Top notes: Green note, coriander, orange, aldehyde
Heart notes: Rose, jasmine, lily, cardamom, cedarwood, vetiver
Base notes: Patchouli, oakmoss, honey, musk, amber, civet
Roma by Laura Biagiotti (1988)
Take Shalimar, with its bergamot, vanilla, and civet base; add a big dose of amber, a smidgen of black currant, and the scent from Doublemint gum’s powdery foil—and you have the sparkling, warm, sweet-spicy floriental perfume, Roma, by Italian fashion designer Laura Biagiotti.
Like some perfumes in the Oriental category, Roma gets a lift from hesperidic top notes. They seem to linger throughout Roma’s development, lightening the perfume’s mood so that we don’t take it too seriously. The uplift from bergamot and pink grapefruit plus that quirky touch of powdery mint keeps Roma’s character from falling into the brooding or overly decadent. It seems fresh and carefree for a perfume in this category. (The fluted, frosted bottle looks like a Roman column.)
Mint is said to be a difficult note to use in fragrance without evoking Scope mouthwash or toothpaste, so it’s surprising it works so well in a floriental with such prominent vanilla and amber. You’d think it would clash or seem unappetizing, but its freshness works well with richer notes.With a fresh, sparkling opening with extra zip from mint; a floral heart that gives it a soft femininity; and a vanillic/ambery/civet base with creamy/spicy sandalwood for depth and warmth, Roma is an approachable, unpretentious beauty.
Top notes: Bergamot, pink grapefruit, black currant, mint
Heart notes: Jasmine, rose, lily of the valley
Base notes: Sandalwood, vanilla, amber, musk, patchouli, oakmoss, civet
Rumba by Balenciaga (1988)
Perfumers: Jean-Claude Ellena with Ron Winnegrad
To discover that Jean-Claude Ellena was a co-nose of Rumba is like stumbling upon a photo of a chic movie star before she had a stylist, wearing some ’80s getup with big shoulders, a profusion of ruffles, and huge hair. Like a pre-stylist starlet, Rumba is a beautiful, hot mess.
Some may know that before Ellena had his Minimalist Phase (Bulgari’s Eau Parfumée Au Thé Vert, Hermès’s Un Jardin Sur Le Nil, etc.), he was in what could only be described as a Maximalist Phase. Among his Maximalist creations: First by Van Cleef & Arpels (1976), with its huge floral bouquet, and the honeyed floral animalic Rumba, which starts out loud and fruity and dries down to a husky-throated woody-leather-musk affair.
A rumba, derived from the Cuban-Spanish word rumbo, meaning “party” or “spree,” is a ballroom dance based on a folk dance in duple time of Cuban-Spanish-African origins. It’s heavy on the hip-swaying and passion, and Ellena does his best to translate this larger-than-life drama into perfume.
If you can get past the huge fruity-floral opening (usually my least favorite style, but maybe you love that sort of thing), you might find yourself liking parts of Rumba in spite of yourself. It has that Amarige/Poison-like syrupy fruit-tuberose-honey opening that could put you into a diabetic coma, but then in a flash, Rumba gets incensey and a little rough. Rumba’s drydown is, in fact, dry, and such a welcome counterpoint to its fruity treacle: Cedar, sandalwood, and styrax create an incense effect that’s both mysterious and sexy.
Styrax is an interesting note often used to create leather scents. A gum-resin from the bark of a styrax tree, it imparts a leathery, smoky, balsamic (powdery-ambery) effect that perfumer Olivier Polge has said can give a chypre-like quality to perfumes. (Maybe this is why my Haarmann & Reimer guide has categorized Rumba as a floral-chypre animalic, even though there is no bergamot or oakmoss—the usual chypre ingredients—listed in the notes?)
I read a description somewhere of Rumba that stuck with me—that its drydown is like the inside of an old cathedral during mass, the smell of dripping beeswax candles combined with burning frankincense. If this aspect of the perfume were foregrounded and just slightly sweetened with the other notes, what a completely different dance Rumba would be. But then, it wouldn’t be the ’80s fragrance that it is …
Maybe Rumba is the perfume that sent Jean-Claude Ellena fleeing into the arms of Perfume Minimalism, like a drunk to rehab after a weekend bender.
