Honeyed, creamy, spicy, and soft, Diva is at once fresh/floral and animalic/rich. The sweetness of ylang-ylang and jasmine are tempered with the soft-focus effects of orris, musk, and cistus (aka, labdanum), the resin from the rockrose bush that lends lush creaminess to scents. Patchouli, vetiver, and oakmoss add rough drama, while civet and honey (the civet more subtly than honey) add a touch of Eros to Diva’s ladylike demeanor.
One way of wearing such an outmoded scent like Diva today would be to put on a judicious amount early in the morning, with at least an hour for it to rest on your skin. (I have the parfum concentration, and one tiny drop has filled the air in a friend’s tiny apartment. Beware.) In the drydown, Diva retains its character while mellowing out enough so as not to scare your neighbors. Diva is like one of the big cats at the zoo: less intimidating, almost friendly while it’s napping.
Top notes: Bergamot, aldehyde, coriander, rosewood, hyacinth
Heart notes: Rose, jasmine, tuberose, carnation, orris, ylang-ylang
Base notes: Patchouli, vetiver, honey, oakmoss, civet, musk, cistus
Jardins de Bagatelle by Guerlain (1983)
With a retro violet leading the way, Guerlain’s Jardins de Bagatelle has a lovely warm sweetness that pushes a green aspect. It doesn’t get interesting until its drydown, when its fruity-violet-lemon top, and heart that’s both green and sweet, settles into a spicy base with a hint of civet.
Top notes: Violet, blossom-calyx notes, bergamot, aldehyde, lemon
Heart notes: Rose, jasmine, narcissus, cassie, ylang-ylang, orris, orchid, lily of the valley
Base notes: Vetiver, cedarwood, civet, musk, patchouli, benzoin
Jil Sander Woman 2 by Jil Sander (1983)
Feminine, masculine. Floral, leather. Sweet, bitter. Rich, dry. Light, intense. It’s hard to believe Jil Sander Woman 2 came out in the ’80s, the decade that brought us scent bombs I love like Poison and Loulou. Known for her minimalist fashions and even called “The Queen of Less,” German designer Jil Sander became famous for her separates in black, white, and cream that could be mixed and matched, made for working women with big bank accounts and an eye for avant-garde style.
But her complex perfume is a different story. Jil Sander Woman 2 is a stunning, enigmatic floral-chypre animalic perfume that comes closest to Piguet’s iconic Bandit than any modernish perfume I’ve come across so far, in character if not in notes.
It opens with a burst of juicy-sweet green fruit and bergamot reminiscent of Miss Balmain’s mouthwatering intro (and that of Sikkim, Aramis, and Azurée), which contrasts with its Mojave Desert of a base: leathery, woody, bitter, dry—and ridiculously chic.
Woman 2 may also have a touch of IBQ (isobutyl quinoline), which is the love-it-or-hate-it arochemical Cellier so famously overdosed Bandit with. It creates a rubbery-tobacco ash-and-leather accord that sent some scared Bandit sniffers running for the hills. I’m sniffing my wrists now and get IBQ plus patchouli, sandalwood, moss, and incense, combined with the faintness of the green fruit/floral top and heart. A huffer, for sure.
Top notes: Aldehydes, fruit note, neroli, green note, bergamot
Heart notes: Tuberose, jasmine, rose, lily of the valley, orris, orchid, carnation
Base notes: Amber, cedarwood, castoreum, patchouli, civet, sandalwood, olibanum, benzoin, moss
Niki de Saint Phalle by Niki de Saint Phalle (1983)
Befitting a perfume that shows two entangled snakes on its cap, Niki de Saint Phalle is a heady green floral chypre that practically hisses and rattles its tail. Sour, green, fruity, and intense, the perfume smells like the collision between a lime, a peach, and rattlesnake venom. As it dries down (I visualize this poison elixir literally dripping down a wall), the florals snake their way past the hissing top notes, and the mossy, musky, woody base provides some antivenom to the bracing beginning.
Niki de Saint Phalle was a French model-turned-painter-sculptor-filmmaker-provocateur-perfumer who was influenced by Spanish architect Antonio Gaudi. Her most famous work is a sculpture garden in Tuscany called The Giardino dei Tarocchi (The Tarot Garden). Opened in 1998 after twenty years of work, The Tarot Garden pays homage to tarot card symbolism, and its garish colors and found-object style of construction informs the style of this extreme perfume. (She also did “shooting paintings,” in which colors underneath a plaster canvas were not revealed until she used a shotgun to expose them. No shrinking violet, this one! Way to move on from a modeling career!)
