The Making of a Miss Behave Collab: Bessie Smith by Nashira

I don’t want no drummer. I set the tempo. — Bessie Smith

Bessie Smith, Empress of the Blues

Tell us a bit about Bessie Smith.

Bessie Smith, nicknamed “The Empress of Blues” was a legendary blues and jazz singer during the Harlem Renaissance. After being orphaned at 9, Bessie and her brother used street performing as a way to earn money to support their household. She was hired as a dancer and performed with the famed Ma Rainey before eventually forming her own solo act.

At the time virtually no Black artists were being recorded because white audiences didn’t typically listen to Black musicians. Black music was mostly consumed by white listeners through MInstrel shows where white performers wore blackface and portrayed Black people as lazy, ignorant, hypersexual, and superstitious. A new market emerged when Okeh Records was convinced to record a Black blues singer named Mamie. Mamie’s records became so popular amongst Black consumers that record labels couldn’t ignore the potential profit in marketing Black records. Labels soon began looking for other female blues singers to record “race records” for potential Black buyers.

Bessie eventually began recording with Columbia Records and her songs were immediate hits. With her increasing popularity Bessie became a headliner touring on the Black vaudeville circuit, where she often sold out shows. Bessie was an incredible talent with a rare, low contralto voice that captivated her audiences. The success of her records launched her fame, and she grew to be one of the most popular, highest paid Black music artists of her time. After being dropped from Columbia Records during the depression, continued sales of Bessie’s records contributed to keeping Columbia Records afloat. Bessie exuded glitz and wealth, while singing about pain and struggle. She has influenced some of the most well known artists in pop culture today. Many would call Bessie the first Black superstar.

Why did you choose Bessie Smith?

The Harlem Renaissance gave Black artists, authors, poets, and musicians the creative freedom and control over how the Black experience was portrayed. It set the groundwork for the civil rights movement, but even in times when radical shifts in political awareness were happening, women's voices were often suppressed. Bessie commanded her voice be heard. Through her music she discussed racism, sexism, prison labor, poverty, and the complicated highs and lows of love. Her songs encouraged women to explore independence, sexual freedom, and practice agency.

I chose Bessie Smith because her music was empowering to women who wanted to hear stories of our liberation. In many ways she made early protest music that challenged social norms. While certain critics labeled her as “rough”, I admire the way she didn’t soften her edges to be more palatable.

What was your vision for this fragrance?

I knew I wanted the fragrance to embody the feeling of an underground jazz club during The Harlem Renaissance. When I think of Bessie Smith I don't think of the popular Speakeasies that emerged during prohibition like The Cotton Club, where rich folks could listen to live jazz and blues. My vision was of the basement afterparty where you could find Bessie and other musicians post performance, or the underground jazz club where they’re running numbers in the back, or even the rent party where they’ve pushed all the furniture out of the way to make room for dancing.

What do you love most about this fragrance?

I’ve spent the last month or so taking myself back to a time that I never experienced. I’ve envisioned what it would be like to live in this place with people I’ve never met so I could translate that feeling to the Poesie team. So the thing I love most besides the perfect balance of sweet/smoky/boozy/ woodiness, is that when I smell this fragrance it transports me to the exact place I imagined.

What were the highlights of this process/collab?

Working with Joelle and Allie was such an amazing experience. Even now, after all is said and done I still can’t believe I was able to be a part of this process. I’ve been a fan of Poesie fragrances for awhile now, but to watch Joelle create different scents based on my ideas that at the time felt all over the place was so cool. Having a fragrance I can smell, that reflects an idea that I had, that embodies such an important woman in an important era is something I will cherish. To be able to share that with people through both the fragrance and this blog is really special to me.

Nashira

About Nashira

Nashira (pronounced na-shy-ra) is a fur mom who loves reading, and discovering new fragrances. As far back as she can remember, she’s always had a perfume collection. She loves the way fragrance is so closely tied to memory and emotion. To her, fragrance can transcend time and space. Nashira started creating TikTok videos to help with social anxiety. She says making fragrance content has helped introduce her to so many amazing people. When she started getting into indie perfume oils Poesie is one of the first brands she fell in love with; her favorites are Soft and Madar.

