Scent and Subversion (9 page)

Perfumer:
Jean Carles

Named after a Mediterranean wind that comes in from the Sahara, Sirocco, like Emeraude and Shalimar, combines a citrusy top note with rich vanilla and balsams. With a stunning lavender and vanilla heart enriched by benzoin and spiced by
patchouli, this gourmand Oriental perfume is a dark, sensual experience, and has a more mysterious aura than the brighter Emeraude and the friendlier Shalimar.

According to the
1964 Dictionnaire des Parfums de France
, Sirocco, as befits its name, is “a warm and heady fragrance evoking the immensity of the desert sands … ideal with furs and during elegant society events under starry skies.” Good to know! Its dusty, dry, incensey backdrop adds a wonderful counterpoint to its rich, balsamic base.

Notes from
1964 Dictionnaire des Parfums de France:
Citrus, lavender, benzoin, patchouli, vanilla

A river of clove runs through the kingdom of Indiscret, picking up fresh bergamot, mandarin, jasmine, and rose as it continues to snake its way down. By the time it reaches its incense and amber/vanillic/woody base, it settles into an intensely sensual, rich, spicy, ambery base. Indiscret is said to have been Lauren Bacall’s signature scent, which makes sense, because both of them smolder. Perfumer Yann Vasnier describes Indiscret as a spicy, animalic Oriental perfume, detecting from an intact perfume nip notes of clove, jasmine, carnation, aldehydes, and vanilla.

Notes from
1964 Dictionnaire des Parfums de France:
Carnation, rose absolute, jasmine, woodsy notes

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 with an herbal, lemon opening, followed by a smooth, woody finish warmed by tonka.

Notes from
Fragrantica.com:
Citrus, lavender, jasmine, rose, carnation, lily of the valley, cedar, tonka bean, musk, sandalwood

An intensely green/floral chypre with hints of tobacco and civet, Voulez-Vous (or “Would you like to …?”) is about as subtle as its name suggests. Voulez-Vous’s florals, along with its aggressive greenness, can be observed through its tobacco-tinged animalic drydown, which acts like a come-hither veil of smoke. Perfumer Yann Vasnier describes Voulez-Vous as a chypre leather similar to Miss Dior, with galbanum and rose. In a 1960s ad for Voulez-Vous, a woman stares down her unseen prey as she lights
a cigarette. Describing her look as “bedroom eyes” would be the understatement of the year.

Notes from
1964 Dictionnaire des Parfums de France:
Green, woodsy, and fruity notes with jasmine and lily of the valley

Perfumer:
Jean Carles

Ever the provocateur, Jean Carles not only enjoyed making perfumes for loose women; he also loved gender-bending in fragrances. Even seasoned noses might have a hard time telling the difference between masculine Canoe and Carles’s Ambush, for women. Both are
fougères
(Canoe more classically, because of its addition of oakmoss), and both differ only by a few notes: Canoe has patchouli, carnation, and oakmoss, and Ambush does not. And the sweetness is more prominent in Ambush, whereas Canoe upped the aromatic quality.

Fougère
(for “fern” in French) is a traditionally masculine category of perfume that originated with Fougère Royal (1882). Its base comprises lavender, oakmoss, and coumarin, giving it an herbaceous, mossy, and vanillic-warm character.

Top notes:
Lavender, clary sage, lemon

Heart notes:
Bourbon geranium, carnation, cedarwood, patchouli

Base notes:
Vanilla, tonka, musk, heliotrope, oakmoss

Perfumer:
Henri Robert

Muguet des Bois (“Lily of the Woods”) 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 is an artful artlessness to its loveliness.

Edmond Roudnitska, who created his own version of a lily-of-the-valley fragrance with Diorissimo, greatly admired Coty’s Muguet des Bois, and believed that no one had ever created a better lily note. (Unlike most floral notes, lily of the valley’s scent cannot be extracted into a stable essential oil; only reconstructions exist.)

Top notes:
Leafy green, bergamot, orange, aldehydes

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

Base notes:
Sandalwood, musk

An ad for Muguet des Bois by Coty, c. 1948

When I first dabbed Blue Carnation on, its sharp and herbal opening salvo was so unfamiliar and harsh (with a prominent anise facet) that by the time its predominant, dense clove-cigarette accord arrived, I was truly baffled and put off. This stuff is strong!