Initially the cacophony of green notes, fruit, spearmint, and herbaceous artemisia/marigold at the beginning just scared me off.
Now I’m more receptive to its nuances: the way the amber and olibanum hum their low, warm, sweet songs at the opening as the top notes are screeching; the fact that the spearmint note adds an unusual freshness; and the way the rich florals are almost guarded by the top notes, as if we’re thrown off the treasure by the snake-guards / top notes. (Or maybe the true character of this perfume lies in the top notes? I think so.)
A lot of floral chypres mellow significantly from their bright top notes to their chypre bases. Niki de Saint Phalle’s joyous and intimidating green/sour/sweet/floral freshness sings through the chypre base. It’s there hours into the drydown, and as I’m sniffing my wrists now, I smell a mossy/woody green note kissed with a touch of fruit.
Top notes: Green notes, tagetes (marigold), artemisia, peach, bergamot, spearmint
Heart notes: Jasmine, rose, carnation, orris, ylang-ylang, cedar, patchouli
Base notes: Oakmoss, vetiver, sandalwood, olibanum, leather, amber, musk
Paris by Yves Saint Laurent (1983)
Perfumer: Sophia Grojsman
How does a perfumer compose a fragrance that smells like joy, hope, and innocence? Ask Sophia Grojsman, the nose behind beauties such as Calyx, White Linen, and Eternity. The word joy was the first word that came to mind when I revisited her perfume, Paris, the rose-based scent that doesn’t so much scream rose as it does interpret, with the help of other notes, what this flower stands for in the popular imagination.
Green, fresh, and bursting with sweet—but not oppressive—florals, Paris knocks you over with its good mood. If you’ve ever been to Paris in the spring, you know the kind of blinding beauty it can offer. At times it can seem like everything about Paris was made to give you sensory pleasure—the food, the architecture, the smells—and Grojsman’s Paris translates that flash of joy into perfume notes.
Violet and hyacinth bloom most prominently around Paris’s intense rosiness, while cedar and sandalwood give it an almost cinnamony spice. The drydown is a powdery whisper of musk and orris, which soften the perfume’s floral brightness.
What’s interesting to me about Paris is how recognizable the floral notes are, and yet their composition together signifies an idea, a mood, and a place. It’s also a painterly fragrance. You can almost “see” the artist painting her canvas made of flowers—a giant rose with a dab of lily here, a splash of violet there, creating (to switch metaphors) a kind of musical tension in its notes that sustains a happy, almost bittersweet mood, like a bubble that just might burst, or happiness that surely couldn’t sustain itself.
Top notes: Green notes, bergamot, hyacinth, blossom-calyx notes
Heart notes: Violet, rose, orris, jasmine, linden, lily of the valley, ylang-ylang
Base notes: Musk, cedarwood, moss, sandalwood, heliotrope
Sand and Sable by Coty (1983)
A simple but beautiful little drugstore tuberose/gardenia gem fattened by a suntanlotion-like accord, with green notes to offset the richness.
Notes: Tuberose, gardenia, jasmine, rose, green notes, and peach
Trussardi by Trussardi (1983)
Seeming more like a perfume from decades before it, heir to Fête de Molyneux, Miss Balmain, and other chypre-leather animalics, Trussardi is beautifully balanced between green/mossy and sweet/warm. It starts off with a rosy-green galbanum/rose/coriander accord that’s offset with a surprising touch of swee
tness from sensual tuberose and ylang-ylang. Its freshness continues with transparent florals and leafiness, with geranium and lily of the valley leading the pack.
Once we reach Trussardi’s drydown, this gorgeous fragrance’s basic (basest) instincts come out with a dose of patchouli, musk, and leather. Aside from the amber and vanilla, it’s like a who’s who of animalic notes. Hours into it, the fresh, green, incensey-woody-mossy-leather impression remains, touched by subtle greens and florals. If you like Sinan, Paloma Picasso’s Mon Parfum, and other intense chypres, you’ll love Trussardi. It was clearly a child of the 1960s and 1970s.
