Yesterday's Perfume

White Linen by Estee Lauder (1978)

There are some perfumes with names that perfectly align with your first impression of them. You almost wish you had been present at the creative meeting when all the great minds (and noses) converged — like directors, set designers, producers, costumers and actors on a movie set before the shooting begins — to hash out the vision for the fantasy to come.

That's what I feel about White Linen. The name itself is poetic, and immediately conjures up summer, heat, and the casual but chic fabric linen whose wrinkled, organic imperfections are its charm.

Bright yet warm, crisp but yielding to softness, White Linen (classified as a floral aldehyde), has always been an olfactory puzzle for me. Even now, it's hard to isolate the notes even as I read them and furiously sniff my wrists. Perhaps this is the effect of the powerful aldehydes, which work to abstract the notes to suit the perfume's larger concept.

The same way that the sun and heat in the summer can subsume a host of impressions (flowers, trees, grass, picnic, breeze, feelings, thoughts) into one blinding image or feeling, White Linen's initial aldehydic blast blurs the individual notes.

But once you get in the shade from the perfume's rays, as it were, the gorgeous florals (rose, lily of the valley, jasmine, ylang-ylang) and soft woods (sandalwood and cedar softened and sweetened by orris, honey, and tonka) alight on your consciousness the way a random butterfly might alight on your arm during a summer picnic, finally allowing you to focus on one thing for a moment.

Interestingly, but not surprisingly, there's civet in the earlier formulation of White Linen. I'm coming around to the belief that civet is added to perfume not just for a little stink, but for a host of psychological effects that can be best described as subliminal tension: unease and a fear of loss, of the kind you fleetingly feel on a beautiful day you don't want to end. (It's put to good use in a similar way in another wonderful summer fragrance, YSL's fruity-floral chypre Y.)

Top notes: Aldehydes, citrus oils, peach, blossom-calyx note

Heart notes: Rose, lily of the valley, jasmine, orris, ylang-ylang, lilac, orchid

Base notes: Cedar, amber, sandalwood, civet, honey, benzoin, tonka

It's no surprise to me that Sophia Grojsman is the mind/nose behind White Linen. She is a magician at conjuring up not just beautiful scents and visual impressions, but also complex feelings associated with a perfume's theme/concept. (YSL's Paris smells like roses and violets, yes, but also hope, joy, and innocence.)

When I smell White Linen, I smell the detergent that was used to wash the fabric and the smell of it vaporizing as it's ironed. (I suppose it's more romantic to imagine it drying on a line, but there's something about the intensity of the aldehydes that doesn't mesh with the gentleness of that image.) I can also "smell" the sun and the garden and perhaps woods that surround the veranda I'm sitting on drinking lemonade or a Mint Julep. But not many perfumers can add that extra dimension to a fragrance: mood, feelings, psychology. I'm not sure how she does it, but she's a wizard; in a class by herself.

Like a pointillist painting by Seurat, White Linen, if looked at up close, will yield its individual components. Its genius is that its first impression, and lasting impression, is what you'll remember: crisp, laundered white linen on a beautiful summer day.

Toujours Moi by Corday (1924)

I want to take a break from the freshness of the May flower and discuss a vintage Oriental perfume I forgot I had in my cabinet of curiosities/perfume closet: the soft and sexy Toujours Moi by Corday.

Launched in 1927 by Blanche Arvoy, Corday perfumes are more whimsical and charming than their namesake — assassin Charlotte Corday, who stabbed pro-French Revolution radical Jean-Paul Marat to death in his bathtub. (Gotta love the French.)

With the vanillic sensuality of Shalimar, a hint of Tabu's amber eroticism, and a comforting whisper of smoky tobacco that recalls Habanita, Toujours Moi (Forever Me) is a must-have for lovers of perfume in the Oriental category. It manages to be intense and subtle at the same time, like the sounds of an entire orchestra roaring along in a music hall, the strains of which can be heard faintly by a lone passerby on the street.

Notes: Orange blossom, lavender, jasmine, lilac, vetiver, musk, incense, (I don't see rose, vanilla, sandalwood and amber listed, but surely a few of these too..?)

According to lore, composer Harry Revel caught a whiff of Toujours Moi on a beautiful woman, and when she told him what she was wearing, he decided to write musical compositions inspired by six Corday perfumes. (You can actually get Perfume Set to Music on Amazon! Apparently, it's heavy on the Theramin.)

Thanks to Revel's attention, musical motifs abound in Corday's beautiful and surreal ads. One I found on Fragrantica features a maiden trapped in a perfume bottle strumming on a mandolin. The instrument's musical sounds emerge from the bottle to become Corday's perfumes: Jet, Toujours Moi, Fame, Possession, L'Ardente Nuit. (I think this is the album cover, too.) From the ad:

"These six magnificent Corday fragrances inspired 'Perfume Set to Music,' an album of six delighful musical selections written by the famous composer Harry Revel and recorded by RCO Victor. An unparalleled tribute to the genius of Corday, 'Perfume Set to Music' is as soul-stirring...and beautiful....as the Corday perfumes themselves."

According to the blogger from Ambre Gris, Toujours Moi was reformulated by Dana in 1995, and if reviews on Basenotes are any indication, this reformulation was (and continues to be) a disaster. (Not surprising, considering what happened to Tabu.) I have what looks like a '60s version (with line drawings of maidens and unicorns), but it says on the box, "Distr. Parfums Corday" and "blended in New York." Hmmm.

The eBay vintage perfume expert from Cleopatra's Boudoir says that there was a small reformulation when Max Factor bought Corday, but that it mostly stayed true to the original, and that they kept the Corday name. (This must be where the "blended in New York" comes in?) She also says that Toujours Moi is a perfume translation of the incense used for hundreds of years at the cathedral of Notre Dame. Interesting... It does have a lovely incense bite.

