Yesterday's Perfume

Happy Mother's Day!

If you didn't get your mother perfume for Mother's Day, call her, tell her you love her, and/or reminisce about the perfume she wore!

Here's a post that could get you started...What perfume did your mother wear?

Perfume at the Movies: Narcisse Noir in Michael Powell's "Black Narcissus"

 

 

In Black Narcissus, Michael Powell's hypnotically beautiful film about nuns who relocate to a convent in the Himalayas only to become haunted by the earthly delights of their pasts, Caron's 1911 perfume Narcisse Noir is but one enticement to the world of sensuality.

For those of you lucky enough to have smelled the deliciously decadent vintage perfume Narcisse Noir by Caron, the above clip from Michael Powell's 1947 film Black Narcissus depicting its disquieting effect  will make perfect sense. With its white orange blossom flower's pact with the devil and one of the lowest animalic base note growls in the history of perfume, Narcisse Noir is a reference perfume for those fetishized perfume terms "indolic" and "animalic" that make some perfumistas look for their fainting couches.

When the film begins, a group of Anglican nuns are asked to relocate to a palace in the Himalayas that was once the playground of concubines. They are to start a new order, headed by Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr, below left), that will serve as a school and a hospital for the locals. Nevermind that monks who attempted the same thing previously failed spectacularly. "The Himalayas," says resident macho man and British overseer of the region, Mr. Dean (David Farrar), "is no place for a nunnery."

Amid the intoxicating natural splendor of the Himalayas is the artificial paradise, as Charles Baudelaire described it, of perfume. If the Himalayas is no place for a nunnery, then Black Narcissus is no perfume for one. In the above clip, a bejeweled, perfumed and bedecked local General (Sabu) removes his scarf one day during a study session at the convent. Redolent with Black Narcissus perfume he got "at the Army/Navy store in London," the scarf's scent bemuses Sister Ruth (the astonishing Kathleen Byron). "I don't like scent at all," she declares icily. To an inverse degree, the scent mesmerizes local bad girl Kanchi (Jean Simmons in unfortunate "brown face") who inhales its elixir, swooning in reverie. "Sister," asks the General, "don't you think it rather common to smell of ourselves?"

Common or not, resistance to all manner of sensual enticements prove futile. Almost as soon as they arrive, the nuns find themselves no match against their new home's haunting beauty. Memories of romantic and natural delights from their past threaten their dedication to the nunnery, to their vows of chastity, and in one nun's case, to sanity itself. But it's not just their past that seduces. Don't forget resident bohunk Mr. Dean, who is one of the palace's seductive features, along with the altitude, rolling greenery, flowers, and perfume.

An allegory for the failure of both British colonialism and its fantasies of "civilizing" natives, Black Narcissus is also about the power of sensual beauty over attempts to repress it. Baudelaire, who loved perfume and cosmetics as two of the "Flowers of Evil," would be pleased by a scene that symbolizes one nun's embrace of the dark side: the most dramatic application of red lipstick I think I've ever seen in the movies. As one reviewer writes, "It is enough to see the bright, red lipstick that Sister Ruth has put on to know that the apocalypse is near."

Perfume and lipstick as the downfall of civilization, or at least the harbinger of the occasion? I think I speak for many of us who say, "Bring it on."

(Thanks to my dear friend Jonno for introducing me to Black Narcissus and for grabbing the above clip. I should probably mention that although Sabu says that his perfume is Black Narcissus and not "Narcisse Noir," and Perfume Intelligence lists a few other obscure Black Narcissus perfumes — by Ahmed Soliman [1920], The Bacorn Co. [1915], Parfums d'Arys [1930] and Lotus du Noel [1930], I choose to believe that only Narcisse Noir could have elicited Kanchi's reaction and Sabu's devotion. Also, If you're concerned with what seems like the film's binary between natural/unnatural, natives/civilizing Brits — and you should be — also note that the film splendidly deconstructs this in dizzying, and probably unwitting ways. For one, by creating the "natural" Himalayas exclusively on a London soundstage, and by introducing the sensuality of native Sabu via the unnatural Western perfume he bought at the Army/Navy store. And don't get me started on poor Kanchi's face.)

 

My Book SCENT AND SUBVERSION: A Century of Provocative Perfume Will Be Published by Lyons Press

One spring night in 2008, I was in bed reading a New Yorker article by John Lanchester called Scents and Sensibilities. It was a meditation on the difficulty of conveying what he called "taste experiences" into language, as well as reviews of a couple books that did a splendid job of doing just that. One was a book about wine, and one — you guys know where I'm going with this — was a book about perfume by Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez, the magnificent Perfumes: The Guide.

