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?
Welcome back! Have missed your reviews. Jungle Gardenia was a favorite perfume of the college girls back in the '60's. All the rage before E. Lauder's Youth Dew took over! Would love to smell it again. Tuvache also produced a masculine called Armada (if I'm remembering correctly-'twas a long time ago!) which was on the market all of 10 minutes in the early '70's.
Posted by: Fraddicted | January 24, 2012 at 05:10 PM
Ooh I say! What a scent to come home to. No wonder there was a baby boom.
Lovely stuff, and it's great to be reading a new review.
Thanks for returning to whet our perfume appetites once more:-)
Posted by: Anna in Edinburgh | January 24, 2012 at 05:16 PM
Armada, eh? That sounds pretty masculine, Fraddicted! Jungle Gardenia makes a lot more sense for college girls (to me) than Youth Dew!
Posted by: Perfumaniac | January 24, 2012 at 05:22 PM
Awww. Thanks, sweet Anna in Edinburgh. Good point — who knows how many babies were made with the scent of Jungle Gardenia stinkin up the joint!
Posted by: Perfumaniac | January 24, 2012 at 05:23 PM
Glad you're back! I've missed your posts. And darn you for giving me another vintage scent to search for!!
Posted by: SniffingAround | January 24, 2012 at 10:12 PM
Great to hear from you again! I think I remember smelling Jungle Gardenia in my high school days when I went through a serious gardenia-loving phase. I used to haunt the testers at the local shop on a daily basis, as my allowance wouldn't stretch to buying my own bottle of anything.
Posted by: Vinery | January 25, 2012 at 01:46 AM
OMG!!! You're back! And you have - as you know! - been much missed!
I wonder if this Jungle Gardenia is the same that - I seem to remember reading somewhere - both Joan Crawford and Dorothy Parker wore? I suspect it might have been if it's half as good as you say!
And you are so right. Tuberose+gardenia brings out the whole "Resistance is futile and you WILL be assimilated!" response...
Even with a Francophile name like...Tuvache...'You'...and 'Cow'. Surely there's a whole new cruel joke hiding in plain sight there? ;) So they added the accent grave just to confuse us! :D
Posted by: Tarleisio | January 25, 2012 at 12:23 PM
Hi SniffingAround. Apologies for getting you into this one in particular. It's expensive! But wow, so beautiful.
Posted by: Perfumaniac | January 25, 2012 at 12:42 PM
Hi Vinery! I think I'm in a serious gardenia phase now, too. And tuberose. I was never much into florals, but these two are so interesting. And Jungle Gardenia is just plain fun. There's no being dour or in a bad mood with this one.
Posted by: Perfumaniac | January 25, 2012 at 12:44 PM
According to a Tuvaché site I checked out, Tarleisio, it is indeed the perfume Joan Crawford and many others — including drag queens — loved. (It would make me happy to know snark-meister Dorothy Parker loved it, too! It would have gone really well with all those cocktails she seemed to down.) And as for Tu Vache (sans accent) = You Cow, I have no words! I don't know how you caught that, but that would have been a diabolically horrible in-joke. Thanks for missing my words, and for stopping by and cracking me up as usual!
Posted by: Perfumaniac | January 25, 2012 at 12:47 PM
Hey, welcome back! I missed you!
Glad to see a colorful review like this too. Tuberose is my favorite note, not just for its antiestablishmentarianism but also for its versatility.
I don't know much about gardenia, but it strikes me as an ultrafeminine, lush tropical blast.
When you said the notes were tuberose and gardenia, I thought of the Estee Lauder perfume. That one's a bit tame for me. But this sounds like it has a lush rainforest effect-lovely.
Posted by: Joan | January 25, 2012 at 09:05 PM
Hi Joan. Versatile is a great way to describe tuberose, but it is a trouble-maker too! I'm having a love affair with tuberose and gardenia scents. Tubereuse Criminelle recently knocked my socks off, and I love Strange Mysterious Perfumes' Epic Gardenia. They have such complexity, depth, and vibrancy. They're alive.