Top notes: Coriander, green note, aldehydes, hyacinth, galbanum, bergamot
Heart notes: Ylang-ylang, jasmine, rose, tuberose, orris, geranium, lily of the valley
Base notes: Cedarwood, sandalwood, patchouli, styrax, olibanum, moss, vanilla, amber, musk, leather
Coco by Chanel (1984)
Perfumer: Jacques Polge
Fruity, spicy, and warm, Coco’s honeyed amber, benzoin, and vanilla represents the ’80s version of tasteful excess, with a perfect balance of shiny fabric, gold bracelets, rings, and glossy makeup. I really love the dose of patchouli in Coco, which gives it a touch of wildness and noir excitement that belies its other, friendlier notes.
Top notes: Fruit note, mandarin, pimento, aldehyde, coriander
Heart notes: Rose, carnation, ylang-ylang, cinnamon, orris, patchouli, vetiver, sandalwood, tuberose
Base notes: Olibanum, amber, benzoin, vanilla, musk, honey, civet
Lutèce by Houbigant (1984)
Lutèce is a spicy, powdery Oriental perfume that balances bright orange and lemony geranium with a rich base of woods, spice, and vanilla. Its nutty, confectionary heliotrope and vanilla recalls Ombre Rose, but it tones down the gourmand aspect and ups the citrus, dry woods, and cinnamon spice. Surprisingly well-balanced for a powdery, ’80s Oriental perfume. (The Dana version is largely the same.)
Top notes: Aldehydes, mandarin orange, brazilian rosewood, geranium
Heart notes: Peony, rosemary, orris root, vetiver, lily of the valley, cedar
Base notes: Tonka bean, cinnamon, musk, vanilla, heliotrope
Maxim’s de Paris by Cardin (1984)
Featured in Gigi, mentioned in Jean Renoir’s La Grande Illusion, and frequented by a who’s who of twentieth-century icons including Jean Cocteau, Marcel Proust, Maria Callas, and Jackie Onassis, Maxim’s was a legendary restaurant in Paris famous for its Art Nouveau decor, beautiful women, and visiting luminaries.
Maxim’s de Paris, the perfume, doesn’t stun its wearer into submission like many ’80s fragrances, balancing as it does floral and green notes, and sweetness with spice. (Its base is reminiscent of Rumba’s.) Maxim’s, in short, speaks softly, although it carries some big olfactory sticks.
Top notes: Bergamot, tagetes, green note, fruit note, mint, melon
Heart notes: Lily of the valley, cyclamen, rose, jasmine, ylang-ylang, orris, tuberose
Base notes: Sandalwood, musk, honey, vanilla, heliotrope, amber
Paloma Picasso Mon Parfum by Paloma Picasso (1984)
Daughter of Pablo Picasso turned Tiffany jewelry designer and perfumer, Paloma Picasso added her name and input to one of the best scents of the 1980s: the castoreum-rich green chypre that bears her name.
Paloma Picasso Mon Parfum has the sillage of an ’80s perfume but the gravitas and depth of a 1940s chypre. Green, floral, woody, spicy, mossy, and animalic—Mon Parfum is overdosed with castoreum, a leather note prominent in men’s scents, making it a classic feminine scent with masculine signifiers. It’s one of my favorite chypres of all time.
Subtler yet more animalic than the versions in black plastic bottles, Mon Parfum in the white glass bottle roars with a savage blast of civet and aldehydes in its opening, combined with innocent and transparent rose and lily of the valley. Leafy coriander and geranium then encircle the florals, both narcotic (tuberose, jasmine, ylang-ylang) and delicate (rose, lily of the valley), transposing them into another, more haunting key.
Every time I would put on Mon Parfum, I’d notice another nuance. Sometimes lily of the valley and rose seemed to waltz in with civet in the opening, and at other times the civet hid from me, and all I could smell was aldehydes. With the later formulas, there’s an everything-all-at-once quality, like a meal that was blended together, taking away your pleasure in sampling each part at your leisure. You get all the notes, but they’re roughly corralled and herded into your nose; you miss the delicate entrances, exits, and interplay of notes.
If you can only find Paloma Picasso in the black plastic bottles (and they are everywhere to be found), you’re still going to have a gorgeous fragrance on your hands, but what will be missing is what I got to finally experience with this Mon Parfum in the white bottle: real development, movement, and depth.