Top notes: Peach, raspberry, green note, orange blossom
Heart notes: Tuberose, jasmine, rose, carnation, heliotrope, lily of the valley, honey
Base notes: Cedar, sandalwood, amber, tonka, vanilla, musk, styrax
Ça Sent Beau by Kenzo (1989)
When I was a kid, I used to love this strange candy at my corner store that consisted of flavored water injected into a wax cylinder. Usually, the candy was very sour or bright, which wildly and wonderfully contrasted with the wax you’d chew to get into the juicy center.
That’s what Ça Sent Beau (“It Smells Good”) reminds me of: a juicy, fruity floral (and not just any floral, a one-two tuberose/jasmine punch brightened by mandarin and orange blossom) embedded in beeswax, amber, and heavy musk. You can smell the sharpness of fruit, orange blossom, tuberose, and lily of the valley, but they’re clouded, enriched, thickened by an inexplicable waxy heaviness. A beautiful chypre base keeps the perfume from being confectionary. It smells good, indeed.
Top notes: Fruit complex, spice, notes, bergamot, mandarin, green complex, orange blossom
Heart notes: Tuberose, lily of the valley, jasmine, rose, carnation, coriander, cumin, orris, cedarwood, sandalwood
Base notes: Vetiver, patchouli, moss, amber, musk
Samsara by Guerlain (1989)
Perfumer: Jean-Paul Guerlain
When I first smelled Samsara a few years ago, I concluded that it was a polite jasmine scent without much character. It didn’t seem to make the most of the opportunity it had to express in perfume form the dramatic Buddhist notion of samsara, or the endless cycle of birth and suffering and death and rebirth.
I still don’t know if a perfume can express samsara, but my thinking on Samsara has itself cycled to a new place. Did I get a better version of Samsara? Was my first sniff of a reformulated Samsara, without the depth? Or perhaps it is I who have become deeper, more open, about what I can appreciate, if not wear?
All I know is, the second time around, Samsara won me over. Its top notes momentarily reference the fruitiness of many 1980s scents, but its main character is a buttery-rich sandalwood infused with decadent jasmine. Smooth and slightly spicy, Samsara is an ’80s power fragrance with more class than crass.
Top notes: Bergamot, lemon, green note, peach, tarragon
Heart notes: Jasmine, rose, ylang-ylang, orris, carnation
Base notes: Sandalwood, vanilla, benzoin, amber, musk, tonka
Calvin Klein’s CK One is the representative 1990s “clean” scent. Stripped of any olfactory representations of the body in its base notes, CK One was marketed as a unisex scent, and even its utilitarian-looking, nondescript bottle seems bare.
Water, Water, Everywhere
CK One, L’Eau D’Issey, Laundromat (1990–2000)
It’s not a surprise that the first airbrushing program for computers, Adobe Photoshop 1.0, was released in 1990. Many perfumes in this era, no matter how beautiful or technically interesting, seemed to similarly have erased away imperfections—the olfactory kinds deliberately put into perfumes in earlier eras to give them depth, notes that referenced the body, or any true base notes that expressed “baseness.” Whether a reflection of the virtual, disembodied Internet era, an expression of post-AIDS germaphobia, or an aesthetic reaction to 1980s excess, Sunflowers, Happy, and L’Eau d’Issey (“Issey’s Water”) and their clean, uncomplicated freshness ruled the day.
In fits and starts toward the end of the decade, however, perfumers sounded much-needed dissonant notes, including the rubber in Bulgari Black (Annick Menardo), the truly difficult birch-tar smoke of Eau du Fier (Isabelle Doyen), and the unwashed beauty of Muscs Koublaï Khän (Christopher Sheldrake), with its trifecta of the animal notes, castoreum, civet, and musk, proudly on olfactory display.
Byblos by Byblos (1990)
Perfumer: Ilias Ermenidis
A fresh, happy, green floral, Byblos’s mandarin note is enriched by rose, lily of the valley, bright raspberry, and a warm orris base that fattens it up a bit. One of the earliest fruity florals whose category, alongside clean scents, went on to dominate the 1990s.
Top notes: Green note, bergamot, mandarin, cassis, peach, marigold (tagetes)
Heart notes: Mimosa, lily of the valley, orris, rose, orchid, heliotrope, lily, violet
Base notes: Vetiver, musk, raspberry
Cabotine by Grès (1990)
Perfumer: Jean-Claude Delville
Here is the Big Bad Eighties in perfume form: a collision of soaring green candied fruits—peach, plum, and cassis—with old-school lipstick and cosmetic face powder. Strong, but beautiful for its type.
