There is a wonderful excruciating movie about the life of Lola Montez of the same name. She ends up in the movie being part of a circus show where anyone in the audience can holler out any question they want, no matter how loathsome, and Lola has to answer it. It is the nadir of humiliation. I don't think she ever had to undergo that sort of treatment.
However, this was a woman who just had not limits. She was a very pretty dark haired woman from Ireland. Born into a straight laced family which did its best to see that she got a good education, Lola eloped with a man before she finished school and ended up in India, divorced, and earning a living as an exotic dancer! She made her way to Europe and was introduced to King Ludwig I of Bavaria. He fell deeply in love with her and she lead him around by the nose. Of course, the people and government of Bavaria hated her, she was foul tempered, arrogant, meddled in politics, was demanding a title and citizenship — -Enough!
Thanks to Lola, Ludwig was deposed. She managed to bring down his government in two years! She fled to that most popular of places, California where she entertained the world on stage. Then she really got dramatic.
Lola moved to Australia and invented the Spider Dance, an act where she hiked her skirts up higher and higher until you could see all of her lady bits. Of course this caused a sensation, and her shows were very well attended by lonely miners. Alas, her bad temper caused her to lose her latest revenue stream. She heard an unflattering catcall from the audience and responded with the meanest insult to all of the Australian assembled which she could muster. After that, her shows were not well attended and she had to endure yet more trouble when the editor of a local paper published an unflattering critique of her. She responded characteristically by attacking him physically with a horse whip!
She returned to America, the California but by now she was not as attractive as she had been. Though under 40 her face had lost its charm and there was good reason. She was suffering from the then incurable syphilis. She was in the grip of tertiary syphilis by this time and it's effects ranged from angry outbursts (for which she was famous), the shakes, trouble walking, in some cases collapsed bridge of the nose, sores which don't heal; it is indeed terrible. And she suffered and died at 39.
Despite her troubled life, she lived the way she wanted and cut a wide swathe. So, I thought that her perfuem should be just as extreme as she was, something which was to make an impression and last, just to push anyone else out of the way and take command. A concentrated green of Irish grass accord has been combined with a deeply green aquatic note to be the symbol for her true origins and dash, this is followed by a wildly alluring dark and thick labdenum and a tonka infusion I make here in my mixing room. Finally, I have added a very small amount of an animalic musk which is super powerful, so care must be used not to go overboard here, it is the symbol of her erotic adventuresomeness. This is a very modern musk, very pure, very strong.
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