Scent and Subversion

by Barbara Herman

  Top notes: Bergamot, lemon, orange, coriander, tarragon

  Heart notes: Lily of the valley, Rose de Mai, jasmine, orris, carnation, lily, lilac

  Base notes: Vetiver, oakmoss, musk, labdanum, benzoin, amber

  Perfume goes electric in this two-page ad for Graffiti.

  Miss Balmain by Pierre Balmain (1967)

  Perfumer: Germaine Cellier

  There are a couple ways to look at Miss Balmain, and both of them involve a comparison with Bandit, which seems to be its reference scent. (Germaine Cellier, the perfumer who composed both of these masterpieces, was known to reuse her famous accords in different compositions.)

  In the first comparison, Miss Balmain is Bandit Lite—not as daring, not as angular, and not as harsh as Bandit. Perhaps Miss Balmain is the dominatrix-in-training who will at some point drop all her feminine signifiers (flowers and softness) and take up the whip Bandit saves for her, for when she’s ready to graduate.

  If you don’t think of Bandit as the reference scent, but rather as the building-block accord, then Miss Balmain is the perfected, more fully matured Bandit, rounded out with its greens and florals, every note singing in harmony. Bandit is like a saturated, underexposed photograph whose brightness (florals and green notes) glow almost imperceptibly under its cloak of darkness. Miss Balmain is the same picture ratcheted up one full stop, so that those invisible greens and florals come forward. Or, Miss Balmain is like those paintings that get cleaned up by art historians, revealing color and brightness where there was only brooding darkness before.

  Unlike Jolie Madame, Miss Balmain’s sweetness isn’t candied and doesn’t stick around for as long as it does in JM, and unlike Jolie Madame, Miss Balmain has a momentary tartness. When I sniff Miss Balmain, I get the same impression of overwhelming beauty I do with Cellier’s Vent Vert. It’s an “everything all at once” scent, joyous and kaleidoscopic in its loveliness.

  Top notes: Aldehydes, coriander, gardenia, citrus oils, thujone

  Heart notes: Carnation, narcissus, orris root, jasmine, rose, jonquil

  Base notes: Leather, amber, patchouli, castoreum, moss, vetiver

  English Leather Timberline by MEM Company (1968)

  A timberline is the point on a mountain where trees stop growing, so it’s not a surprise that Timberline is less woody than it is aromatic, and even ambery sweet. Categorized by the Haarmann & Reimer Fragrance Guide as a woody, ambery fougère, its anisic, herbaceous, and citrus top gives way to a soft, balsamic base lightly sweetened with honey and heliotrope and spiced with cinnamon and carnation. I have the cologne version, and this wisp of a fragrance, like all the English Leather colognes, has personality without much depth or longevity. The Dana version without the wooden cap doesn’t score a lot of points with commenters in perfume forums, so try to get vintage; they’re still pretty cheap.

  Top notes: Bergamot, lavender, lemon, anise, basil, rosemary

  Heart notes: Geranium, carnation, cinnamon, fern, heliotrope, aldehyde, cedarwood, pine needle

  Base notes: Sandalwood, vetiver, moss, tonka, vanilla, honey, musk

  Estée by Estée Lauder (1968)

  Sweet, spicy, and powdery, Estée hits all the notes that can scare newcomers away from vintage perfume. Its cloying jasmine leads, followed by spicy carnation as a bridge to oakmoss and smooth, powdery sandalwood. Estée is the rare vintage perfume I think smells too powdery and floral for modern noses.

  Notes: Coriander, rose, lily of the valley, jasmine, carnation, oakmoss, sandalwood

  Mink and Pearls by Jovan (1968)

  Although it’s called Mink and Pearls, as if in homage to the great animalic chypres, Intimate and Primitif, Jovan nevertheless stays true to a late-1960s, early-1970s, back-to-the-earth freshness. Starting with a bracing galbanum, joined with clary sage and bergamot, Mink and Pearls gets a dose of sweet florals with a green glow from narcissus. It’s not long before we’re walking on a blanket of cool, dry moss and woods with a hint of dark animal notes.

  Instead of diving too deep into Eros, Mink and Pearls stays in the woods, with clary sage, galbanum, and spice from carnation and patchouli. A classic green-leather chypre, sunny side up.