All I can go by is my nose, and my nose says that whether or not this was a reformulation of the original 1924 scent, it is a lovely one — sweet, spicy, and soft (detractors would say powdery). Its warm (ambery/vanilla), woody finish hours into the dry-down is my favorite part. If you love Tabu and Habanita, try to get a bit of Toujours Moi; it's their love child.

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There's a lyrical and informative post about Toujours Moi on the French perfume site Ambre Gris. Using my busted high school French and the helpful translation website Dicios, I managed a decent translation of it. If you know any French, I suggest you visit it. It's totally worth it to hear the French talk about perfume! Where else are you going to read stuff like this:

"What is nevertheless most striking in the Parfum de Toilette top notes of Toujours Moi (the old term for a perfume concentration and the only one I had the time to try), is that they frankly reminded me of...bubblegum. Orange blossom, touched with jasmine, is intimately combined on a sweet bed of honey, nuanced with soft spices: I sensed a touch of pepper and above all the coloring of eugenol's clove/carnation facets. This rather monochromatic mix evoked a wad of rose-scented chewing gum, inside whose heart lay coiled, slyly...a small Tabu. A warm and sweet note of sandalwood discreetly props up the sweetened orange blossom: one is now well into the category of woody oriental."

One place you will NOT read stuff like this is if you use Google Translate, unless you want to LOL at gobbledegook like the following, from the same post and paragraph as above:

"What is most striking, yet in the top note perfume toiletries Toujours Moi...is that they take a frank look like...bubblegum. The orange flower, jasmine affected, there is interwoven with a layer of gently sweet-honey, subtle spice fluffy: I feel a shiver of pepper and cloves especially the colors/eye of eugenol. The assembly thus composed, rather monochrome, evokes a bubble gum pink heart of which loverait sly, a little Tabu...A soft, warm notes of sandalwood has quietly support this sweet orange flower: it is in the register of the eastern woodland."

Got that, everyone? "It's in the register of the eastern woodland." I'm so using this...

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UPDATE: A reader got in touch with me and told me she has a 40s-era Toujours Moi in that lovely bottle you see in the ad. If you're interested, you can contact her here: Diana1113@aol.com.

She sent me a sample of the 1956 Toujours Moi so I could compare it with the older one I reviewed here, and it is ever-so-slightly softer, rounder (by that I guess I mean more seamless in its blending of notes), more powdery and ambery-vanillic-warm than the 60's-70s one I reviewed. The 60s-70s bottle leaves a stronger tobacco-incense impression in the drydown. Both wonderful formulas, the 50s just a little warmer and softer.

About the '90s Toujours Moi I also received: I only have to say — run away from this as fast as you can. Its nauseating chemical drydown is as bad as the Tabu that you can now get for like 5 bucks. Awful.

(This last photo is from my own collection; the "Corday" name was cut off by copiers. I forgive you NY Public Library!)

Muguet des Bois by Coty (1936)

I had initially started writing about the May flower muguet (lily of the valley) mid-December in San Francisco when the thermometer registered in the 30s. It was a wonderful trick to play on myself, peering into a meadow redolent with the rosy-citrusy-green scent of lily of the valley in the dead of winter, but I'm glad I saved my review for the beginning of May.

Muguet des Bois smells clean, but unlike some more abstract clean scents, it's reminiscent of nature, and therefore impregnated with complexity. From the hint of musty lilac to a bright lemony-rose, there's a paradoxical artful artlessness to its fresh loveliness. 

Top notes: Leafy green, bergamot, orange, aldehyde

Heart notes: lily of the valley, lilac, cyclamen, rose, jasmine

Basenotes: sandalwood, musk

In a wonderful writeup on lily of the valley perfumes, Helg from Perfume Shrine tells us that when lily of the valley's components were analyzed using headspace technology (whereby a scented object's compounds can be analyzed by placing a dome over them, passing inert gasses through, and then capturing/analyzing the components), a surprising 23 compounds were found. (Surprising to me, anyway!) Citing reps from Symrise, she says they found the "floral rosy citrus from citronellol, green pea and galbanum-like notes, fatty, waxy, aldehydic notes, and trace notes of fruit and raspberry from beta-ionone."

Basenotes says that it's still in production, but I haven't smelled the modern formulation. I hope they've maintained its beauty, but it's worth finding the vintage if you can — it doesn't smell dated at all to me. I have what looks like a '60s or '70s version of the perfume — celadon-colored cap, little enameled white flowers and green leaves running across it. Edmond Roudnitska himself, creator of his version of a lily of the valley fragrance (the legendary Diorissimo), greatly admired Coty's Muguet des Bois. In Michael Edwards' Perfume Legends, he said of it:

"I remembered that Coty had a lily that was called Muguet des Bois. No better lily note was ever made. It pushed the green note of the flower. As a lily note, it was magnificent. It was much better than the one I had made myself. I wondered how they had managed to create such a masterpiece in the Thirties, with so little means. But it never became very successful, because it wasn’t a perfume one could wear." (Thanks to Now Smell This for finding this quote.)

I'm not sure I agree with him that it's not a perfume one could wear, but it is definitely both more feral and innocent than the sophisticated Diorissimo. It's raw in the way Vent Vert is, evoking, through the art of its composition, the spicy/green aspect of flowers in the wild. If lily of the valley strikes you as too innocent — give this one a shot; you might find it edgier than you thought. (If you're interested in a freaky scientific fact that involves the molecule bourgeonal, which smells like lily of the valley, go to First Nerve and read about how a scientist discovered that bourgeonal somehow attracts sperm. Not that innocent, indeed!)

Image source: Pearl's Sentimental Journey