I was transfixed by the elegant and funny writing Lanchester excerpted and tantalized by the possibility of smelling these perfumes Turin and Sanchez so evocatively described. I'd loved perfume as a child and tween, but my love had lain dormant for a couple decades despite my continued (desultory) purchasing and wearing of perfume. After reading The Guide, my Limbic System, like an awakened Rip Van Winkle, went on a zombie-like quest for braaaaains!!!!PERFUUUUUUME!!!!, and here I am, four years later, still obsessed by it.

As I continued to read about perfume in books (Chandler Burr's two awesome books The Emperor of Scent and The Perfect Scent) and blogs (Perfume Shrine, The Scented Salamander, 1000 Perfumes, Basenotes, Fragrantica, Grain de Musc, I Smell Therefore I Am, Bois de Jasmin, Olfactarama, The Non-Blonde, Katie Puckrik Smells etc., etc. look to your right for the others!), my perfume tastes focused on what could be described as Temporal Niche: vintage perfume.

Don't get me wrong, as I was collecting vintage, I was still sniffin' the new. There was my obsession with Serge Lutens' Muscs Koublai Khan, and particularly with this wonderful category I'd never heard of called "animalic." (Read this classic Basenotes thread to see why!) Etat Libre d'Orange's Sécrétions Magnifique blew me away with its skirting the "bleeding edge," so to speak, of what a perfume could smell like. And Christopher Brosius at CB I Hate Perfume seemed to have a restless, New Millennium urge to reset the barometer on smell to Year One, with his representational scents of Roast Beef, Old Fur Coat, and Burning Leaves. There were many, many others. Trust.

But there was, I felt, time to learn about the new. Turin and Sanchez made a compelling case against bad reformulations of classics, and waxed poetic about certain perfumes that, in their original form, were sublime. Vintage perfumes were disappearing, and I needed to smell as many as I could before I could never experience them again. Thanks to eBay, estate sales, Ye Olde Junque Shoppes, The Perfumed Court, and friends like Leslie Ann at the Miniature Perfume Shoppe and this blog's readers — some of these originals soon became mine.

I had so many a-ha, falling-down-the-perfume-rabbit-hole moments with vintage. A night of sniffing vintage Chanel No. 19 was revelatory for me, in that I realized that a well-made perfume is a Mute Invisible Cinema, with its own mise-en-scene, characters, atmosphere and narrative. Diorella was kaleidescopic in its strangeness and complexity. Narcisse Noir, Bandit and so many others showed me just how erotic and subversive perfume could be, their perfume notes and combinations a language full of stories. As well as being beautiful, these creatures held secrets about the women they were meant for and the culture they were made in, and I wanted to find out what I could. All this led me on my slightly insane quest to smell as much of 20th century perfume as I could, and to discuss how each decade's style reflected the culture it emerged from.

There have been times, including now, when the hierarchy of needs up there in the Madame Rochas ad have placed Perfume squarely before Food, Clothing, and Shelter. But here I am. Two cities (SF to NOLA), one agent (the patient and wonderful Gordon Warnock of Andrea Hurst Literary Agency who believed in this project), and one publisher (Lyons Press/Globe Pequot Press) later, and these years of perfume obsession are culminating in a book that will be published in 2013.

I'm excited about Scent and Subversion: A Century of Provocative Perfume. It will include descriptions and histories of over 300 vintage perfumes, decade by decade, from Jicky to Demeter's Laundromat (2000). It will cover drugstore perfumes as well as haute perfumes. It will have over 100 gorgeous and interesting vintage perfume ads I've been collecting over the years. There will be some history about perfume houses, noses, basic perfume appreciation glossaries, and essays about the history, sociology, and even philosophy of perfume. There may even be interviews with perfumers.

In many ways, Scent and Subversion is a feminist project as much as it is an aesthetic one, because I'm also interested in how women have experienced this art that has been (predominantly) dedicated to them. What does it mean to them? Why do they love it? That's why the comments on this blog, the conversations I've struck up with readers, and the friendships that I've formed around perfume have been invaluable to me. I've learned so much from every one of my perfume friends.

Scent and Subversion is a work in progress. I'm still collecting some vintage perfumes, and I'm still doing some research. I'll still occasionally blog, but I'm furiously working on the book now, so the posts will be less frequent. I may post a question I want to tackle in the book, and your feedback could help me formulate an answer. If any of you have suggestions — books you want to make sure I've read, vintage perfume you want to ensure gets covered (or that you want to send), ideas for the book, anything! — please drop me a line either in the comments section, or via email (yesterdaysperfume@gmail.com). Thanks to everyone who's chatted with me about perfume over these years. Y'all will definitely be getting acknowledged in the book!