  Top notes: Aldehydes, hyacinch, galbanum, clarry sage, bergamot

  Heart notes: Jasmine, narcissus, jonquil, rose, carnation, tuberose

  Base notes: Patchouli, castoreum, amber, tonka, moss, leather musk

  Azurée by Estée Lauder (1969)

  Perfumer: Bernard Chant

  Azurée, Estée Lauder’s chypre-floral animalic, is a complex beauty that sends your olfactory brain off into multiple directions at once. It’s often referred to as the sister fragrance to Chant’s other Estée Lauder composition, the hairy-chested Aramis.

  Citrusy and herbal (bergamot/artemesia), vaguely tropical and candied (the sweetness and lushness from the gardenia/amber), Azurée ends with a bone-dry, bitter-green leather accord that is Bandit-like yet softer in its elegance and austerity.

  One of the most intriguing aspects about Azurée for me is that although the florals are flanked on either side by dry notes, there’s a rich, momentary gourmand quality to the scent because of the sweet amber, and perhaps how it combines with gardenia and ylang-ylang. For a brief second in the midst of these florals-in-the-desert, a beguiling and fleeting Oriental quality wafts into the perfume, as if Azurée had tucked a piece of caramel candy into its otherwise-dry floral pocket.

  Top notes: Aldehydes, bergamot, artemesia, gardenia

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

  Base notes: Leather, patchouli, oakmoss, musk, amber

  Calandre by Paco Rabanne (1969)

  Perfumer: Michel Hy

  Calandre by Paco Rabanne is a fresh floral with a spicy leafiness that recalls the coriander note in Jean Couturier’s much bolder and heavier chypre, Coriandre. Its sheer florals—rose, lily of the valley, geranium, and jasmine—are so transparent they’re like watercolors painted with flower petals.

  There’s character in Calandre’s notes, but they’re in their lightest, still-adolescent dilution. The perfume is, nevertheless, sensual. Rose and jasmine have their indolic training wheels on, not yet making bedroom eyes or inviting you closer, but telegraphing sexuality from a distance. Musk, amber, and sandalwood give Calandre’s innocent character a kind of inchoate and unknowing sensuality, the kind that is tossed off by beautiful teenage girls between adolescence and womanhood when they’re not yet fully aware of their effect on others.

  At the risk of sounding lecherous, I’ll say that Calandre smells like the lovely sweat of a teenage girl. There may be musky notes in her perspiration, but they smell like their own kind of spicy perfume. I think of Lolita smelling like Calandre, or the scent of virgins Patrick Süskind’s sad predator in Perfume wanted to bottle.

  Like a Debussy piano piece that fully absorbs you when you’re listening to it, but floats away just as quickly, Calandre is ever-so-slightly melancholy and heartbreaking in its fragile beauty.

  Top notes: Leafy green, aldehydes, bergamot

  Heart notes: Rose, lily of the valley, geranium, jasmine, orris

  Base notes: Sandalwood, vetiver, musk, amber, oakmoss

  Chamade by Guerlain (1969)

  Perfumer: Paul Guerlain

  Chamade, created by Guerlain in homage to Françoise Sagan’s novel, La Chamade, means a kind of drumbeat or trumpet sound that signals surrender to the enemy. It can also describe the kind of beating your heart does when you’re in love.

  With orris’s powdery delicacy, sandalwood’s buttery richness, and a rose so fresh and beautiful I can still smell a hallucinatory petal peeking out in the vintage formula, Chamade is not for the faint of heart. I imagine a woman with a little too much makeup on, a ’60s woman who has a spiritualist and makes her own kombucha tea. It’s a fragrance from another time, as wild and loud as a Pucci print.

  Top notes: Hyacinth, jasmine

  Heart notes: Turkish rose, ylang-ylang, black
currant bud, galbanum, lilac, lily of the valley

  Base notes: Vanilla, sandalwood, tonka bean, vetiver, amber, iris

  Dioressence by Christian Dior (1969)

  A woman explodes from a flower in this illustration by Nikasinovich for Chamade, which means either a drumbeat that announces one side’s surrender or a pounding heartbeat.

  Perfumer: Guy Robert

  Dioressence, a spicy, floral chypre takes off with an intense green note that almost seems to waver for a moment like the undulating note from a theremin. First sour, then garbagey, it returns to its bright greeness and, in the next movement of the perfume, everything settles into the spicy, warm floral that is Dioressence’s basic personality. Glamorous and festive, Dioressence is a party scent.

