Top notes: Tagetes (marigold), green notes, spearmint, peach, bergamot
Heart notes: Jasmine, cedarwood, rose, carnation, orris, ylang-ylang
Base notes: Moss, patchouli, vetiver, sandalwood, olibanum (frankincense), musk, amber
Musc Oil by Bruno Acampora (1975)
Bruno Acampora appears to have been quite the bon vivant in the 1960s and 1970s, traveling from Capri to Marrakech to New York City, stopping long enough to have Andy Warhol do a portrait. So maybe the raves I’ve heard about his Musc Oil come from the accumulated lore that surrounds the man, because this strange little musk just confused me. There are moments when Bruno’s musk smells a bit like men’s cheap cologne (and cheap it is not: $185 for 10 ml), but its complexity keeps me interested.
CB I Hate Perfume’s Musk Reinvention seemed to take out most of what’s in Bruno Acampora’s musk, leaving only the dirty-skin smell, which means taking out a lot: notes that are green, herbaceous, camphory, Band-Aidy, mushroomy, humid, sharp, earthy, and woody. This is not a shy musk, or a skin musk, or a subtle musk. It is very long-lasting, spicy, and strange. It’s still growing on me (and I might mean that literally!), given the mushroom note that seems to hover over it.
Notes: Musk, rose, violet, cloves, amber, sandalwood, patchouli
Nuance by Coty (1975)
For a perfume whose tagline was, “If you want someone’s attention, just whisper,” Nuance sure is loud. A woody-powdery, aldehydic floral chypre, Nuance starts off with rich fruit notes of peach and plum. Those notes join with a spicy violet and herbaceous heart with a classic chypre base. These days, Nuance has all the hallmarks of “perfumey” perfume that would prompt many to say, “That smells like my grandma.” It hits all the right notes, but without being particularly distinguished.
Notes: Aldehydes, lemon, plum, peach, rose, orange blossom, violet, cinnamon, lavender, herbs, trees, moss, vanilla, musk
This 1978 Nuance ad suggests that “Nuance says yes.”
Parure by Guerlain (1975)
The citrus and galbanum in Parure (“Jewelry Set”) is bracing and bitter. Herbal notes of thyme and clary sage soften this brightness and prepare you for the sweet warmth of a jasmine that shines like the sun within Parure’s dry, mossy, leather impression.
Soon enough, the “formal” part of the perfume announces itself: leather, moss, styrax, and vetiver, with amber and Tolu balsam’s warmth echoing the jasmine. For a moment, there’s an interesting caramel note that recalls Azurée and Miss Balmain, an evanescent gourmand quality in an otherwise fresh and moss-dry fragrance. Parure’s balance of citrus, warmth, and mossy-dry-leather is perfection.
Top notes: Aldehydes, citrus oils, thyme, galbanum, clary sage
Heart notes: Jasmine, rose, lilac, lily of the valley, orris, narcissus, jonquil
Base notes: Leather, styrax, vetiver, moss, Peru balsam, amber
Skin Musk by Bonne Bell (1975)
“If warmth had a smell, it would be SKIN.”
—1979 AD FOR SKIN MUSK BY BONNE BELL
We learn in Chandler Burr’s The Perfect Scent that Skin Musk was a favorite of Sarah Jessica Parker, which is interesting both because it’s a cheapie drugstore scent and because it smells like a masculine scent—albeit a modern, niche masculine scent! It starts off with some kind of bright note, probably bergamot or lavender, but its development is what makes it interesting. It has the rich sensuality of many simple 1970s musks, which were like one modulated low growl in a bottle. And although it has some overly synthetic-smelling moments, Skin reminds me a bit of L’Artisan’s Dzing in its “What the hell am I smelling exactly?” effect.
As its name suggests, you have to get really close to it on skin to smell it. Skin starts off with an indistinguishable floral note (rose?) embedded in a complex mix of wet cardboard, that flinty, sulfurous scent after a match is lit, sandalwood, and, of course, musk. As it dries down, a wonderful nutty, nonsweet vanilla warms the skin and stays as a sheer veil of spicy warmth.
The idea that Skin (or Skin Musk) was marketed to teen girls in the ’70s just goes to prove that perfume styles are culturally determined, changing with the mores, lifestyles, and politics (gender and otherwise) of the times. What are teen girls wearing now? Princess by Vera Wang? The latest schlock from Kim Kardashian?
I had it on last night and, after a couple hours, asked some friends to smell my wrists. The words they used to describe it were “fresh” and “transparent.” Not bad for a little dime-store beauty!
