Yesterday's Perfume

Cabochard by Gres (1959)

Reminiscent of Robert Piguet's Bandit thanks to galbanum and the chemical isobutyl quinoline, which gives both perfumes a harsh, green, rubbery and leather note, Cabochard is nevertheless a kinder, gentler Bandit, down to the demure grey bow around its neck. This is, no doubt, in part due to the sweeter, warmer notes of rose, jasmine, ylang-ylang and orris. 

"Caboche" means headstrong or stubborn in French, suggesting that the wearer of this perfume will broadcast her toughness, in spite of being ladylike. She may smell of flowers, but they're flowers one has to pierce through a fog of cigarette smoke to get to. Cabochard smells a little "lady of the night" to me. (Or, like my piano teacher from childhood, who always smelled like a combination of sweet perfume and diesel fuel combined with stale tobacco smoke.)

I hate to say this, because I want so much to love Bandit and Cabochard, both legendary green leather chypres, but they are both almost too chemical and harsh for my nose. Every time I've taken a whiff, wanting my damndest to fall in love, I begin to get allergic reactions, my nasal passages declare war, fortifying themselves by shutting down. And I begin to sneeze.

This is no way, in other words, to begin an affair.

But more than that, perhaps there is something cliche in this day and age about the whole Stevie Nicks "leather and lace" formulation. Maybe being a tough lady can be broadcast with the most over-the-top "feminine" notes? Does she have to say one thing (flowers) and mean another (leather, tobacco, isobutyl quinoline, galbanum)? This dialectic seems stuck in the '40's and '50s, when these scents originated.

I am beginning to have an appreciation for scents that are either straightforwardly feminine or perhaps signify a femininity that does not refer to masculinity (like Germaine Cellier's perfume for Balenciaga, La Fuite Des Heures or Fleeting Moment). This perfume, unlike Bandit and Jolie Madame, seems to tell a woman's story "in her own words," with notes that refer to the kitchen, the countryside, and to classic perfumery. (I took a whiff from a friend's virtually empty bottle and await my bottle via eBay, but I can see how this scent isn't so "defensively" tough.)

In the end, I surprise myself by saying this, but I think, like a dominatrix with a whip and a scowl, Cabochard and its predecessor Bandit doth protest too much.

Top notes: Aldehydes, citrus, fruit and spice accents

Heart notes: Jasmine, rose, geranium, ylang-ylang, orris

Base notes: Patchouli, amber, vetiver, castoreum, moss, musk 

(please note: Haarman & Reimer guide does not list galbanum or isobutyl quinoline as notes for Cabochard although that harsh accord is present in the vintage)

Miss Dior by Christian Dior (1947)

Miss Dior is an interesting bundle of contradictions. It is a lushly flowered bouquet in a conservative, masculine, houndstooth checkered bottle. (It turns out this was not always so; it used to be in a Baccarat-designed amphora in the figure of a woman's shape, namely, the "New Look" Christian Dior revolutionized.)

 The "Miss" suggests a ingenue quality that this composed and refined perfume belies, in its complexity of notes. And finally, it is way sexier than its later outer presentation would suggest. Perhaps, having been constructed for the late '40s woman, it represents her sexuality under wraps?

My initial experience with Miss Dior was an interesting one. Opening up the small, houndstooth version of the bottle, I dabbed some onto my skin. I detected civet, strangely enough, before I smelled the flowers, the animal dirtiness before the ladylike polish. It was like seeing a woman's underpants as she emerges from a cab before knowing her name. (My notes after taking a whiff: "Neroli? Ylang-ylang —for the sharpness — jasmine, tuberose, civet, musk?" Close. I'm getting there in detecting the specifics.)

But when the flowers do hit — wow. I am a convert to florals thanks to the vintage florals I've encountered, in Piguet's Baghari, in Houbigant's Quelques Fleurs. They're not soliflore (soli-bore?), one-note wonders, but bruised flowers on bases of leather, tobacco, often sliced with something sharp and green to cut through the lushness and make it sing, the way lemon zest can make a creamy risotto even more delicious. The mix of notes in Miss Dior truly makes the metaphor of perfume as a musical composition work: it is an orchestrated blend that hits you like a full-on symphony.

