Bal a' Versailles -- A Look Back

This week and next, I'm going to be busy with relatives and/or away. Hence two reprints from the early days of Olfactarama, which you might have not read. Hope you like them!

Don't forget: the drawing for four samples of Liz Zorn's Soivohle fragrances ends Monday, May 17th, midnight US Eastern Daylight time. Leave a comment to enter.

Below is my very first post, about Bal a' Versailles.

"In 1978, I visited Andorra with my parents. Andorra was, and I’m sure still is, one great big duty-free shop. I remembered something I had read in a fashion mag, or maybe God-forbid, Cosmo, about a certain perfume. It was the pinnacle, they said. The best. So of course I wanted it. I found it in one of those big-box duty-frees and brought it home, a tiny round bottle enclosed in a brocade pouch.

It became my signature night scent for many years. I was just past college then, and no one I knew had ever worn perfumes like this. So, I thought, it distinguished me as worldly and complex; uptown, different in every way that mattered from the patchouli-wearing sprouts-eating no-makeup post-hippie girls I knew at school.

It would bitch-slap you silly with that first flat note, that definitely-not-American slam. And then it would quickly bloom into florals, jasmine and rose. But it wouldn’t leave you comfortable there. Under all those sweet and pretty flowers flowed the heavy, musky, unmistakable note of...what was that, anyway? I didn’t know the words then. Civet, musk, ambergris – and, in the Seventies, they were all real.

It smelled so foreign! I wore it whenever I went out, not sure of what might happen (as in anything can.) Of course, I reserved my ladylike Chanel No. 5 for work. But when the sun sank, out came the little bottle I'd bought in Andorra.

I've been through a number of them since then. Even now, when it feels like it's going to be an interesting night, I wear it. Sometimes, I wear it to sleep, too.

The expert Luca Turin has called it “circular,” I've read, explaining that it settles, then rolls back and forth between the sweet and dirty, the florals and the civet, what they call "skank" now. Another perfume writer called it “comforting.” In a way it is.

I guess I could call myself a semi-perfumista now, with many bottles and even more samples, some niche, some corporate, all recommended. But the Bal is still special. It makes me feel more...well, let's just say more. And there's a bottle of the vintage, coming in the mail."

The Estate Sale

We’ve all heard the estate sale stories. So-and-so got a giant mint bottle of vintage Tabac Blond for $2. All I ever find is scary Seventies stuff like, say, an orange crock pot, missing the cord, its receptacle caked with cat hair and cobwebs. But I saw an ad in the paper yesterday for a sale in a very nice part of Atlanta, near the Governor’s Mansion. Maybe, I thought, they’ll have some decent perfumes. It seemed promising enough.

There was a line out front. I eavesdropped on the conversations around me. Many of these people knew each other. They seemed to be part of the subculture of estate-salers and resellers. Early birds were already carrying the antiques out when I arrived. And many of the people had that old-time Atlanta accent, in which “there” is pronounced “they-ah.” This accent is unmistakable to a native. It tells everyone who knows enough to care: “A’hm from he-yuh, as was my muth-ah, as was huh muth-ah.” You hardly ever hear it any more. I didn't expect to hear it here.

Finally, they let me inside. It looked as though the hearse had just left. The books were still on the shelves. Other than a few tables heaped with costume jewelry, and other ones with dinnerware, the belongings were untouched. The house was dark, dusty and dirty. Someone had turned the air all the way up, too, so it was tomb-like cold.

I began moving through the rooms. There were racks and closets filled with clothing that looked like it had belonged to a New Orleans madam, or maybe a nightclub singer. It was all sequins, and jeweled tops, rhinestones and satin and stained silk, glittery caftans, stockings -- imagine people picking through your stockings! -- and gloves. I saw tables filled with odd ceramic knicknacks. There wasn’t any lingerie, thank God, but there were shoes, at least 75 pair, all tiny -- size five or six maybe -- spike-heeled and expensive. And there were bed-jackets. More sequins. More glitter and glitz than I’d seen in decades.

It was the last sort of clothing I would have expected to see in this staid old Buckhead house.

The place had already been picked over, and if there had been any good perfume, it was gone. But there were at least a dozen empty bottles, big ones, of Bal a’ Versailles. I can’t imagine how one person, in one lifetime, could have used them all.

Who was she?

I didn’t linger long enough to read labels. The clothing was flashy, but certainly not couture. I saw no men’s wardrobe or things, just women’s, all this flimsy finery bursting out of closets and drawers, the bathroom a shambles, even the makeup for sale. What was her name? I kept thinking of something like Estrella, or Lila or Blanche, like Blanche du Bois, a faded Southern lady, hanging on to whatever kind of past had required her to own all this. Was she someone’s mistress? The companion to a wealthy man who went home every night to a single strand of pearls and a discreet dab of Chanel? Did she spend her days lounging around on velvet sofas, dressed in chiffon, reeking of Bal a Versailles, waiting, always waiting?

I thought: Tennessee Williams would’ve loved this.

I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

My entire haul, by the way, was a few samples of vintage edp that would be considered “old-lady” -- Je Reivens, Rive Gauche and Shalimar. I can still smell them on my wrists.

They are the perfumes of a ghost.




Estate sale photo used under license from Dreamstime.com.