Yesterday's Perfume

Primitif by Max Factor (1956)

The 1950s were all about "friendly-sexy."

If aggressive 80s perfumes wore olfactory shoulder pads, as perfume writer Susan Irvine suggests in her book Perfume Guide, then picture 50s perfumes wearing those dresses with rounded shoulders and poofy skirts.

"Friendly-sexy" was exemplified by Marilyn Monroe’s soft, downward-curving and rounded eyes, full lips, and pillowy body. Everything about her look screamed sex — but with a smile.

1950s perfume, too, represented by Revlon's Intimate or Robert Piguet's Baghari, is steeped in musky sensuality. (Intimate's animalic ballast — castoreum, civet, and musk — is about as subtle as a bullet bra, and Baghari sinks you into a musky vanilla reverie that's heavy and rich.)

And then there's this little known gem by Max Factor — Primitif. (Thanks to Leslie Ann from Miniature Perfume Shoppe for introducing me to it and offering up a sample vial!)

Primitif is deliciously skanky, with intentions about as wholesome as Danger Girl's to your left there. But there's something campy and pulp novel about its menace.

Primitif starts out with a roar of sharp, crisp aldehydes. Within seconds, it lurches down into a caramely, crisp, buttery, peachy perfume with more than a little stink of civet and musk (perhaps nitromusks?) toward its dry down. I would guess some oakmoss and maybe a smidge of patchouli. It's definitely in the chypre-animalic floral family. Jasmine? Gardenia?

A Basenotes reader noted that Primitif reminds her of Arpège, but if Arpège is Natalie Portman, Primitif is Lindsay Lohan. Out of control, incorrigible, and perspiring a kind of animalic pheromone. (Yes, I know; pheromones don't have a detectable scent to humans. Humor me, please.)

When my perfume friend Robin sent me a super-vintage Chanel No. 5 with nitromusks, it was a revelation. This was a serious musk, and made me rethink all of the perfumes with musk that had disquieted me so.  Nitromusks — in perfumes like vintage Chanel, Baghari, and Intimate — curl, crackle, and fatten up the perfumes they're in. You have to smell this added dimension to understand what I mean, but the best analogy I can think of is the difference between a dish with butter or without it. There's an olfactory "mouthfeel" you get from these musks...

So is Primitif primitive? Well, in the most civilized, self-conscious way, like a well-heeled woman wearing a leopard print coat. It reveals, in perfume notes, the contradictions in 1950s good girl/bad girl sexuality. In any case, I'll be Huffing it all week...

Jean Naté by Charles of the Ritz (1935)

 

If a lemon went to finishing school, it would smell like Jean Naté.

Soft, powdery, complex and sophisticated, this old gem (the old school Charles of the Ritz cologne spray, anyway) is sunny without being ditzy. It starts out at the gate (cue the 70s commercial above with the female jockey) all lemon. Even Lemon Pledge, uncannily. But soon enough, before you can disparage the old gal, she tosses off a bon mot or two, talks about a summer she spent in Tangiers, and soon you realize you're dealing with something refined and special.

A reader on Basenotes says that the the following are Jean Naté's notes: Lavender, Jasmine, Rose, Carnation, Lily of the valley, Cedar, Tonka, Musk, Sandal. This sounds smells right to me. Especially the tonka and sandalwood, which give it a roundness and woody complexity at the end. The lavender probably contributes to the slight medicinal/cleaner note at the beginning. (I even get a herbal tarragon note occasionally.) Spraying it several times, I realize that there's no getting around a kind of bug-spray screech that, strangely, isn't off-putting to me. The more I sniff Jean Naté it and let its nuances speak, the less the lemon (lemongrass, maybe?) grabs my attention, and the more its sensuous base sings out.

Lemon scents were pretty popular in the 1970s, which is why Jean Naté (born in 1935) was popular through that sporty-scented decade. (There was Love's Fresh Lemon, Revlon Wild Lemon, and Skinny Dip, just to name a few.) Perhaps that note seems too crass now, too easy. But I imagine that for a perfumer to replicate lemon and, at the same time, transform it, is akin to using a primary color as a painter to novel effect. (Think Mondrian, or even Mark Rothko, who I've cited on my blog before.)

I also think of those poor chefs on the Food Network show "Chopped" who compete against one another to make palatable, creative and even delicious dishes out of crazy ingredients. ("In your baskets, you have Rambutans, duck liver paté, chocolate, and Kool Aid. Have fun kids!") Where's the fun in safe or easy perfume notes?

I remember Jean Naté in the splash bottles, and this version definitely recalls that, but the spray cologne has so much more dimension. The Charles of the Ritz Jean Naté is an overlooked oddity, and I'll be wearing it in the sweltering New Orleans heat this summer. Courtesy of eBay, for $1.99.