  Lore has it that perfumer Guy Robert was approached by the Christian Dior folks and asked to create an animalic Dior, a perfume that could live up to the tagline, le parfum barbare (“the barbaric perfume”). Given Diorella’s magnificent fruit-gone-bad note and Miss Dior’s not very ladylike whiff-of-underpants note, you could almost call it the Dior formula! Robert had the good fortune (so the story goes) to acquire some ambergris, and while at Dior headquarters, after rubbing his fingers into the oily block (which is how you smell this floral, marine-like scent), he went into the bathroom and washed his hands with a Miss Dior knock-off soap. On the plane ride back, he smelled his hands, Et voila! Le parfum barbare was born. (Although it’s possible that vintage Dioressence in the extrait concentration has natural ambergris, even perfume historian Octavian Coifan thinks that the ambergris note in Dioressence is a skilled reconstitution of synthetic and natural notes, such as ambrox and detalox.)

  Heady and intense, not everyone could wear Dioresscence. Like Chamade, which it reminds me of a bit in terms of character, Dioressence makes me think of women like Endora from the television show Bewitched, or Anne Bancroft’s Mrs. Robinson. Lusty, headstrong, a little tipsy at the holiday party, and ready to get into some trouble. She might be in a Pucci maxi dress reeking of Dioressence, and you may have to stand back from her when she’s regaling you with some crazy story in her too-loud voice. But days later when you catch a whiff of it again on a stranger, you think: glamour, parties, experienced women, too many cigarettes, and flowing glasses of champagne. Barbaric? Sounds like the height of sophistication to me.

  Top notes: Aldehydes, orange

  Heart notes: Jasmine, geranium, cinnamon, carnation, orris, ylang-ylang, tuberose

  Base notes: Patchouli, oakmoss, vetiver, vanilla, musk

  Musk by Alyssa Ashley for Houbigant (1969)

  In the late 1960s, Alyssa Ashley was introduced to the Houbigant Parquet division of perfumes. According to a website that was up until recently, it was the hippie era that influenced perfume’s nostalgic look back to the animal notes of civet, musk, and ambergris, which were actually the names of the Alyssa Ashley perfumes themselves, and part of their “Natural Primitives” collection:

  At the end of the ’60s … music changed, habits changed, fashion changed. The young generation, starting from the USA and England, embraced oriental philosophies looking for a simpler, more natural lifestyle. This new style of living also reflected itself in perfume. Young people no longer wanted the sophisticated fragrances worn by their parents, but embraced the simple ones whose roots lay in oriental culture. The hippies and the flower children bought the fashionable essential oils, and in 1969 Alyssa Ashley launched their first product, Musk Oil.

  My first introduction to Alyssa Ashley’s musk was via a modern formulation. (Of all the Natural Primitives, Musk is the only one still available, albeit in a reformulated version.) I wasn’t that taken with it, but decided to give the vintage a try. I won an eBay auction of a vintage Musk “roll-on” from the 1970s, for 99 cents. More floral and brighter than Civet and less spicy than Ambergris, Alyssa Ashley Musk is a happy, bright, clean musk with a hint of baby powder, the scent of freshly washed hair and skin, but with warmth.

  Notes not available.

  In this amazing 1969 ad from Lanvin for My Sin perfume, a man and woman with identical haircuts and sweaters shown from behind represent anxiety over the ways in which feminism, women’s liberation, and the sexual revolution threaten to erase sexual difference altogether. “Once upon a time,” the ad begins, “it was easy to tell the girls from the boys … all you had to do was look.” Where vision fails, the conventionally gendered perfume steps in.

  Norell by Norell (1969)

  Perfumer: Josephine Catapano

  Josephine Catapano’s favorite composition, Norell is a beautifully blended green floral that approaches chypre-hood but stops short, like a woman who removes the one accessory—a statement necklace or stiletto heels—that would make her outfit more formal.

  It starts off bright and fresh, moves into radiant floral mode, and dries down to a slightly sweet and soapy/woody floral warmth, like suntanned skin plus flowers.

  Lots of women, adhering to Coco Chanel’s dictum that a woman should smell like a woman and not a rose, find the floral category matronly, unsexy, or (gasp!) too conventional. I’m beginning to think, however, that floral beauties like Norell and another Josephine Catapano creation, Fidji, are the little black dresses of the perfume world. Sometimes, you just want to smell good without thinking about it too much.