Some commenters on perfume blogs had interesting observations I'll share: "I detect something like cumin beneath the top notes, and while I don't like a prominent cumin note it's subtle enough
to just add an interesting, vaguely animalic, warmth to the cool greens." She says cumin, I say civet. But we're both saying, "dirty."

Another: "Though different olfactory stages and notes can be detected, they are not as pronounced or separated from one another. Rather, they lead to another with a harmonious continuation that makes the complete experience magical and seductive. Which is, after all, the secret for the charisma and sex-appeal of Chypres - the way they blend different notes without leaving too-obvious hints as for what they really are."

Miss Dior reminds me that sexiness does not have to be broadcast as a neon semaphore that flashes: SEX. It hints, it teases, and it appears to withold. We don't live in that time now, obviously.

Top notes: Gardenia, galbanum, clary sage (sauge sclaree), aldehydes

Heart notes: Jasmine, rose, neroli, narcissus, iris, eyelet, lily of the valley

Base notes: Patchouli, cistus-labdanum, oakmoss, ambergris, sandalwood, vetiver, leather (cuir de Russie)

Crescendo by Lanvin (1965)

Discontinued in the year of my birth, 1969, the name Crescendo, based on yet another musical term (Arpege for "arpeggio" was another), refers to a sound that rises from soft to loud.

Perhaps it's due to the power of suggestion, but this wonderfully androgynous perfume, at once floral and tinged with tobacco and leather, does seem to get spicier the longer it's on my skin.

As I popped open the tiny bottle, the bracing scent went from floral to spicy in 60. So, instead of the metaphor of a chord broken into component parts, as Arpege suggests, Crescendo takes those parts and amps them up in sound, or intensity, or to play with metaphors, from feminine to masculine. Love it!

Described as a spicy floral oriental, Crescendo has the following notes: Iris, carnation, hyacinth, amber, incense, and spices.

Vivara by Emilio Pucci (1965)

Smelling the floral chypre Vivara for a second time, perhaps with a cold to distort its scent, I almost detect a sour milk note that, strangely, is not unpleasant!

Sunny, spicy, warm, like skin (and perhaps this is where the realistic sour note comes from? Unbathed, sunbathed, un-deodorized skin?), Vivara is as vivid as a sunset on a hot, summer day.

It's been described as a green chypre, and a "sunny perfume of the Mediterranean."  The ad copy suggested that, with a whiff of Vivara, "it is always summer."

The writer for The Scented Salamander thinks that Vivara evolves from a green scent, to an aromatic scent to a floral scent, and that it evokes a "walk on a hot day on the beach with cypresses, moss, cold water, and sunkissed skin."  She also suggests that the "exquisite woody drydown" is joined with saltiness and beachiness.(Perhaps this marine and skin element is what I was catching as "sour milk.")

Vivara, which seemed so dead and off when I stuck my nose into the nondescript vintage bottle, truly came alive for me on my skin. It's a nice summer skin scent.

Top notes: Galbanum, lemon, bergamot
Heart notes: Cypress, May rose, Bulgarian rose
Base notes: Sandalwood Mysore, Labdanum

Antilope by Weil (1945)

You'd think that a perfume called Antilope would be a little more, well, gamey or animalic, but Antilope by Weil lives up more to the habitat of the antelope than to the animal the name evokes.

For a perfume with so much going on, it's quite a subtle, spicy, leathery, and woody affair. One gets the sense that the leaves, woods, and flowers that went into Antilope have dried into a haylike concentration, both strong and subdued, whose scent is stirred into recognition only by a hot sun or a brief summer wind.

My first questioning impression was: herbaceous leather? Chypre? Camphor? Cedar? Is there a sweet middle note that rounds out and warms up the sharper notes? Basenotes that deepen that warmth? (Labdanum/cistus? Opoponax?) Antilope is more classically masculine than Ma Griffe, say, but its blond spice and leather makes it a subdued and subtle rather than overpowering fragrance. It smells, as many have said,  like a savannah of dried grass/hay. It's been called a "floral woody aldehydic chypre."

I get an almost mint note that others describe as chamomile. And even though I don't see it in the listed notes, I do smell that faintly herby, hay-like scent. With Antilope (imagine a woman's fragrance being called that in this day and age — you might as well call something Hippopotomus!), I imagine a sleeping animal on a bed of herbs, dried grass with flowers in the distance. In sum, dry, sweet and woody. I love this. (Ad from H Prints.)