Notes not available.
Yendi by Capucci (1975)
Can perfume smell fluorescent? After my first hit of Yendi, an odd and intriguing floral by Capucci, I can say that the answer is yes. Yendi opens on a high note that combines fizzy citrus that reads like lime, soft-powdery sweet hyacinth, clear rose, and bright florals, including an intense lily of the valley. I also detect a leafy-green facet reminiscent of coriander.
Yendi warms up fast, thanks to a fleeting clove-bud note that bridges the perfume’s crisp top and heart to its woody-musky-incensey and powdery drydown.
The styrax and musk base gives Yendi a fresh, clean-but-slightly-dirty aspect. After about an hour, Yendi left a faint amber/vanilla impression with a whiff of powdery orris.
This juxtaposition of fizzy citrus and clear florals with a subtle musky drydown makes Yendi bright but complex. Unlike the “clean” fragrances that came to dominate the 1990s, Yendi—and many other 1970s florals, chypres, and green scents—maintains an allegiance to the body by retaining traces of its musky sweat in the notes. These scents aren’t trying to mask the body, just embrace it.
Top notes: Aldehydes, bergamot, hyacinth, peach, raspberry
Heart notes: Rose, honey, lily of the valley, cyclamen, clove bud, orris, orchid
Base notes: Sandalwood, musk, cedarwood, amber, styrax, vanilla, moss
Babe by Fabergé (1976)
With its cheesy name and designation as a floral in my Haarmann & Reimer Fragrance Guide, Babe could easily be passed over by the perfumista hunting for an interesting vintage perfume. That would be a shame, because like many 1970s scents, Babe is complex and interesting without being overbearing. Babe is really a floral chypre whose sheer light florals (kissed by a hint of ripe raspberry) are balanced with a touch of spice and sweet warmth from carnation and amber, earthiness from vetiver and treemoss, and a rich golden woodiness from sandalwood.
Top notes: Aldehydes, raspberry, hyacinth, bergamot (aldehydic fresh)
Heart notes: Lily of the valley, honey, rose, orris, carnation, jasmine (romantic floral)
Base notes: Vetiver, musk, sandalwood, amber, treemoss (sensual powdery)
Blazer by Anne Klein (1976)
With a name that couldn’t be more dated unless it was called Gauchos or Shoulder Pads, Blazer is nevertheless a gorgeous fresh floral whose chypre base ensures that it smells unlike anything out these days. A fresh, lemony-citrus top is warmed and sweetened by a plum note, while a rich, buttery sandalwood joins with musk and moss to put a more-formal jacket—er, blazer—over the casual Friday that is this perfume’s top and heart notes.
Top notes: Bergamot, lemon, mirabelle (plum), hyacinth
Heart notes: Oeillet (carnation), orris, lily, jasmine, rose
Base notes: Mysore sandalwood, cedar, musk, moss
The Competition: Sisterly love takes a hit with this 1977 retrograde ad for Ambush.
Cardin by Pierre Cardin (1976)
Poised between a big ’80s scent and a strong ’70s chypre, Cardin straddles these two eras in its top and heart notes. Green, sweet, and fruity in its aggressive opening, Cardin moves into a rich floral that’s topped by sweetness, tempered by green notes and lifted by aldehydes.
Top notes: Green note, raspberry, bergamot, aldehyde
Heart notes: Jasmine, rose, carnation, ylang-ylang, orris, honey, lily
Base notes: Sandalwood, musk, oakmoss, amber, civet
First by Van Cleef & Arpels (1976)
Perfumer:
Jean-Claude Ellena
Some perfumes are lyrical poems that capture the fleeting emotion of particular moments or times. And some perfumes are epic dramas, dressed up with multigenerational characters, crisscrossing plots and subplots, and a Moral to the Story. First is in the latter category.
A big, elegant floral in the vein of an Arpège (1920s) or L’Air du Temps (1940s), First seems almost out of its time in the 1970s. First is Jean-Claude Ellena’s uptown creation before he went downtown and became minimalist, and as befits a perfume for the haute Parisian jeweler, Van Cleef & Arpels, First just smells expensive. It’s the perfume equivalent of those floral arrangements one sees in the lobbies of expensive hotels.
From the first note of sweet fruit to the burst of fresh florals, followed by their deepening into woods and animal notes, there is drama and development, all in the service of making the florals sing a gilded tune.