 

 

Hear "Perfume Set to Music: The 'Sound' of Scents" by Harry Revel (1948)

I've reviewed Corday's lovely perfume Toujours Moi here on Yesterday's Perfume, but I've been wanting to "hear" it ever since I learned that composer Harry Revel translated it into music in the 1940s.

Revel had the synaesthetic inspiration to turn scent into melody when he caught a whiff of Toujours Moi on a Parisian woman. Apparently, it was only when he heard the Theremin instrument in the soundtrack of Hitchcock's Spellbound that he felt he was truly able to capture perfume's "ethereal quality."

I wanted to hear for myself how successful he was, so I got the 45, had a friend digitize it for me (thanks, Steeby!), and below are the first couple of Corday 'fumes-turned-tunes: Toujours Moi and Fame.

I'm not sure if I agree with the claim on the back of the album that "it is probably the only successful attempt to capture and reproduce...the 'sounds' of fragrance and scent." As fun and at times beautiful as the music is on "Perfume Set to Music," I don't see the correspondence between the perfume and the tune. Toujours Moi, for example,  is a seductive and sultry scent, and its musical counterpart? It sounds like the soundtrack to a Saturday morning cartoon, or the background music of an old movie. Interesting, but not perfume-like. Any Debussy piece, to me, sounds infinitely more perfumey.

Just listen for yourself. Do the tracks below for Toujours Moi and Fame sound like perfume to you? Or even those perfumes? Let me know! (One caveat: it takes at least two minutes to download the MP3 once you click on the link. Give it time; it's worth it!) And for your viewing pleasure and edification, I've also included a video of a cat playing a Theremin. It is awesome.

Download 2 Audio Track

Perfume Set to Music: The "Sound" of Scents (liner notes)

"The suite of musical sketches on this record is the result of a new and fascinating field of exploration by the British-born composer, Harry Revel. Inspired by the heady scents of the famous French Corday perfumes, it is probably the only successful attempt to capture and reproduce with musical instruments and human voice the 'sounds' of fragrance and scent.

Revel attributes the development of the sketches to a chance meeting he had with an attractive Frenchwoman in the bar of the Hotel George V in Paris late in 1936. 'The fragrance of her perfume,' the composer relates, 'transposed itself in my mind to a melodic theme. I was curious to know what the scent was and she explained that it was a famous perfume made by Corday — Toujours Moi. It occurred to me then that if one fragrance could inspire a melody there must be others that could do the same. Before leaving Paris I visited the offices of Corday and told them of my experience. They were intrigued by the event and suggested I visit Grasse, in Southern France, where Corday secures the oils and materials which go into the making of their perfumes. While in Grasse, and later, back in Paris, I spent many hours sampling perfumes and finally the idea for a suite became fixed in my mind. Before I returned to the States I had set down the first draft of a series of sketches which I titled 'Perfume Set To Music.'

MAGIC OF THE THEREMIN

"In the years that followed, I attempted to put the finishing touches to the sketches but was disturbed by my inability to score them in such a way that they would convey the actual ethereal quality of rare perfume.

It was not until I attended the premier of the motion picture 'Spellbound' and heard its magnificent score which employs the Theremin that I found the answer to my problem. The Theremin is a difficult musical instrument to describe. From it comes a sustained sound which is drawn out by moving the hands before the sounding board without touching it. The moment I heard its subtle tones I knew that in this instrument lay the key to the scoring of my suite.

Shortly thereafter, Revel completed the suite and the actual recording took place at the RCA Victor studios in Hollywood. Dr. Samuel Homan, who participated in the sound track recording of 'Spellbound' played the Theremin, with the orchestra and chorus under the direction of Leslie Baxter."

 

 

What Perfume Would the Women of Mad Men Wear?

Last Sunday, fans of AMC’s Mad Men were treated to a return of the addictive drama about the golden age of advertising on Madison Avenue during the tumultuous 1960s. Mad Men gives us a glimpse into what it might have felt like to witness that era's politico-cultural changes from the viewpoint of workers in the office of the Sterling Cooper advertising agency, an agency whose job it is to read the zeitgeist for the venal purpose of manipulating people consumers into buying stuff.

As devoted viewers already know, through characters so well-drawn we feel like we know them, we get to see the collision of sexism, racism, and capitalism, and the results aren’t pretty — but they sure are fascinating!