Top notes: Aldehydes, spice note, citrus oils
Heart notes: Jasmine, rose, orris, lily of the valley, violet
Base notes: Cedarwood, vetiver, leather, musk, amber

Perfume Intelligence: tangerine, neroli, galbanum, acacia, farnesiana, narcisssus, hyacinth, ylang ylang, may rose, lily of the valley, oakmoss, civet, sandalwood and musk.

My Sin by Lanvin (1924)

My Sin is like nectar, manna. What the hell am I smelling and why is it so wonderful? Is it lilac? Neroli? Lily of the valley? Whatever the notes are, they've converged to create a sexual flower, one that is at its peak of fragrance, like  a meadow in full bloom on the hottest spring day, visited by the horniest, healthiest bees. It smells indolic, lush, overripe, decadent — fecundity in a bottle.

My Sin is a floral animalic.  "Carnal Flower," Frederick Malle's modern perfume, would be the perfect name for this perfume.

I'm realizing that the difference between modern and vintage perfumery is like the difference between polyester and velvet, between a two-dimensional photograph and a 3-D hologram, between digital and analog. Just when I didn't think a perfume could be more beautiful, My Sin knocks me over with lush, velvety, langourous flowers. My Sin is like a beautiful woman who doesn't even have to try. All eyes are on her. Wicked, sweet, sensual. And again, she's not even my type.

Top notes: Aldehydes, lemon, bergamot, clary sage
Heart notes: Neroli, jasmine, clove, rose, Muguet (Lily of the Valley), jonquil, ylang-ylang, lilac
Base notes: Vetiver, vanilla, musk, woods, tolu, styrax, civet

Shocking by Elsa Schiaparelli (1937)

Shocking, the first fragrance by Italian designer Elsa Schiaparelli, a friend and collaborator with Surrealist artists and Coco Chanel's rival, was named in part because of the hot pink color that was her trademark, a color that in British English is still called “shocking pink.”  

Top notes: Bergamot, aldehydes, tarragon 

Heart notes: Honey, rose, narcissus 

Basenotes: Clove, civet, chypre

Is the perfume itself shocking? I like to think that what shocking pink is  to regular pink, Shocking is to an ordinary floral chypre.

It starts with an odd tarragon note which is followed by honey and rose. So far, so good, which is to say — not that shocking. The chypre accord at the end softens and pulls together these three striking and distinct notes. 

How is this perfume, then, an olfactory equivalent of Schiap pink? It has one foot in the natural world and another in an electric socket that ratchets everything up into a neon simulacrum. The double sweetness of honey and rose almost compete for prominence, and initially make you wonder if sweetness is all there is. 

Although one Basenotes reader thinks the perfume "smells like the closet of a spinster great aunt who saved every rose corsage and honey jar that came her way," those notes are followed by the civety base that keeps it from being cloying. 

 

Like an art student who wears vintage dresses and library glasses and but smokes and sleeps around — Shocking has a wild streak.

L'Heure Bleue by Guerlain (1912)

Jacques Guerlain was said to have been influenced by the blues used by Impressionist painters. The blue hour also refers to dusk, when flowers smell their sweetest. Having been composed two years before the outbreak of WWI, L'Heure Bleue also evokes a pre-war, romantic Paris, before darkness descended upon the city.

Sweet, spicy, and soft, with a warm base that evokes leather, the perfume suspends a host of intense and suggestive scents in an uneasy but beautiful balance, just as the blue hour of the perfume's name holds together, in a melancholy moment, the waning of day's hopes and the beginning of night's uncertainty. The almost confectionary sweetness of the perfume is balanced by the spice and sharpness of bergamot, clary sage, tarragon, and a very prominent clove bud note.

Perhaps I've read too much about this perfume, and the repeated references to melancholy and pre-war romanticism have tainted my ability to get my own impression, but L'Heure Bleue is a beautiful
perfume that I could never imagine myself wearing. I would feel oppressed by a fragrance that didn't let me reinvent it on myself. Like a ghost that haunts a house so that living in it is impossible for new inhabitants, L'Heure Bleue imposes on its wearer its melancholy story about a beautiful time right before much was lost.

To answer the ad's question: I am not her type. And she, alas, is not mine.

