Top notes: Bergamot, green note, peach, lemon, rosewood
Heart notes: Jasmine, ylang-ylang, rose, cedarwood, sandalwood
Base notes: Vanilla, amber, musk, moss, civet
Poison by Christian Dior (1985)
For many, this monster floral is aptly named. It is a true love-it-or-hate-it fragrance. (Ad from 1985)
Perfumer: Edouard Flechier
It’s hard to believe that Poison is almost thirty years old. This much-maligned and equally beloved ’80s scent bomb with a bad reputation still grips my imagination. With its aubergine-colored, fairy-tale apple meets vintage apothecary bottle with a crystalline stopper, Poison is nothing if not provocative. You either love it or hate it—usually for the same reasons!
Rich, woody, spicy, and occasionally veering into a grape-bubblegum accord, Poison is like Shiseido’s Féminité du Bois with the cedarwood turned down and the tuberose-jasmine turned way, way up. The continuum of berrylike scents from Femme, to Magie Noire, to Féminité du Bois, shows the versatility of the berry/Prunol note, as well as its goth-erotic sensibility.
Although Poison comes on strong, the scent balances its intensity with a symphony of background notes that keeps it from being one-dimensional. Poison’s spice (cinnamon, coriander, carnation), woods, and musk temper its floral sweetness. It mellows out with an opiate-like softness, partly sweet, partly woody, musky, and incensey. Perfumer Edouard Flechier confirms that IFRA restrictions have continuously changed its original formula since its inception.
Top notes: Coriander, pimento, plum, anise, mace, rosewood, carnation
Heart notes: Rose, tuberose, ylang-ylang, carnation, cinnamon, jasmine, lily of the valley
Base notes: Cedarwood, vetiver, sandalwood, musk, heliotrope, vanilla, opoponax
Sables by Annick Goutal (1985)
Perfumer: Isabelle Doyen
If bigness is the mark of a 1980s scent, then Sables (“Sands”) is very much of its time. This out-of-character Goutal fragrance for men explodes on your skin with the smells of burnt sugar, fenugreek, the savory-sweet Immortelle flower, buttery sandalwood, and amber, like a dessert doused with brandy and lit on fire.
In addition to its bigness, Sables also smells like a twenty-first-century unisex niche perfume, its striking weirdness due in part to its being built around the maple syrup/savory bacon/ham note of the Immortelle flower. (This “Everlasting” flower is notorious for challenging perfumers to construct something that doesn’t simply smell like Sunday brunch.) Sables’s slight anisic, herbaceous, and celery-like scent recalls the dried cooking herb, fenugreek, which is used in curries and Middle Eastern cooking.
The perfume’s heat—suggested in notes like cinnamon and pepper—is also the metaphorical heat from sand dunes, summer, and perhaps the oft-imagined “exotic” winds that carry floral and food spices from markets across stretches of desert. It places itself, then, in the middle of this recurring trope in perfumes such as Lucien Lelong’s Sirocco and Serge Lutens’s olfactory Orientalist fantasy, Chergui (2001), both names for hot, Moroccan desert winds. (Speaking of Serge Lutens, his Christopher Sheldrake–composed Santal de Mysore [1991], with its buttered popcorn and cumin notes, smells like a toned-down homage to Sables, minus the cinnamon and maple syrup.)
Sables takes a few tries to get, and you might just end up appreciating it without loving it, but that it came out in the 1980s—the era of big flowers and big fruit—is a testament to Isabelle Doyen’s prescience, brilliance, and daring. (Get thee to an Annick Goutal counter and try this stuff! Miraculously, it’s still around.)
Notes: Immortelle, cinnamon, pepper, black tea, sandalwood, amber
Calyx by Prescriptives (1986)
Perfumer: Sophia Grojsman
Equal parts guava and grapefruit, Sophia Grojsman’s stunner Calyx is arguably one of the best of its fruity genre. Its genius? Reproducing the funky fruit-going-bad ripeness of tropical fruits like guava, jackfruit, and durian. Added to Calyx’s overripe sweetness—more aromatic than sweet—is the bitter freshness of a grapefruit accord so authentic-smelling I can almost taste the rind.
Calyx’s initial slightly rotting fruit note dips down low, like an orchestra that opens by allowing the musical saw to sound its first wavering, carnivalesque note. Once the rest of its song gets back on its feet to a “normal” register, that fruit-on-the-verge-of-going-bad note lingers, coloring the way the rest of Calyx’s fruity floral notes are experienced.