An Alternate History of Marie Antoinette, Sans Cake

If a childhood crammed with fairy tales and princesses evolved into an adulthood filled with royal biographies, you quickly learned that being a princess wasn’t all flowy dresses and tiaras. In fact, the more of those biographies you read, the worse it looks. Strict upbringings (Queen Victoria), being shipped off to some foreign country where you may or may not have known the language (literally everybody), being shut up in a tower (Juana of Castile). It all makes being a peasant look better and better. 

Marie Antoinette age 12 (what?!), portrait by Martin van Meytens

Is there a better example of the princess plight than Marie Antoinette? If so, please don’t tell me, because her story is depressing enough. I can’t handle anything worse. Immersing myself in her world (for science!) has me thinking about our collective fascination with the doomed queen. Which part do we like better, the doom or the queen? Or is it the combination of both that makes her so compelling? Would be still be talking about Icarus if he had made a successful flight? But I’ll spare you the philosophizing, which at any rate is better served alone with a glass of cognac than pinned to a blank page where it ends up squirming and looking quite small.

Every time I’ve mentioned this collection to someone IRL, their response can be summed up in one word. Cake. 

Just...no. SHE LITERALLY NEVER SAID THAT. We all know that by now, right? The internet is full of very s-m-r-t people telling other people that Marie Antoinette never said “let them eat cake.” There’s so much proof. Like the fact that the whole story had been attributed to other royal women (it’s always the women, isn’t it?) for years and years before Marie Antoinette had even gotten to France. And there’s a whole thing about brioche vs cake that I won’t even get into. Because it doesn’t matter. Because she never said it.

It may seem like I’m getting overexcited about the cake thing. I’m not really mad at the people today who still pair that quote with Marie Antoinette (but seriously people, stahp) so much as I’m mad at the 18th century jerks who started the story in the first place. Anyone who knows me knows I can hold a grudge. Sure you’ve been dead for 200 years, but that’s NO EXCUSE. And the cake thing was the least of it. There was so much vile propaganda around Marie Antoinette that it’s crazy. Sooo many pornographic pamphlets. Not quaint 18th century porn, but straight-up gross-yes-people-were-just-as-awful-back-then-and-can-you-believe-it type porn. Google at your own risk.

via GIPHY

Wow this took a turn. Which is probably exactly how Marie Antoinette felt when she was swanning about trying to do her queenly duties until a gang of merchant women marched from Paris and burst into Versailles out for blood. I’m not trying to put down the revolution. Let’s just say that it seems like their ire was not only misplaced but deliberately misdirected. And I have a lot of thoughts about how that happened and misogyny and the irony of the French deficit having been mostly due to their support of the American Revolution and why did Marie Therese who by all accounts was an amazing ruler of Austria raise her daughter to just do what the nearest man told her to do and also Louis XVI get it together omg.

[deep breath]

I have a confession to make. I’ve paused my audiobook of Antonia Fraser’s The Journey with two hours left because I’m not sure I can handle the end. I want to picture Marie Antoinette at Petit Trianon milking her hand-washed cows into Sèvres porcelain buckets. I want to be her friend (you know, the one who tells you what to do and you kind of hate it but you kind of like it because she’s always right, dammit). I want to push her and frigging Louis XVI into the carriage before the Women’s March gets there (because they totally could have gotten away!). I would prefer not to end up with my head on a pike (do we even still have pikes?) like her actual best friend the Princess of Lamballe. I mean, can’t you just picture if instead of everyone getting their heads chopped off, the French royalty ended up like the Brits and how many articles there would be on fashion blogs asking “who wore it better” and they wouldn’t have to invent feuds between Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton because there would be a perfectly natural feud between the British and French royals?

In that world, everyone would talk about how Marie Antoinette wasn’t great at being queen but she did her best and she was actually a really nice person who tried to help peasants even though it wasn’t fashionable and how she had exquisite taste and contributed to the evolution of the decorative arts. I mean, they wouldn’t word it exactly like that. But you get the idea. And no one -- NO ONE -- would ever mention cake.