Top notes: Bergamot oil, Clary Sage oil, Coriander, Lemon, Neroli,
Tarragon

Heart notes: Clove Bud oil, Jasmin, Orchid, Rose de Mai, Ylang-Ylang

Base notes: Benzoin, Cedar, Musk, Sandal, Vanilla, Vetiver

Arpege by Lanvin (1927)

I keep thinking that I'm going to get tired of my vintage perfume acquisitions, but like a true addict, I become obsessed anew, waiting with bated breath for the next one. I feel like I'm suddenly living life on a new planet — a new, deliciously smelly planet!

Enter Arpege, a gorgeous and complex perfume named after the musical sequence the arpeggio, a musical term for a broken chord or the notes of a chord played in successsion to one another, rather than simultaneously. We know that there's a metaphoric, poetic correspondence between musical chords (or notes played simultaneously) and perfume accords, an accord being the basic theme or character of a fragrance which comes about when three or more perfume notes blend together to create new identities, .

To my still neophyte nose, the accord or theme of Arpege is sensual beauty, slightly corrupted, at the end of a night of dining and dancing in shift dresses, stilettos and furs, which ends with a kiss, a cigarette and the promise of more. The flowers are wilting on the table, sitting next to the fur coat which has absorbed some post-dinner cigarette smoke. This is such a feminine, sexy, animalic perfume. It might be the most womanly one I've had the pleasure of sniffing.

I'm not a huge fan of florals, but when they're backed up with a symphony of dark, rich notes like patchouli and sandalwood, they resignify what flowers mean to someone used to the sickeningly sweet, linear, fruity, and synthetic-smelling perfumes of today. Symphonic, round and deep, Arpege tells me what perfumes once smelled like, and what they should smell like again. When I smell this perfume, I think about the colors in a Disney cartoon, like Snow White, or the colors in Hitchcock's Vertigo, when he was just discovering technicolor. The deep jade on Madeleine's dress, the icy gold of her hair, the matte salmon of her lips, the dancing flowers in Scottie's technicolor nightmare — compare these to the flat colors of sloppy digital movies.

Arpege, described on the Now Smell This blog thusly: "Where Chanel No. 5 is languid, Arpège is full-bodied." (The Chanel No. 5 comparison comes from the fact that both of them were early aldehydic, which is to say, abstract and synthetic-based fragrances.) "If No. 5 is a vase of summer flowers," they continue, " then Arpège is that same vase three days later, flowers ripe and spicy, with a dirtier base. Neroli slices into the Arpège’s lush heart, where the lily of the valley takes over its role, giving balance to the more velvety body of the scent."

Velvety. Animalic, like tallow, sebum, flowers and fur. I am totally in love with Arpege.

Top notes: Bergamot, neroli, aldehydes, peach
Heart notes: Rose, jasmine, lily of the valley, ylang-ylang

Base notes: Sandalwood, Ambrein, vetiver, musk

Perfumers: Andre Fraysse and Paul Vacher

Jolie Madame by Balmain (1953)

Another amazing scent composed by Germaine Cellier. Jolie Madame has a leather base which assures, as Cellier fragrances do, that even if it's sweet like candy, there is still a tough gal you're dealing with under her perfectly fitted dress suit.

Jolie Madame is not my favorite Cellier, but like many of her fragrances, it contains a contradiction in the notes which fascinates and must have reflected what it was like being a woman in the '50s. The almost sickly sweet top notes of tuberose, gardenia and jasmine undercut with the butch notes of leather, musk, castoreum and civet, demonstrate in perfume form that a '50s woman may have appeared all smiles and pleasantness but underneath she could be the toughest person around, or, to be less literal, more complex than those florals would suggest.

Conceptually, this sounds right. But with Jolie Madame drying down on my skin right now, and the sweetness fading into leather and tobacco, I picture, instead, a beautiful woman who is also a tomboy, a hyperfeminine-looking woman who surprises you when she speaks with a raspy voice. (When asked which perfume she would take with her to a desert island if she could only choose one, Tania Sanchez, co-author of Perfumes: The Guide, chose Jolie Madame.)

Top notes: gardenia, artemisia, bergamot, coriander, neroli

Heart notes: jasmine, tuberose, rose, orris, jonquil

Base notes: patchouli, oakmoss, vetiver, musk, castoreum, leather, civet