  What distinguishes Norell from some of the flower bombs of today is its green opening and its development toward a soft, ambery/woody drydown. It does its dazzling thing for a bit, and exits softly and with grace.

  Top notes: Hyacinth, galbanum, bergamot, narcissus, lemon

  Heart notes: Carnation, jasmine, rose, orris, orchid

  Base notes: Sandalwood, musk, cedarwood, moss, amber

  Ô de Lancôme by Lancôme (1969)

  Perfumer: Robert Gonnon

  A precursor to Clarins’ Eau Dynamisante, Ô de Lancôme is a light, lemony, fresh chypre with a substantial-enough base to make you wonder why citrus chypres aren’t still made that are rooted to earth. Unlike CK One or other fresh 1990s scents, this has a base that anchors you to a foundation—to earth, moss, trees, vetiver. It smells natural. There’s a gorgeous interplay between the hesperidic top notes and light florals, but it’s the drydown that will captivate your heart. I want to bathe in this stuff. Tart, green, herbal, woody-mossy; one of the best citruses out there. (Word on the street is the reformulation isn’t as nice.)

  Top notes: Bergamot, lemon, tangerine

  Heart notes: Basil, rosemary, coriander, honeysuckle, jasmine

  Base notes: Sandalwood, vetiver, oakmoss, cistus labdanum

  You can almost hear marketers thinking in this 1972 ad for Ma Griffe: “How can something as old-fashioned as perfume be relevant to the newly liberated woman?” Easy! By creating nostalgia for the prefeminist utopia of “unliberation”: a world in which men take care of women.

  A Breath of Fresh Air

  Aliage, Diorella, White Linen (1970–1979)

  You can really feel in many 1970s scents a kind of loosening up, a freshness, a breeziness that seems implicitly tied to the women’s movement, and perhaps, an escape from the tinderbox that was the 1960s. Many green, fresh masterpieces populate this decade, allowing women to smell austere, powerful, thoughtful, and delicate—sometimes all at once. (Men’s scents get greened, as well.)

  I was looking at an early-1970s issue of Vogue with a friend, and she remarked that unlike today, the young models looked like women and not teenage girls. Just think of the supermodels then: Gia Carangi, Karen Graham, Beverly Johnson, and Lisa Taylor. They were in their twenties, and their faces looked adult rather than adolescent—knowing, womanly, and even sexually intimidating. Perfumes from the 1970s share that unapologetic sophistication. They weren’t afraid of being a little difficult and complex. After all, teens already had their own scents, like Love’s Baby Soft and Blue Jeans by Shulton. This division that once existed between women and girls seems almost nonexistent now in fashion and pop culture in general.

&nbs
p; In addition to being unapologetically adult, 1970s perfumes weren’t afraid to gender-bend or get a little dirty. The chypre category, like the ideal 1970s woman, is on the verge of androgyny, and many florals, chypres, and green scents from the 1970s maintained an allegiance to the body by retaining traces of its musky sweat in the notes. They weren’t trying to mask the body—just embrace it.

  For a moment, for lines like Coty’s Sweet Earth, there was a return to the nineteenth-century soliflore, with perfumes constructed around one perfume note—for example, Honeysuckle, Gardenia, or Hyacinth. Alyssa Ashley for Houbigant got into the retro mood as well with the Natural Primitives line of perfumes named after animal base notes: Ambergris, Musk, and Civet.

  Givenchy III by Givenchy (1970)

  A green/floral chypre, Givenchy III is pretty much perfection. It starts off with a mouthwatering combo of green/citrus notes (galbanum and mandarin) and fruit/flowers (peach and gardenia), which add luscious candied juiciness to the dry, refined, and elegant greenness of this chypre. You almost forget its coquettish brightness as it dries down to a woody, powdery, spicy, and warm ambery base.

  The peach and galbanum combo must have inspired Estée Lauder’s Aliage, which came out two years later. Aliage distilled, simplified, and amplified those notes, chopping off the almost-melancholy notes that follow in their wake. (After all, what sport scent gets all brooding and philosophical?)

  Givenchy III, in contrast, almost immediately moves from that upper register of sunshine and happiness by drying down into a softer, more-contemplative mood with hyacinth and iris in its base.