With as much fruit that’s packed into this perfume, you’d think that it would be cloying and overbearing, like the fruit bombs that stink up Sephora’s perfume aisles today. But, again, Calyx’s intelligence belies its often ditzy fruity-floral perfume category.
Top notes: Peach, apricot, cassis, green notes, tagetes (marigold), spearmint, bergamot
Heart notes: Lily of the valley, lily, jasmine, rose, cyclamen, melon, orris
Base notes: Cedar, musk, moss, raspberry
Jil Sander Woman 3 by Jil Sander (1986)
JSW3 starts off with a juicy galbanum-laced start, its pronounced masculine feel (perhaps) from the coriander, rosewood, and bay leaf combo. JSW3’s heart is gorgeous: It retains traces of the green, fresh top notes, and then moves to a powdery orris that transitions to spring-fresh florals. By the time it begins to dry down, you feel you’ve been on a roller-coaster ride of personalities. As the fresh green opening hovers over florals and powder, its animalic base rounds it all off with with a mossy, incensey, leathery, creamy sandalwood finish.
As much as I like Jil Sander Woman 3, it confuses me a little. Its pieces don’t fit together or even clash in a way that makes sense. It feels unfinished, although each time I sniff my wrists I get something gorgeous. It resembles a scent you could find at Barneys now—niche, and a little experimental.
Top notes: Green note, bergamot, coriander, aldehyde, rosewood, bay
Heart notes: Rose, ylang-ylang, carnation, jasmine, lily of the valley, geranium, orris, tuberose
Base notes: Patchouli, castoreum, sandalwood, olibanum, benzoin, amber, moss, vanilla
Panthère by Cartier (1986)
Perfumer: Alberto Morillas
There was once a myth that the panther was the one animal that smelled so amazing that its prey would voluntarily approach it just to catch a whiff of its narcotic fragrance. It seems that Cartier missed an opportunity to make this perfume as animalic as its name suggests. Instead, Panthère is a voluptuous, complex, sweet floral that dries down to woods, and balances fruit notes with white flowers.
Top notes: Karo Karounde, tagetes, peach, mace
Heart notes: Coriander, jasmine, gardenia, rose, heliotrope, carnation, ylang-ylang
Base notes: Cedar, sandalwood, patchouli, moss, musk, amber, vanilla, tonka
Parfum de Peau by Claude Montana (1986)
Perfumer: Jean Guichard
Known as the “King of the Shoulder Pads,” and an influence on wild designers like the late Alexander McQueen, Claude Montana gifted the 1980s with extreme, sculptural silhouettes and shoulder pads Lady Gaga eagerly borrowed from. But alas, the House of Montana, founded in 1979, went kaput in 1997.
Parfum de Peau starts off with tangy green notes, ripe cassis, and peach, laid over a veil of pepper and spices (cardamom). The unspecified green note almost has a vegetal green pepper smell—an odd note to marry with ripe fruit! Spicy ginger, sandalwood, and carnation join classic florals to the divine base that lasts for hours and evolves into a true “parfum de peau” (skin scent/perfume).
Depending on when I sniff my arm, Parfum de Peau gives me spicy fruit, an intense rose, or the amazing spicy-woody-powdery, animalic base that makes this perfume more of a floral Oriental to me than a fruity chypre, as the Haarmann & Reimer Fragrance Guide classifies it. (Or it’s some hybrid of both.)
What makes this fruity concoction sexy rather than innocent or cloying is its animalic nature. Cardamom and cassis are both notes that can reference the body, BO in the first instance and urine (cat pee,
specifically!) in the second. Joined with the more-obvious animalics—castoreum and civet—you can see why this is not a perfume to put on before you go to church on Sunday.
Parfum de Peau represents everything the 1980s stands for in the popular imagination: It’s loud, daring, and cacophonous. But it’s also incredibly beautiful, and I’ve had it on my mind since I put it on last night. Even though the version I have is a mere eau de toilette, I can smell its subtle woody-ambery powderiness on my skin almost an entire day later.