Not only are Mad Men’s characters drawn realistically, the show’s style is also impeccably curated, from the bullet bras we see underneath the female characters’ tight dresses to the opening credit’s "falling man" homage to Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. And style here is also substance. The style details are right not only for fetishistic accuracy, but also to reinforce the characters’ inner lives.

Don Draper’s brand of toxic misogyny is depicted as complex (insofar as Mad Men is smart enough to show us that he is also its victim). In a parallel fashion, his perfect suits and cool and in-control Mid-Century modern office serve as objective correlatives for a kind of surface polish with no interior. Who is Don, really? Or Peggy, with her oddly asexual Mod dresses? Or Joan, with figure-enhancing outfits that serve both as weapons (they didn’t call them bullet-bras for nothing!) and armour? Or Betty, with her flowery ladies-who-lunch style at odds with her icy stares and melancholy brooding?

Which leads me to the point of this post. With all of Mad Men’s stylistic details spot-on, one detail that would interest perfumistas is undepictable via the medium of television: Perfume. What perfume would Peggy, or Joanie, or Betty wear? Or Don, Pete, or Roger for that matter?

Seeing as we don’t always wear perfumes that came out the precise year we’re living in — it’s usually give or take a decade or two, no? — in my answer, I took into account the year this season’s Mad Men takes place (1966) along with the personality of the character and her possible aspirational yearnings.

Betty Draper, a graduate of Bryn Mawr and former model turned “mad” housewife, has since remarried after her marriage to cheating Don Draper fell apart. Betty, mother of three, is the quintessential unfulfilled 50s-type housewife now living in an era on the cusp of the 70s women’s movement. She wants to break free, so I think her perfume choice should reflect a yearning (not yet fully conscious) to express herself, while at the same time remaining “classy.” I could see her wearing Fracas (1948), My Sin (1924), or Femme (1944), perfumes that either through name or notes, suggest a (conventional) rebellion against her good-girl status.

 

Peggy Olson started out at Sterling Cooper as Don Draper’s secretary, living in the outer boroughs of Manhattan. But through ambition, a knack for copywriting, and Don’s surprising mentorship, she became a Manhattan-based copywriter there. (A copywriter at the same agency, Pete Campbell , got her pregnant in what can only be described as a rape. She terminated the pregnancy had the baby, but turned Pete down later when he told her he loved her.) She’s one tough cookie, in other words. If she’s wearing perfume at all (she wants to blend in with the boys, after all), it’s probably something she just picked up at the drugstore that's not too intrusive: maybe Fabergé's Woodhue (1944).

The office manager at Sterling Cooper, Joan Holloway uses her beauty and sex appeal to wield what power she can in the office. She’s had affairs with coworkers (notably with the then-powerful Roger Sterling), and she teaches newbies how to work the system using their feminine wiles. In an interesting subplot, Joan seemed jealous that Peggy began to rise in the ranks at Sterling Cooper not as a secretary, but with the male copywriters. Joan, like Betty, is caught between two eras, and it will be interesting to see how she develops as a character. Joan probably wants to smell feminine but elegant, downplaying va-va-va voom sexuality since her clothes certainly aren’t doing that. I imagine her wearing classics such as Arpège (1927) or Chanel No. 5 (1921).

French-Canadian beauty Megan Draper: Former front desk receptionist turned wife of Don Draper, Megan is young, vibrant, smart and sensitive. Her looks have helped her get by in life, but she’s also headstrong and intelligent. The most hip fashionable figure of this group, Megan’s perfume is going to be fresh and of-the-moment: I imagine her in Fidji (1966) or Vivara (1965).

As a bonus, one of my favorite cameo characters: Joyce Ramsay, an assistant photo editor at Life Magazine. Joyce’s job, sexual orientation (she’s a lesbian) and contacts in the bohemian world give Peggy a window into different worlds flourishing outside of her Madison Avenue bubble. Joyce lets it all hang loose, so I doubt she’s wearing perfume. Her scent of choice? B.O., baby! or possibly patchouli oil. My guess, though? The natural scent of the cannabis smoke that seemed to surround her in all of the episodes she was in.

What do you think the women of Mad Men would have worn? And what about the (M)ad Men themselves?

 

A St. Patrick's Day Tribute to My Favorite Green Perfumes

Last year, I listed my favorite "green" perfumes in honor of St. Patrick's Day.

Green perfumes contain notes and accords that are reminiscent of the freshness and bracing quality of leaves, grass, and herbs. They can lift your spirits and revitalize your senses, but they're not for everyone.

If you're looking to get your green on, check out my favorite green perfumes. And Happy St. Patrick's Day!