Top notes: Coriander, rosewood, bergamot, green note, aldehyde
Heart notes: Rose, geranium, tuberose, jasmine, lily of the valley, ylang-ylang
Base notes: Patchouli, vetiver, amber, musk, civet, benzoin, oakmoss
Sinan by Jean-Marc Sinan (1984)
The love child of Coriandre and Paloma Picasso’s Mon Parfum, Sinan has everything the adventurous chypre lover would want: soul, depth, eroticism, and wearability, with a whiff of the exotic. This spiced chypre, shot through with angular green florals, is the olfactory equivalent of putting on a turquoise-blue caftan and wearing big gold hoop earrings. (Think of brocaded silk, or Loulou de la Falaise during Yves Saint Laurent’s Orientalist phase.)
Sinan starts off green and herby, and its coriander, although prominent, is dosed with a lighter hand than it is in Coriandre. Geranium’s piquancy, lily of the valley’s green facet, and ylang-ylang’s sharp sweetness—all are lightly cloaked with the musty damp herbaceous blanket that is coriander.
Top notes: Bergamot, green note, coriander, aldehydes, rosewood
Heart notes: Rose, geranium, lily of the valley, jasmine, orris, ylang-ylang, cardamom
Base notes: Patchouli, vetiver, amber, moss, musk, cistus
Ysatis by Givenchy (1984)
Perfumer: Dominique Ropion
Ysatis is not only a pleasure to pronounce (look in the mirror, purse your lips, and whisper “Eee-saht-ees, by Jee-vahn-shee” just for kicks), it is also a gorgeous and sensual floral. The surprise (and indispensable) note is coconut, giving the perfume a hint of richness, fat, and calories. It acts like a soft-focus camera lens to blur the crisp florals and give them a vaguely nutty, milky, and ever-so-slightly sweet tropical feel that could have veered into gourmand territory but stops short. It’s Ysatis’s hint of the tropical that makes it interesting, and its sexy drydown is my favorite part. That’s when the notes, all tucked into bed and spooning together, melt onto your skin.
Top notes: Green note, aldehydes, fruit note, rosewood, coconut
Heart notes: Tuberose, jasmine, narcissus, carnation, rose, ylang-ylang
Base notes: Patchouli, sandalwood, castoreum, civet, oakmoss, amber, honey, cistus
Anne Klein II by Anne Klein (1985)
Subtle, by ’80s standards, the distinguished and lovely Anne Klein II bowed to the decade’s passion for Oriental fragrances with amber-colored hues but comes out unscathed: It doesn’t smell too outré or dated.
Anne Klein II starts off surprisingly green, and then transitions to a beautiful blend of flowers. Orange blossom and ylang-ylang in particular continue to peek through the perfume’s third stage, which is the perfume’s primary character: creamy, ambery, woody, and orris-caressed vanilla.
Top notes: Bergamot, green note, peach, rosewood, lemon
Heart notes: Jasmine, rose, ylang-ylang, carnation, orris
Base notes: Vanilla, amber, sandalwood, musk, patchouli, civet, benzoin
Derby by Guerlain (1985)
Perfumer: Jean-Paul Guerlain
Not many scents have mint notes in them—not only because of the association mint has with things like toothp
aste, and, in England, cleaning products, but because it would take a steady hand to figure out how much to add in order to keep mint from taking over. But Derby, Guerlain’s chypre leather, puts peppermint to good use. What would otherwise be a beautiful but typical chypre leather transforms, through the addition of peppermint, into something sparkling, shot through with a cold, almost metallic quality, as if something otherwise dark were lit from within.
Top notes: Bergamot, lemon, artemisia, peppermint (fresh herbaceous)
Heart notes: Pimento, rose, pepper, mace, jasmine
Base notes: Leather, vetiver, sandalwood, patchouli, moss (leathery, mossy, woody)
La Nuit by Paco Rabanne (1985)
Perfumer: Jean Guichard
Three words: spiced, honeyed leather. (It’s also a contemporary version of Schiaparelli’s 30s scent, Shocking.)
Top notes: Citrus, basil
Heart notes: Rose, honey
Base notes: Oakmoss, woods, leather, patchouli, civet
Obsession by Calvin Klein (1985)
Perfumer: Jean Guichard
Until I picked it up recently, I hadn’t sniffed Obsession since the 1980s, so I was surprised at how restrained it seems to be in hindsight, and how well it’s held up. Part of Obsession’s success lies in its ability to take you in two olfactory directions at once: It balances a sensual, ambery, and powdery base with a radiating orangey heart that’s kept fresh with green notes and bright fruit. Spice and animal warmth never threaten to undo the paradoxical green freshness at its heart. Although updated with the ’80s obsession with bright fruit accords, its Shalimar-like structure of bright/sensual/animalic is familiar, and it works.
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