Posted by: Perfumaniac | January 25, 2012 at 10:40 PM
Hooray!!!!!!!! You are back! I wore the Jovan/Coty version many years ago but this one sounds like the one I should have been wearing :)
Posted by: brigitte | January 26, 2012 at 08:59 AM
Brigitte - I heard that the Jovan/Coty version was slightly fruitier. I'd love to smell each one! This one is both fun and gorgeous.
Posted by: Perfumaniac | January 26, 2012 at 10:09 AM
'Favorite fragrance of the world's most beautiful girl' eh? That alone will ensure sales by the bucketload to besotted boyfriends.
Dazzling review Barbara. You are BACK! I love the your 'perfume brain's pleasure center'. Brilliant.
Tuberose is not a favorite not for me but after having read this review I'm feeling decidedly dull and demure in my Chanel No 19. (Why am I so alliterative today I wonder?)
Posted by: annemariec | January 26, 2012 at 05:37 PM
Anne-Marie: Chanel No. 19 is Tilda Swinton to Jungle Gardenia's Twitter.com/courtneystodden. (I know you avoid Twitter, but you must check out this nutcases MANIA for alliteration. Or should I say, desperate desire to daftly dedicate her diction to alliteration.) You simply had a mild case of it. "Bucketload to besotted boyfriends" is almost as good as "decidedly dull and demure."
Posted by: Perfumaniac | January 26, 2012 at 06:16 PM
I know about Jungle Gardenia from the seminal "Paris Is Burning," where the legendary house mother Pepper La Beija talks about how it was her signature scent. I've wanted to smell it for years!
Posted by: Jonno | January 26, 2012 at 10:31 PM
Jonno, Thank you for reminding me about "Paris Is Burning" and Pepper LaBeija! I had no idea that Jungle Gardenia was her signature scent. It makes me love her (and JG) more, and it makes perfect sense. This perfume is in multiple forms of drag, the olfactory MSG that makes everyone, regardless of their bio status, feel like a natural woman.
Posted by: Perfumaniac | January 27, 2012 at 02:26 AM
It has literally made my Sunday night to see a new post! And on a fragrance I have been intrigued by for a number of months. I have googled this perfume in the past and there are a lot of war brides and women in the 1940s who wore and loved this fragrance for years..apparently Vermont Country store is carrying it again? As I said, I've been intrigued, just not $50+ intrigued.
Posted by: Perfume Obsessed | January 30, 2012 at 01:15 AM
Perfume Obsessed, thanks for the compliment! Any cool links to share on Jungle Gardenia? The war brides angle sounds interesting.
I think at some point I'm just going to see if a bunch of people want in on a bottle with me to decant. I'm not going to spend $250 on this, as much as I love it. (And I would shy away from those Vermont Country Store reformulations. I haven't heard good things about them.)
Posted by: Perfumaniac | January 30, 2012 at 09:43 AM
Oh, you are so back! I'm trying to decide whether to explore a note or a niche house as my birthday gift to myself (coming up in march). You are making quite the case for gardenia here.
Posted by: julie | February 01, 2012 at 12:32 AM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vy8A25QGQ2E
Posted by: Ambivallentia | February 01, 2012 at 04:00 PM
Hi there Ambivallentia,
I'm not sure why you've sent this Sissel Tolas interview from YouTube. What does it have to do with Jungle Gardenia? I'm "ambivallentia" about keeping it up, but I guess I will. I love her haircut!
Posted by: Perfumaniac | February 01, 2012 at 04:32 PM
She is such a different voice in "the perfume/scent world". I appreciate her statement that it took her 7 years not to react to scents as "good-bad". I hope at least it is relevant comment for any perfume review. ;-)
Posted by: Ambivallentia | February 02, 2012 at 12:40 PM
Hi Ambivallentia. I have a lot of respect for what Sissel Tollas does, no doubt. But usually when a blogger spends time to write about a subject, the etiquette is to respond to the post and/or other commenters. Simply throwing in a link to a tangentially related subject with no commentary or introduction could be considered spamming. Like I said, I'm leaving it anyway.
Posted by: Perfumaniac | February 02, 2012 at 01:34 PM