What Would Your Life Look Like Measured Out in Perfume?

Perfume, by nature, lurks in the background, often exerting unconscious effects on mood, attraction, and even cognitive function. So it makes sense that perfume may hover over people's memories of their lives like pale spirits, largely ignored or unacknowledged. Some may feel as if perfume had no effect on them at all — until prompted to remember. And then suddenly, there's the memory of what Mother or Father wore. Or their first fragrance. Or what someone's hair or skin smelled like the first time they kissed them.

I've always loved perfume, but I seem to have been more of a kid perfumista than an adult one. (Until recently, of course.) My mother was a wearer of grand fragrances, so I had a head-start there (Femme, Scherrer, Magie Noire, etc.) And I associated perfume with freedom and exploration, because it was at the mall where I was dropped off as a kid/tween that I sprayed perfume with abandon, trying everything I could get my little paws on. Between the Sanrio store, Waldenbooks, and whatever department store with a perfume counter there was in the early 80s in Fayetteville, Arkansas — it was there that my constellation of desires was borne.

There was a long period of my adult life when I wore whatever came my way, without particular gusto. My renewed interest in perfume came through reading Perfumes: The Guide, and needing to smell everything Tania and Luca wrote about. (I imagine this was many a perfume lover's gateway book.) My gateway drug perfumes? Vintage Diorella and Lutens' Muscs Koublai Khan.

So without further ado, here is a list of perfumes that have marked my life thus far. (I'm sure I'm leaving something out.) I'd love to see your list as well!

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• Earliest memory of perfume: I'm five, and my father has brought back from Hawaii three "island flower" perfumes whose plastic caps are in the shape of a flower. The perfumes smell exotic. The liquid inside is viscous and sticks to the cap like egg whites.

• Cherie, a girl in my third grade class who lisps, has cute crooked teeth, and tries to kiss me at recess, wears a lemon perfume. This is a happy scent and memory.

• My mother wears Charlie and goes to university. It smells smart and daring to me.

• At the mall during one of my explorations at the perfume counter, I discover Calvin Klein's first eponymous fragrance. It smells like apples and fall to me. I'm in love with the simple bottle, too, and put it on every chance I can get.

• My beloved grandmother wears L'Air du Temps, until the very end. I can't smell it without thinking of her.

• My piano teacher smokes menthol cigarettes and wears a very strong, indolic floral that to this day I'm trying to remember. (Fracas? Joy?) Whatever it is, the combination of her mentholated cigarette breath and smokey clothes plus that perfume (plus the spearmint gum she chews to try to cover up the cigarette smell!) leave a lasting olfactory impression on me. Perhaps the most pungent one! Combined with her raspy voice, wild glasses, and smart polyester pant suits, Mrs. Foley, if she could be olfactorily summed up, smelled to me like diesel fuel and flowers.

• A cousin gives me a violet soliflore for a present. Its sweetness depresses me, and I never wear it.

• A cousin I admire wears Oscar de la Renta. My favorite aunt wears Charles of the Ritz.

• In high school, I decide I love Grey Flannel and don't care if it's for men. I feel daring wearing it with my private school jumper and little white socks. (It definitely competes with Ralph Lauren's Polo, which all the boys are wearing.) I also love Lauren, and flirt with Chanel's Cristalle, which I'm given on a trip to Paris by a family friend. I'm sure Giorgio is in the picture somewhere...

• When I move away from home, my mother sends me off with a giant bottle of Diva, with the crystal stopper. I don't (can't?) wear it.

• In my 20s in New York, at college, I'm waitressing at a restaurant and the bartender, who really wants to be a jewelry designer, brings in a perfume blotter with an odd, refreshing scent I don't know what to make of. It's Bulgari Green Tea. A waitress at an earlier job wore Calyx, which made me swoon; I loved its fruity/sour/floral personality. I'd never smelled anything like it before.

• I move to San Francisco, and a succession of perfumes worn by women I have crushes on remain favorites to this day: Angel and Gucci Rush. A girlfriend wore Aveda's Creme Brilliant hair pomade and CKOne. (Strangely, I was more fond of the Aveda than the CKOne.)

• I start wearing Poison as if it's the 80s all over again, when I'm in the mood to get into some trouble. (It always works.)

• My partner in crime/best friend at the time, Susan T., wears Hanae Mori, a wispy vanillic floral that's way too powdery and feminine to me. She insists it's better than Angel, which she thinks is the most disgusting perfume she's ever smelled.