But I love acquiring tastes, and it didn’t take long for me to cozy up to Blue Carnation. Or, rather, it cozied up to me. Round, velvety, spicy-sweet clove is a comforting note, not one you encounter very often in modern perfumes, and when you do, as in Serge Lutens’s Vitriol d’oeillet (2011), it seems tame in comparison.

Notes:
Carnation, clove, eugenol, iso eugenol, salicylates, vanillin, milky Indian sandalwood

(Notes from Yann Vasnier.)

Ancient Chinese secret, huh? This 1937 ad for Bourjois’ perfume Kobako manages to commit multiple offenses against a progressive person’s idea of ethnic sensitivity. A white woman leans in as a presumably Chinese woman whispers secrets of her “allure and desirability” behind a splayed-out fan. One of those secrets is the “Oriental essence” that can be found in Kobako, which means “small box” … in Japanese. Sigh.

Perfumer:
Maurice Schaller

Although it’s often categorized as a spicy Oriental perfume, Carnet de Bal (“Dance Card”) is not heavy, dark, or mysterious. It opens with citrus, fruit, and a prominent ylang-ylang note, but its pronounced mossy, woody, and spicy base gives the fragrance its primary character. Although civet and musk rear their naughty heads now and then, Carnet de Bal never veers into dirty-dancing territory. In the drydown, the floral notes peer through the moss and vanilla, creating a gentle yet spicy scent that lingers on the skin.

Top notes:
Citrus oils, chamomile, fruit

Heart notes:
Cyclamen, rose, lily, jasmine, ylang-ylang

Base notes:
Patchouli, civet, amber, musk, moss, vanilla

Perfumer:
Albert Hauck

Old Spice, like so many scents, seems arbitrarily gendered as a masculine fragrance when compared to its contemporaries, and to later women’s spicy Oriental scents (such as Cinnabar and Opium). With citrus and herbal top notes and a spicy balsamic base, Old Spice is simply the more-restrained, less-sweet version of New Spices that came down the pike.

Top notes:
Orange, lemon, spice notes, anise, clary sage, aldehyde

Heart notes:
Carnation, cinnamon, geranium, jasmine, heliotrope, pimento

Base notes:
Musk, vanilla, cedarwood, olibanum, benzoin, tonka, amber

Perhaps we don’t hear about Prétexte as much as its famous siblings because, as the middle sibling in the Lanvin lineup, it has their features (the animalic base of My Sin, the boozy smoothness of Rumeur, and the woods and hint of Scandal’s tobacco), but in diluted and mishmash form.

Prétexte is a woody-ambery chypre with a smooth, powdery, spicy, and animalic base. At first sniff, I must admit, it does remind me of other scents without necessarily drawing me to it. Still, pretty nice stuff, especially in the sexy drydown. Perfumer Yann Vasnier smelled a spicy powdery rose with hay, leather, and castoreum.

Notes from
1964 Dictionnaire des Parfums de France:
Amber, hawthorn, rosewood, narcissus, oakmoss, patchouli, iris

Italian designer Elsa Schiaparelli’s friendship with and influence from the surrealist movement was evident in her playful designs, including her iconic dress-form-shaped perfume bottle for the perfume, Shocking. In this charming 1940s ad illustrated by Marcel Vertès, a woman wears bunny ears in Schiaparelli’s signature color, “shocking pink.”

Perfumer:
Jean Carles

Italian designer Elsa Schiaparelli collaborated with surrealist artists like Salvador Dali and incorporated surrealist elements into her beautiful and whimsical designs. Shocking, her first fragrance, was named in part because of the shocking “hot pink” color that was her trademark. Schiaparelli described this electric pink as “bright, impossible, impudent, becoming, life-giving, like all the light and the birds and the fish put together, a color of China and Peru but not of the West — a shocking color, pure and undiluted.”

The perfume translation of shocking pink is equally playful and affirming. A powdery, spicy, honeyed-rose chypre, Shocking’s animalic, sensual, warm base belies its coquettish top notes. To get the full effect of Shocking, one must get a pristine, intact bottle, or crack open a nip, which perfectly preserves perfume in a time capsule.

Top notes:
Bergamot, aldehydes, tarragon

Heart notes:
Honey, rose, narcissus

Base notes:
Clove, civet, chypre

This 1930s perfume gets a psychedelic ad in the ’60s.