Top notes: Aldehyde complex, peach, raspberry, hyacinth
Heart notes: Jasmine, Rose de Mai, lily of the valley, orris, tuberose, orchid, carnation
Base notes: Vetiver, musk, amber, oakmoss, honey, civet, sandalwood
Grey Flannel by Geoffrey Beene (1976)
Perfumer: André Fromentin
When I was a teenager in Fort Worth, Texas, I was constantly getting into trouble for wearing clothes and accessories—red jackets, weird shoes, no socks—that fell outside of my private school’s uniform code.
Grey Flannel was the scent that taught me perfume could be an invisible form of rebellion—olfactory instead of sartorial. I wore it because I loved the way it smelled (I remember thinking it smelled like cucumbers and Pimm’s Cups), but also because it was a men’s cologne. Sniffing Grey Flannel now, my rebellion seems pretty tame. This fresh, herbaceous chypre seems as conventionally feminine as it is masculine. Its green, citrusy notes are sweetened by an elegant, old-fashioned whiff of violet, a signifier of retro formality in the middle of bracing freshness. Vanilla joins the comforting chorus started by violet, and in the drydown, all the notes—green, sweet, and mossy—nestle together in comforting harmony.
Top notes: Green note, galbanum, lemon, petit grain, bergamot
Heart notes: Violet, rose, clary sage, fern, geranium
Base notes: Musk cedarwood, moss, tonka
Inoui by Shiseido (1976)
Like Chanel No. 19, there’s an uncanniness to Inoui’s evocation of the forest. But where Chanel No. 19 was muted, vegetal, and ethereal, Inoui is hardy and brisk—its aggressive opening of galbanum and lemon (lightly softened and sweetened by peach) is backed up by a forest whose trees, herbs, and berries are almost medicinal in their aromatics (pine, juniper, cedar). Inoui is a symphony in the key of Fresh.
You almost forget there are florals in this perfume at all, although the quiet jasmine does act as a bridge to the soft, comforting drydown of myrrh, musk, and the subtle-but-present civet, acting, as it always does, to provide a bit of disquiet and moodiness.
I’ve smelled enough perfume to know that if anything has peach and galbanum in it, I’m a goner (Y, Aliage, Givenchy III). These are two great notes that smell great together, whetting the olfactory appetite the way a Negroni aperitif gets your taste buds excited for a big meal.
Thyme paired with jasmine floats through Inoui’s green forest like a soft breeze, though its beauty is primarily austere rather than delicate. Once its piquancy dies down, it still manages, even in the warmth of the base notes, to convey freshness through a kind of powdery, clean-skin scent.
Top notes: Galbanum, peach, juniper, lemon, green accord
Heart notes: Pine needles, freesia, thyme, jasmine
Base notes: Cedarwood, myrrh, musk, civet, oakmoss
Lancetti by Lancetti (1976)
Lancetti combines intense green galbanum and citrus with delicate, soft-focus florals. The balancing act between green and powdery and light florals seems characteristic of 1970s feminine fragrances, but in Lancetti’s case, even the chypre base of vetiver and oakmoss can’t keep the scent’s flowery gentleness from dominating. The Silences fragrance by Jacomo, however, reverses this duality …
Top notes: Galbanum, gardenia, bergamot, lemon, rosewood
Heart notes: Rose, orris, lily of the valley, cyclamen, jasmine
Base notes: Oakmoss, musk, vetiver, sandalwood, amber, cedar
Love’s Baby Soft by Love Cosmetics (1976)
Like the Bay City Rollers and feathered hair, Love’s Baby Soft’s iconic pink hue and baby powderiness defined the ’70s for many a teenage girl. (I can barely take a tiny whiff of this stuff without feeling like I’m about to break out in pimples.) What’s fascinating in retrospect is the way that largely masculine notes of the fougère fragrance category exist at the heart of this girly fragrance.
With its combination of lavender and vanilla (standing in for the sweetness and warmth of coumarin from tonka), Love’s Baby Soft transmogrifies from a hairy man getting his hair cut at a barbershop into a fourteen-year-old girl who smells like baby powder and affixes unicorn stickers to her Meade kitten spiral notebook. Even teenage girls in the ’70s were able to get in their perfumes the complexity many grown women are denied in today’s mainstream scents. In Love’s Baby Soft’s drydown, a sophisticated mix of herbaceous fougère, baby powder, and an almondy-vanillic heliotrope that was featured promininently in Guerlain’s L’Heure Bleue mingles like it’s no big deal.