• The only perfume I remember on a boyfriend is one I still don't know the name of. It's his mother's perfume, and it's odd and resiny and incongruous with his looks. (I'd also never met a dude who wore women's — vintage! — perfume.) Maybe that's why it sticks with me so much. So strange that I can still conjure up the memory of a perfume with no name, so many years later.

• I wear Gucci Rush, Angel, Bulgari Green Tea. And I discover Bulgari Black, which seems sexy and wild.

• Before I read Perfumes: The Guide and go perfume crazy, the last perfumes I purchase and wear are Tom Ford Black Orchid, Bulgari Eau Parfumée Au Thé Rouge, and some weird MAC perfume that smells like vanilla and booze.

And....the rest is history! I wear everything now, from vintage to niche to mainstream. But I'm about to get me some Gucci Rush. I miss that stuff, and it's going to be my summer fragrance.

What would your life look like measured out in perfume? Anything you'd still wear?

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Artist Louise Bourgeois's installation Cell II, 1991 (in the above photo) is, to me, the most beautiful rendition in art of perfume's power. The first thing you see is a series of French doors. They're connected together to almost fully enclose what's inside: the table with empty/almost empty Shalimar bottles, next to which is a sculpture of hands held together as if fretful or worrying. In order to see what's inside (the doors seem to want to protect what's inside) you have to peek through an opening. You really feel like you're invading someone's privacy. The solid marble hands seem more fragile, somehow, than the empty bottles, one of the many paradoxes of perfume — how it endures like memory.

Poivre by Caron (1954)

Many fragrances from the 1950s helped women to express their erotic selves through carnal, animalic perfume notes, or as the Max Factor Primitif ad put it: to "say the things" that women "would not dare to."

But this is a familiar trope in perfume. Sniffing Caron's Poivre and thinking about all the metaphors of fire and explosives in its ads and descriptions, I got to thinking, how many perfumes express violence and danger in their notes, perfume signifiers not entirely subsumed by sexuality?

Well, Caron’s Poivre, for one. Apparently, Caron creative director Félicie Wanpouille, who had collaborated with Caron perfumer Ernest Daltroff on the drop-dead sexy Narcisse Noir, wanted to buck the trend of 50s well-mannered, ladylike florals. So she asked Caron’s then-perfumer Michel Morsetti to create something fierce and wild.

Caron's Poivre extrait starts off with a firey and earthy spark of crushed black pepper and sharp florals (you really smell the ylang ylang). Then, like a slow-motion olfactive explosion, it unfurls carnation's clovey facets, weaving together floral and spice, with sweet warmth from clove and opoponax.

To add fuel to the fire, so to speak, it turns out that pepper is not the only note that signifies darkness and danger in Poivre. Not only has the American carnation largely lost its characteristic spicy smell, it appears that we don’t have the dark associations with carnations/cloves that Europeans do. In France, cloves have been considered bad luck for centuries. Carnations have long been associated with funerals and even repressive communist regimes. Grain de Musc blogger Denyse Beaulieu gives us an even bloodier association: in her post on Serge Lutens’ modern carnation perfume Vitriol d’oeilette, we learn that “this was the flower that was carried by aristocrats as they went to the guillotine during the Terror in 1793.” Yikes.

Notes: Red and black pepper, clove, carnation, ylang ylang, jasmine, opoponax, cedar, sandalwood, vetiver, oakmoss, musk (Notes and information on Félicie Wanpouille's hand in the creative side of Poivre thanks to Perfume Shrine; her image from Perfume Projects)

A heady mix of florals armed with explosives and spice, Poivre by Caron could easily be a niche scent today. It's hard to imagine the stereotypical 1950s woman warming up to it — until you remember that not everyone in the 50s was Sandra Dee and Doris Day. (Even Sandra Dee and Doris Day probably weren't Sandra Dee and Doris Day!)

Who could I imagine wearing Poivre? The other 1950s women: poets Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, and photographer Diane Arbus — all three artists who came of age in the 50s who were fascinated with intensity, violence and dark eroticism. They were women who didn’t need a perfume to say the things they would not dare to — all three dared to, and then some. And even though they got burned by the fires they got too close to, they at least tried to break free from the 50s trap that enclosed many women in that era.

 

 

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Some vintage perfumes are as hard to find as endangered animals in the wild. You know when you can't even find it on eBay, you're going to have to do some serious sleuthing — or begging, as the case may be. After falling in love with Roger & Gallet's Blue Carnation (a clove-splosion if there ever was), I needed to get a whiff of what I'd heard was one of the most beautiful renditions of carnation/clove: Caron's 1954 Poivre. It became a quest for a mythical beast as exotic and beautiful as the Chinese dragon in the above ad. (Incidentally: HAPPY YEAR OF THE DRAGON.)