Top notes: Cassis, peach, plum, green note, tagetes, coriander
Heart notes: Rose, tuberose, ylang-ylang, carnation, jasmine, orris, heliotrope
Base notes: Vetiver, cedar, civet, musk amber, vanilla, tonka
Jil Sander Woman 4 by Jil Sander (1990)
Time was seriously out of joint for the Jil Sander house nose if you situate a few of Sander’s perfumes in the context of their respective decades. In the 1980s, when huge fruity florals were taking over the smellosphere, in waltzed Jil Sander Woman 2. With its dry mossy/leathery personality, JSW2 stood out like a severe-looking conceptual artist from Berlin smoking a cigarette in the middle of a Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous party hosted by Robin Leach.
Jil Sander Woman 3 at least tried to chat with a few ladies with poofy sleeves and big hair, having a touch of fruit and friendliness herself. But then, just as the 1990s rolled around and began to get more minimalist and clean, and Dynasty dresses were replaced by minimalist black-and-white, along comes Jil Sander No. 4, right at the cusp, a fruity floral of no particular distinction acting like nothing had changed since the 1980s.
Top notes: Plum, peach, anise, mace, coriander, bergamot
Heart notes: Rose, tuberose, ylang-ylang, pimento, orris, jasmine, carnation, orange blossom, heliotrope
Base notes: Cedar, sandalwood, vanilla musk, amber, tonka, civet
Parfum Sacré by Caron (1990)
Perfumer: Jean-Pierre Bethouart
Does anyone do pepper and carnation fragrances better than Caron? To add to their peppery roster of Poivre and Bellodgia, Parfum Sacré (“Sacred Perfume”) ups the ante with a smidgen of cardamom, a gorgeous velvety rose dusted with powdery-woody orris, and a decadent balsamic base.
Released on the cusp of the over-the-top 1980s with the clean and minimalist 1990s, Parfum Sacré is practically anachronistic in the 1990s, a doomed historical figure in the movies knowing that his demise is near. By turns elegant and opulent, with a warm mix of spices, indolic florals, and woody balsams, Parfum Sacré seduces with its embarrassment of riches.
It’s the skanky civet and musk that meet you at the door to this gilded palace, however, that give this perfume a thrilling dimension it wouldn’t have without them. Like a 1-percenter inviting some artistic riffraff he met at the local watering hole to his fancy home for a dinner party, Parfum Sacré knows that there’s nothing more elegant than to invite the demimonde to your soirée. Sacrilege, after all, is just the flip side of sanctity. Perhaps one commenter on a perfume forum said it best: “It smells of sacred mysteries and incense, much like the inside of an Orthodox church—if that church were being run by Mary Magdalene.”
Top notes: Lemon, pepper, mace, cardamom, aldehyde
Heart notes: Orange blossom, rose, jasmine, rosewood, ylang-ylang, orris, carnation
Base notes: Vanilla, myrrh, amber, musk, civet, cedar
Safari by Ralph Lauren (1990)
Perfumer: Dominique Ropion
Categorized as a green floral, the sweetness and fruit note in Safari dominate its greenness, which is surprising given how galbanum is an opening note. Although there’s a significant—and welcome—touch of spice from carnation and styrax, you’ll have to like your green florals on the sweet side to get along with Safari.
Top notes: Galbanum, green note, mandarin, hyacinth, aldehydes
Heart notes: Rose, lily of the valley, narcissus, carnation, jasmine, orris, orchid, honey
Base notes: Cedar, vetiver, moss, tonka, vanilla amber, styrax
Trésor by Lancôme (1990)
Perfumer: Sophia Grojsman
A powdery apricot-rose that dries down to a musky vanilla, Trésor has a romantic, waxy quality to it, like vintage scented lipstick or face powder. Its dose of syrupy-sweet violet-rose is headache-inducing for some, and suspends everything in a synthetic cloud that is hard to get past. More of a 1980s than a 1990s scent.
Notes: Rose, heliotrope, orris, apricot, iris/violet, sandalwood
Wrappings by Clinique (1990)
Perfumer: Elie Roger
With its oddly prosaic name and season-bending freshness, Clinique’s Wrappings is offered only during the holiday season, and tends to be pretty hard to find even then at Clinique counters. A few Clinique sales associates didn’t even know what I was talking about when I asked if they had a tester bottle and at the San Francisco Macy’s, a (criminal) Wrappings fan had swiped theirs.