Top notes: Peach, cassis, pepper, green note, plum, cardamom
Heart notes: Ginger, rose, tuberose, jasmine, ylang-ylang, carnation, sandalwood
Base notes: Patchouli, vetiver, civet, castoreum, amber, musk, olibanum (frankincense)
Parfum Rare by Jacomo (1986)
Parfum Rare belongs to an uncommon and wonderful perfume category: the animalic fruity-floral chypre. Ripe, spicy, and mossy, it starts at a low register, with hooded eyes and slurred speech, and goes from its fruity-fresh green note to a rottenish base of leather (probably castoreum in all its overdosed glory), amber, musk, and moss. Grab it (or its kind) while you can, before The Man takes away every ingredient that’s special about this perfume from the olfactory palettes of perfumers.
Top notes: Cassis, tagetes, aldehydes, bergamot, green note
Heart notes: Jasmine, tuberose, rose, lily of the valley, orris, ylang-ylang
Base notes: Patchouli, leather, benzoin, styrax, olibanum, amber, musk, moss
Scherrer 2 by Jean-Louis Scherrer (1986)
Pineapple is not a note you encounter often in perfume. In Patou’s Colony, it joined with an unusual chypre leather base and somehow worked. Scherrer 2 almost approaches a chypre elegance and counterpoint to sweet pineapple with its woody base, but it falls short of justifying the use of pineapple.
Top notes: Aldehydes, bergamot, mandarin, pineapple, anise, green note
Heart notes: Lily of the valley, rose, jasmine, lily, orris, tuberose, honey
Base notes: Vanilla, sandalwood, benzoin, amber, musk, heliotrope
Eau Dynamisante by Clarins (1987)
Perfumer: Jacques Courtin-Clarins
One of the most beautiful lemon-forward perfumes available, Eau Dynamisante was marketed as the first perfume with firming, toning, and energizing benefits. It could be dismissed as a mere aromatherapy product, but that would be a pity. With a soaring aromatic-green citrus opening supported by the spice of carnation and patchouli, by the time it blends and dries down on your skin, what’s left is an herbal-citrus skein of happiness. A refreshing aperitif in a decade of rich sauce-heavy entrees.
Top notes: Orange, coriander, caraway, lemon, petit grain
Heart notes: Rosemary, carnation, cardamom, thyme
Base notes: Patchouli
Loulou by Cacharel (1987)
Perfumer: Jean Guichard
I’ve never been into perfumes that are “seductive” in a conventionally feminine way. While some women wear Viktor & Rolf’s Flowerbomb or Victoria’s Secret Very Sexy, I’m happy smelling like overripe flowers (Diorella) or someone’s overripe armpit (Aramis).
This doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate perfume in that girly genre, if done well, and Loulou by Cacharel does it well. With a gently sweet opening of black currants, fresh top notes and florals, and a decadently rich vanilla heart, Loulou dries down to incense and woods, adding mystery to the perfume’s more-conventional come-on. Loulou lives up to the supposed perfume brief Jean Guichard was given by Cacharel: to create a perfume that projects both “tenderness and seduction.”
Loulou was the sequel to Anaïs Anaïs (1978), a straight-up “innocent” floral, and it was also heir to Ombre Rose (1981), whose praline and vanilla notes proved popular. (Until Ombre Rose, vanilla had been out of vogue for decades.) We’re told that Loulou also attempted to soften the harshness of Dior’s Poison (1985) through its intense vanilla note. Among everything else 1980s perfumes overdosed on, apparently vanilla was one of them.
I could never wear Loulou, but its vanilla/incense–sandalwood combination is pretty intoxicating. The vanilla is so rich and gourmand, it runs through Loulou like a vanilla version of the chocolate river that ran through Willy Wonka’s candy factory. By the end, the scratchy-spicy base notes add a maturity and sophistication to the fragrance’s sweetness.
Top notes: Bergamot, violet, plum, mace, cassis (black currant buds), tagetes (marigold), anise
Heart notes: Jasmine, tuberose, orange blossom, ylang-ylang, rose, orris, lily of the valley
Base notes: Cedar, vetiver, sandalwood, tonka, heliotrope, vanilla, benzoin, musk
Passion by Elizabeth Taylor (1987)
In 1957, Audrey Hepburn was the face in ads for Givenchy’s L’Interdit, a perfume created exclusively for her a few years before. In the 1970s and 1980s, untold numbers of Chanel No. 5 ads featured Catherine Deneuve staring impassively at the viewer, her iconicity and elegance synonymous with the Chanel brand. But it wasn’t until the 1980s that the celebrity scent as we know it—the perfume branded with and marketed by the celebrity himself or herself—came into being. Sophia Loren had one (Sophia, in 1980), Cher had one (1988), and Elizabeth Taylor, starting with Passion, ended up with roughly a dozen fragrances.