When I read a comment on some long ago blog by Fragrantica writer and perfumista extraordinaire Ida Meister/Chaya Ruchama about owning vintage Poivre, I shamelessly (but gingerly?) approached her on Facebook and asked if I could buy a teensy sample. Although she didn’t have much, she wouldn’t let me pay and generously sent me enough for several whiffs and a review. (Thank you again, Ida! I even got a lovely note with a lipstick kiss on it. So sweet!)

I’m in love with clove/carnation notes, now, particularly in perfumes that don’t play up the floral angle. (I want to love Caron’s other carnation scent, Bellodgia, but its carnation/clove notes are overpowered, in my opinion, by too-sweet florals. Poivre does the opposite: it turns the bass up and turns down the higher notes.) Apparently, IFRA (the International Fragrance Association, otherwise known to perfumistas as The Enemy), has started clamping down on eugenol, the primary component of clove. I’m not sure if this means I’m going to have to stick to vintage and kiss modern clove notes goodbye, or not. I've heard varying reviews of the Poivre and Coup de Fouet (its EDT) reformulations. If they're not great, don't blame Caron; blame IFRA and its compulsion to mess with ingredients like eugenol. (The Grain de Musc writeup for Serge Lutens’ Vitriol d’oeillete got me smacking my lips. I've ordered a sample, so we'll see if it holds up!)

I end with an electrifying recording of Sylvia Plath reading her poem Fever 103. Here’s to women who play with fire and the perfume that they can smolder in.

 

 

Jungle Gardenia by Tuvaché (1932)

Jungle Gardenia by Tuvaché has been on my radar for some time. I discovered it not on perfume blogs or forums, but rather during a typical nighttime eBay expedition, trawling for vintage perfume. (Hey, we all have our vices, OK?)

How can this nondescript-looking perfume with the silly name that I’ve never heard anyone talk about, I wondered, go for upwards of $250, a typical starting bid for Jungle Gardenia on eBay? I despaired of ever getting my hands on the stuff, but then good ol’ Leslie Ann from the Miniature Perfume Shoppe saved the day. She had the cutest little ½ dram of Jungle Gardenia (half drained), and soon it was mine.

Now I know why ladies are forking over the benjamins for this one. If this was your signature scent in the 50s and 60s, you would be dying to smell it again. $250, in fact, would be a steal.

Jungle Gardenia by Tuvaché was love at first sniff. Some perfumes dilly-dally around, making small talk, trying to get to know you, requiring that you buy them dinner and learn their childhood pets’ names and personalities, etc. etc. You may not be sure how you feel about them at first, but in time, love — true love — can happen. Jungle Gardenia was no such demure date. It bypassed all of my brain’s rational vetting systems and said, “Kiss me, you fool!”  And kiss it I did.

With tropical wet gardenia and bubble-gum sweet tuberose bursting from its center, flanked by fresh green top notes and an erotic base of balsams and musk, Jungle Gardenia goes straight to the perfume brain’s pleasure center. Subtlety, thy name is not Jungle Gardenia.

But then again, gardenias are not the most subtle flower. Teamed up with tuberose, and you can just kiss free will goodbye. Jungle Gardenia is so beautiful (and satisfying? does that sound too pedestrian?) that you almost want to eat it or consume it somehow faster than your nose can take it in. I’m convinced now that Gardenia and Tuberose, two of the girliest perfume notes often disparaged as “too grandma,” are in fact two of the most badass perfume notes in the perfume lexicon. Put them together and they’re liable to form an olfactory girl gang. They will be up to no good, no matter how sweet they try to convince you they are.

Billing itself as “the world’s most exotic perfume,” Jungle Gardenia is exotic in the way Hollywood movies set in the South Seas starring Bing Crosby and Bob Hope were exotic, with all the signifiers of exotic exaggerated and staged just so. (Big flowers, vines, a pile of sand, one coconut tree, tanned women sporting leis.) And yet, I could see how this perfume — like an actual white gardenia affixed to an ordinary 50s hairdo — could have made your average American housewife feel like Dorothy Lamour.

Although it came out in the 1930s, I wonder if Jungle Gardenia didn’t have its heyday in the 1950s. It seems like a very 1950s perfume, sunny and fun yet carnal in that healthy, smiling American woman way. (It certainly helps that the tuberose in Jungle Gardenia really does smell like pink bubble gum.) The 50s ads seen here traded on the fact that so many famous and beautiful women loved it , including beauty queens and Elizabeth Taylor around the time she filmed Cleopatra. (Perhaps it became the perfume that Michael Jackson would wear when he performed — I kid you not, check out this 2009 Vanity Fair interview with Michael Jackson! — because of his friendship with the violet-eyed legend.)