Wrappings starts off green and herbaceous, with the freshest facets peeking out of its juicy, spicy floral bouquet. It seems more like a summer than a winter scent. (It has that ’90s-style ozonic quality I don’t particularly like, but that just ups the ante on its freshness.) The drydown is my favorite part: mossy and dry with a touch of leather, its top and heart notes softened by orris and pleasantly powdery.
Top notes: Green note, artemisia, aldehydes, lavender, mace
Heart notes: Cyclamen, rose, jasmine, orris, hyacinth, carnation, ozone
Base notes: Cedar, patchouli, leather, moss, marine, musk
Amarige by Givenchy (1991)
Perfumer: Dominique Ropion
The olfactory version of a last gasp, Amarige represents the beginning of the end of the big fruity floral of the 1980s. With a jumble of synthetic-smelling fruit notes that smell as jarring as spandex shorts with headbands and fanny packs now look, Amarige’s predictable progression into a tuberose-sweet floral heart and vanilla/amber woody base makes it hard to separate from its sisters (Cabotine, Giorgio, Animale, etc.). Tuberose can usually do a lot of olfactory damage on its own to sensitive noses, but just in case, Amarige threw in chemical-laden reinforcements.
Amarige’s sandalwood and cedar base at least helps redeem it by providing depth and texture to the chemical stew that bubbles at its heart. Once you’re well ensconced in its fruity world, like a cult member who has been thoroughly brainwashed, you might begrudgingly appreciate Amarige. But it’s hard to imagine this style of sweetness will ever come back to perfume, even ironically.
Top notes: Plum, peach, orange blossom, violet, green notes
Heart notes: Ylang-ylang, jasmine, tuberose, rose, orchid, carnation
Base notes: Sandalwood, cedar, musk, amber, tonka, vanilla
Asja by Fendi (1991)
Perfumer: Jean Guichard
A sumptuous Oriental perfume smoking a berry-scented hookah in Yves Saint Laurent’s Opium den, Asja balances spicy carnation/cinnamon with a sandalwood-smooth balsamic base. Just don’t judge a perfume by its bottle, unless you want your perfume bottles to look like two laquered miso soup bowls stacked together.
Top notes: Bergamot, green notes, peach, apricot, raspberry
Heart notes: Rose, carnation, lily of the valley, jasmine, orris, orchid, cinnamon, honey
Base notes: Vanilla, benzoin, styrax, cedar, sandalwood, amber, musk
Escape by Calvin Klein (1991)
Perfumer: Ann Gottlieb
One of the first aquatic, clean, and fruity-floral fragrances of the 1990s, a scent category that came to be an olfactory version of white noise. Fresh, pleasant, and, because functional fragrances like shampoo came to take on these clean scents, redolent of freshly washed hair.
Top notes: Peach, melon, green note, bergamot, apricot
Heart notes: Rose, lily of the valley, orris, cyclamen, heliotrope, ylang-ylang, rosewood, carnation
Base notes: Cedar, vanilla, amber, musk, sandalwood
Jitrois by Jitrois (1991)
Perfumers: Jean-Claude Jitrois and Jean-Claude Ellena
From its rad bottle to its oddball scent—it smells like a fantastic version of a green fragrance tree–scented New York City cab—Jitrois is a truly strange beast.
Fresh, sharp, green, and rich with luscious-sweet gardenia in the opening, Jitrois transforms into something altogether surprising in the drydown. (Perhaps we are given a hint by the gorgeous bottle that not all will remain the same: One side is rippled and rough, as if it were raw material, and the other side is smooth and refined, as if civilized by the left side.)
I thought at first that I was smelling tarragon, combined with new-car smell, and it turns out that I’m not entirely wrong: Jitrois starts off with green notes and coriander. It dries down to a pretty intense animalic base that is synthetic-smelling but familiar somehow, and hence, not entirely unpleasant. Those dissonant notes—green and sweet from gardenia, and a mossy leather base—recall 1944’s Bandit in its homage to leather (designer JC Jitrois’s material of choice, as it turns out).
Top notes: Bergamot, green note, gardenia, coriander, aldehyde
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