Top notes: Syringa (a genus that includes lilac), aldehyde, lemon, lavender, rosewood
Heart notes: Heliotrope, lilac, rose, lily of the valley, orchid, carnation
Base notes: Vanilla, benzoin, musk
Yatagan by Caron (1976)
Perfumer: Vincent Marcello
With bitter herbs touched with hesperidic notes, fresh aromatics, and a mossy-warm leathery base, Yatagan is heir to other chypre animalics like Aramis and, believe it or not, Miss Balmain. (So much for gender consistency in perfume.) The combination of these bracing outdoor notes with the sweet and warm animalic note of castoreum makes Yatagan cuddlier-sounding than its namesake, a curved, Turkish saber used during the Ottoman Empire.
Perhaps like its brother Aramis, who I can only ever picture as a naked Burt Reynolds on a bearskin rug, Yatagan needs only a come-hither stare to stop his playacting, drop his Yatagan prop, and get down to business. Sporty-fresh and carnal-sexy all in one fell swoop, Yatagan also just happens to be Nasomatto perfumer Alessandro Gualtieri’s favorite vintage scent.
Top notes: Bergamot, artemisia, wormwood, lavender, petit grain, galbanum, origanum (genus of aromatic herbs including marjoram and oregano)
Heart notes: Jasmine, vetiver, patchouli, carnation, pine needle, geranium
Base notes: Olibanum, leather, labdanum, moss, castoreum, styrax, amber, musk
J’ai Osé by Guy Laroche (1977)
Opulent, mysterious, and restrained, J’ai Osé (“I Dared”) takes a while to get to know. Unlike many scents in today’s crowded marketplace that rush at you with their olfactory elevator pitches in one spritz, desperate to tell you in one breath what they’re all about, J’ai Osé makes you sit a spell to figure it out.
Speaking of spells, J’ai Osé casts a beautiful one. After a rather unpleasant and unpromising opening of harsh aldehydes, J’ai Osé leads you to dark woods. The dryness of vetiver, woods, and patchouli are met with the creamy lush warmth of amber, olibanum, and benzoin. It’s so inky-dark in the J’ai Osé forest that your nose has to adjust to the subtle gradations of accords and notes, like stepping into a dark, seemingly empty room and having to adjust your eyes to see the furniture.
Once you’re fully under its spell and accept its inky atmosphere, the vegetation in its lush forest shows itself—a flash of white jasmine and deep rose, the dusky leafiness of coriander—the restraint of scents exuded in the cold dawn, a bracing mix of beautiful things holding back. Sticking with J’ai Osé’s temporality and style, though, pays back big-time. The drydown blooms with the creamiest jasmine and rose touched by powdery orris
. You can see with this fragrance that even as late as the 1970s, perfumers were still allowed to play with time, to actually take their sweet time. It is a great loss that this happens less.
Top notes: Peach, citrus oils, coriander, aldehyde
Heart notes: Jasmine, patchouli, rose, orris, cedarwood, sandalwood, vetiver
Base notes: Amber, olibanum, oakmoss, musk, benzoin
Opium by Yves Saint Laurent (1977)
Perfumers: Jean Amic and Jean-Louis Sieuzac
It now seems quaint that YSL’s American backers at Squibb were mortified both by the perfume’s proposed name and bottle designer Pierre Dinand’s idea for the bottle, which was based on the Japanese inro, a wooden box holding medicines and opium that Japanese samurai hung from their belts. But before women became Dior Addicts, and Tom Ford could boast that his scent Tuscan Leather smelled like high-end cocaine, it first had to be culturally acceptable for a perfume to be named after a drug. Hence, Opium, Yves Saint Laurent’s olfactory Orientalist fantasy, was born.
Opium starts with a sharp blast of aldehydes, like the olfactory representation of a struck match lighting an opium pipe. The perfume gives the impression of being both an experience of seamless sensuousness, as it caresses you with its crushed velvet notes in one touch, and a perfume that unfolds languidly. Both of these befit a fragrance that is supposed to conjure up images of wan, dreamy, supine opium smokers in dens punctuated with curling pipe smoke. Vanillic orange notes recalling spiced tea combine with sweet flowers and subtle fruit notes, warmed by a sensuous and musky base. Raymond Chaillan, who assisted in Opium’s creation, is convinced its formula no longer contains large doses of eugenol (found in clove and carnation), or linalool and limonene, found in lavender and citrus respectively. And according to perfume historian Octavian Coifan, who knew someone involved with its production, Opium was inspired by two French, pre-WWI fragrances.
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