Passion was La Liz’s first fragrance, and it is surprisingly “difficult” for a celebrity scent, with a lot of leather, musk, patchouli, sandalwood, artemisia, and coriander to offset the easier tuberose-y florals and honey that make it so unmistakably an 1980s scent.
Top notes: Aldehydes, bergamot, gardenia, coriander, artemisia
Heart notes: Jasmine, rose, tuberose, orris, honey, heliotrope, patchouli, sandalwood, cedar
Base notes: Oakmoss, castoreum, civet, cistus, leather, musk, vanilla
Boucheron by Boucheron (1988)
Perfumers: Francis Deleamont and Jean-Pierre Bethouart
Boucheron starts off, well, very sweet: Orange blossom is flanked with fruit and a tiny bit of herbal basil. It’s got that Amarige screech of sweetness that so many ’80s fragrances do, and which today in perfumes stands out like Dynasty-style shoulder pads. The “fruit complex,” which must be laboratory-made, smells very synthetic and contributes to the difficulty I have with this perfume. Its floral heart joins treacly jasmine and tuberose with a dose of some angles (geranium? narcissus?) and lightness, perhaps from lily of the valley. Boucheron’s drydown makes the sweetness a little more tolerable, and it evolves into a warm and woody/spicy base that veers toward the Oriental. I’m not a huge fan, but I may be in the minority.
Top notes: Bergamot, lemon, cassis, fruit complex, basil, orange blossom
Heart notes: Jasmine, orris, lily of the valley, tuberose, geranium, cedarwood, sandalwood
Base notes: Ambrein, tonka, benzoin, oakmoss, olibanum (frankincense), civet, musk
A science brief as perfume ad, Jovan Andron claims that it contains the human pheromone Alpha Androstenol. (Ad from 1983)
Ex’cla.ma’tion by Coty (1988)
Perfumer: Sophia Grojsman
You can detect Sophia Grojsman’s signature of joy in the absurdly named Ex’cla.ma’tion; however, it’s like a Forever 21 dress with great ideas but poor materials. Although lovers of Ex’cla.ma’tion say that it was an affordable perfume at a time when department-store perfumes were too expensive for young women and teens, I just can’t get past how cheap this perfume smells.
Fruity, vanillic, and musky, Ex’cla.ma’tion’s green note is dissonant, putting it in the Eden and Must de Cartier school of perfumes that invite the question, “Where is that strange note coming from?” Haarmann & Reimer list it as a floral, but to me this is a fruity Oriental perfume. The green note and bergamot keep it from being too weighed down (after all, it’s an exclamation point, not a semicolon or ellipses). It’s like a teenager in a woman’s gown. Try as she might, she’s in an ill-fitting dress.
Top notes: Peach, apricot, green note, bergamot
Heart notes: Orris, rose, jasmine, heliot
rope, lily of the valley
Base notes: Cedar, amber, sandalwood, vanilla, musk, cinnamon
Fahrenheit by Christian Dior (1988)
Perfumers: Jean-Louis Sieuzac and Maurice Roger
Fahrenheit’s temperature rises from its chilly, fresh opening to its warming base of ambery leather. As its thermostat adjusts itself, the less-volatile climes of violet and cedar create an equanimity that seems like its true personality. Because this is the kind of scent men wore when I was growing up, it smells classically masculine to me, but in comparison to men’s fragrances now, this “masculinity” wrapped itself around a surprisingly floral and sweet center.
Top notes: Bergamot, lemon, lavender, violet, mace, chamomile
Heart notes: Jasmine, lily of the valley, cedarwood, sandalwood
Base notes: Amber, patchouli, leather, tonka, musk
Knowing by Estée Lauder (1988)
Perfumer: Jean Kerleo
Knowing is a bold, green, 1980s-style green floral chypre with fruit and woods, and with a hint of Paloma Picasso’s intense animalic base. In the way that you might pause when eating a delicious Vietnamese meal and wonder, suspiciously, if you just ingested loads of MSG, you might pause when sniffing Knowing and ask yourself which note is synthetic and projecting like it’s on steroids? Sometimes beauty and pleasure can bypass such questions, and for me, Knowing is one of those cases: Ignorance is bliss.
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