Tuvaché’s backstory is pretty charming, too. Apparently, it was a New York-based company that felt it needed to be in French drag in order to compete with the popularity of French scents at the time. (You can see the American inferiority complex in 50s ads for perfumes like Revlon’s Intimate: "[T]he fabulous new American fragrance that even French women are talking about!”) Tuvaché’s owner even went so far as to concoct a pen name, Madame de Tuvaché. I bet she would have thrown a circumflex in there somewhere if she could.

Tuvaché’s Jungle Gardenia is long discontinued (in its original form, anyway). I have not tried the Germaine Monteil, Yardley, Jovan/Coty, Irma Shorell, or Evyan versions which are said to have taken over. A few ways to figure out if you have the original formula? 1) Check to see if it’s by Tuvaché 2) See if it’s made in New York and 3) Does it make you swoon?

 

 

 

 

Halston by Halston (1975)

“Halston’s influence on American fashion goes beyond his designs — he took an era, reupholstered it in Ultrasuede, dabbed Halston on its pulse points and made it his own.” - Carina Chocano*

 

At once masculine and feminine, friendly and formal, and chic and sexy, Halston perfume for women embodies the mixed-crowd ethos of the Studio 54 denizens who wore it. Steve Rubell, co-owner of the legendary late 70s/early 80s discotheque, was famous for letting beautiful unknowns past the velvet ropes to hobnob with the celebrities who had debaucherous fun there: Jack, Angelica, Andy, Bianca, Liz, Liza, Calvin, Brooke (Astor and Shields), et al.

 

Like the nightclub its namesake helped make famous, Halston perfume is less interested in who comes to its party than that everyone, because they look like they’re having fun, looks beautiful.

 

Green, fruity, floral, fresh, spiced, mossy and woody (talk about a mixed crowd!), Halston for women typifies late 70s fashion when simplicity — thanks, in part, to Roy Halston — was chic. Its somewhat austere green/mossy/chypre soul has done a bump of coke and decided to put on some lipgloss, a slinky Halston column dress**, and dance the night away.

 

Top notes: Tagetes (marigold), green notes, spearmint, peach, bergamot

Heart notes: Jasmine, cedarwood, rose, carnation, orris, ylang-ylang

Base notes: Moss, patchouli, vetiver, sandalwood, olibanum (frankincense), musk, amber

The chypre category, like the ideal 70s woman, is on the verge of androgyny. Flanked by bitter, herbaceous green and mint on one side and woods and oakmoss on the other, the “feminine” fruit-floral peach-rose-jasmine heart of Halston is like a woman’s body in one of those fabulous "Le Smoking" suits YSL made for women in the 70s. Hours into Halston's dry down, I smell an artifact of the past: a whiff of the powdery DoubleMint gum wrapper, sweetly scenting Halston with its mint and refreshing its base of resins, moss, woods and warm amber.

Even the famous Halston bottle has a chic lineage. Designed by Elsa Peretti, model-turned-interior designer-turned-jewelry-designer for Tiffany’s in the 70s, the biomorphic bottle is modern in its stark simplicity and soft with its curves. (Like her famous tear-drop-heart necklace and thumb-print ring.)

There was a time when Halston was the second top-selling perfume in history, next to “le monstre” Chanel No. 5. Sniff out some vintage***, and you’ll know why. Rachel Zoe and Nicole Richie are doing everything they can to bring 70s Halston-esque clothes back, maybe I should try to bring back Halston the perfume, circa 1975. This weekend…

 

 * This Carina Chocano quote is from an interesting Salon.com book review that situates Roy Halston Frowick’s place in history and discusses his influence on Donna Karan, Calvin Klein, Tom Ford, and Narciso Rodriguez.

** There are so many cool blogs that have curated images of Halston and his models and designs. Here’s one, here’s another, and here's yet another. And here are some NYTimes articles on Halston's legacy: here and here. Interesting fact: Halston was a milliner before he was a designer, and designed Jackie O’s famous pillbox hat she wore to her husband’s 1961 presidential inauguration.

 ***A while back, I bid on some Halston that had been described as vintage perfume. It was anything but, and immediately smelled cheap and weird to me. Your best bet is to get the glass bottle with the glass stopper (rather than the sprays, which are probably going to be reformulations). Or, you can do as I did and get an adorable mini with a tiny screw top from The Miniature Perfume Shoppe. That little guy is definitely a vintage perfume.