The Bottle Club

Yesterday I attended a meeting of perfume bottle collectors. 

Among vintage perfume collectors, these people are sometimes called “The Enemy.” They buy for the bottle, not the juice. And (the horror!) I’ve heard that some bottle sellers pour the perfume in them down the drain.

Incidentally, displaying fragrance in clear bottles is not advised. The perfume in them cooks in bright light, resulting in that nail polish remover top note vintage buyers know too well. So the beautiful bottles presented by Lalique yesterday — all clear glass — wouldn’t benefit any perfume that might be inside them. Not that you’re going to put your limited edition signed-and-numbered Lalique flacon inside a dark cabinet. Are you?

I wish I could display my collection on a dresser top or shelf. Many of the bottles are beautiful. But for me, display is limited to the opaque ones, because it’s the contents I care most about. You can’t wear a bottle. The bottle is something you own, but it doesn’t become part of you like perfume does.

There are some bottles that are swoonworthy, though. One is pictured above.

Elsa Schiaparelli was the grand doyenne of the perfume bottle as surrealist art. She collaborated with Salvador Dali on a number of perfume bottle projects. The most well-known one is the “Le Roi Soleil” bottle, crafted  by Baccarat, which was released in 1946 to celebrate the end of World War II. Dali drew the sun’s “face” as a series of birds in flight, across a rising sun, over an enamel-blue molded glass sea. (I haven’t been able to find any description of what the perfume inside smelled like — this alone is interesting, as such information is readily available on the ‘net nowadays — but most of Schaiparelli’s fragrances were of the take-no-prisoners type.) So, in this case, the bottle, er, eclipsed the perfume inside it. 

Even as a young girl I hoped to someday have a vanity, on which there would be a mirrored tray, full of fine perfumes in their beautiful bottles. The bottles atop my cabinet now — Agent Provacateur comes to mind, in its  pink ceramic egg crowned by a plain metal spray nozzle — aren’t the most appealing ones. Those are stashed safely in the dark interior.

For me, it was odd to walk into a room  like the one yesterday and not smell a bit of perfume. No one was wearing any. That included me. I didn’t want to offend. So, as I passed through the very upscale department store in which the meeting was held, I sprayed  samples of Kurkdijan and Ford  and Creed onto cards, not onto my skin as I usually would.

I guess these people love the bottles a beautiful objects, as art, so I ask: these art aficionados, these collectors, are they more in step with the concept of perfume as art than are those who (so I’ve heard) have been known to decant the perfume for wearing, and put the bottle up for sale to them?

The image of the Dali bottle for Le Roi Soleil comes from Richard Stamelman ’s book “Perfume”  c 2006, Rizzoli International Publications, Inc. No photo credit was given.

The Dali bottle in perfect condition, not that you’re interested in such things, is currently priced at around $25,000, if you can find one. I saw one on a popular auction site that was in very bad condition (chips, broken rays, faded, no box) for just under $4000.

Like Nothing Else: Loulou

I wondered if there was anything in my collection that was truly unique. That really didn’t smell like anything else. 

Awhile back, I’d made a purchase of 40 or so minis, always a risk because minis are usually the first to go “off.” I lucked out, though. Only a few had. The rest — vintage Caleche, Ombre Rose, even the original Chloe — were still good. Among them was a strange, squat hexagonal blue bottle with a maroon spire cap: Loulou. I vaguely recognized it. I put it away for further reference.

Last week I finally got around to smelling it.

This does not smell like anything else I have. I think it’s one of those Rashomon perfumes — eight blind men, one elephant, eight widely varying guesses. Reading comments here and there on the forums, I seen everything from “too sweet” to “tuberose,” and I wonder, once again, if they’re just smelling something I can’t.

To me, “Loulou” is anything but sweet. It’s heavy and dark, full of wood and spice; cassis, a little jasmine, the herbaceous flower tagetes, plum (skin, not flesh.)  Aldehydes. Some heliotrope, certainly not enough to make it sweet! I’ve seen it compared to L’Huere Bleue, but to my nose they’re no more than minimally similar. (Having just applied a little LHB vintage extract to my other hand, I can see the resemblance, but this A to B comparison leads me to a new “note” in Loulou — coffee. That is to say, molecules assembled in such a way as to remind me of coffee. And I haven’t seen “coffee” listed anywhere else.) 

“Notes.” More and more, we hear they’re marketing-speak, nothing more; useful to prospective buyers, as one wants to have some idea about what one is getting, more or less. From reading descriptions of “Loulou,” it would appear that one is getting The Eighties in a bottle — “a frag with shoulder pads,” somebody said.

Well, I don’t think so. It’s true that this is powerful stuff. And I guess it does have something in common with Opium, the darkness and spices. But there is much more of the former than the latter here. When I think of the Eighties I think Little-Shop-of-Horrors tuberose: choose your Poison. This isn’t that. This is a truly dark, mysterious scent, a femme fatale perfume if there ever was one, reaching much further back into time than The Eighties. (The name “Loulou” refers to Louise Brooks, with the Twenties pageboy bob.)

My little mini is vintage, made of the same opaline glass as the big bottle (the spire top, though, is plastic). Judging from the label on the bottom, it’s pretty old. And I swear I keep smelling castoreum in there somewhere.

LouLou isn’t discontinued. It’s available on the discounters for a song, although it’s in a big ordinary bottle and, dollars to doughnuts, the bottle is plastic and the scent inside is reformulated beyond recognition, at least compared to the mini I have. Maybe that’s what all the commenters who call it “sweet” have been smelling. These minis like mine, though, show up all over, and they’re not expensive; around ten bucks usually for the EDP.

I will wear this out some night, the kind of night where I might otherwise wear L’Ombre Fauve — one that calls for some dark, sultry scent. One I know the DH will like, because he’s already told me he does. I’d like to see what others say about it. I think it’s in the same conceptual ballpark as the real (read: wildly expensive) ouds.

The garish colors of the bottle, the maroon and cyan, aren’t about the Eighties, either. They were used by Matisse often enough to become associated with him.  That’s one his paintings, “The Casbah Door,” from 1912. 

“Loulou” was released in 1987. The perfumer was Jean Guichard, who also did “Obsession” for Calvin Klein.

The painting image came from here.

Vintage Lanvin Rumeur

A few days ago, I came across a few mills of vintage Lanvin Rumeur.  I didn’t have time to sample it properly over the weekend, so I thought, for some reason, that it was an aldehydic floral like Arpege. Anyway, I grabbed a couple of those for comparison and brought it down to the studio to sniff and write about today.

Maaaannnn! This is no floral. 

Rumeur was released in the early Thirties. Not a particularly good decade for most. Times were tough. (Perfumes, as markers of history, fascinate me. This is why I love the vintage stuff so much.) The Thirties were a decade of tough fragrances, too, like this: leather. Like an old aviator jacket once owned by a pipe smoker who, well, maybe didn’t get to wash his hair as often as he should have; a prominent note here is costus.

Costus is made from steam-distilling the roots of the Saussuria costus, a perennial, thistle-like herb that grows in Asia. I have a little bit of the essential oil. It smells like scalp, sort of dirty and fleshy and musky at once. It was used as a fixative in the ancient world, but that may not have been the same plant — there are many types. 

Reading up on the IFRA regulations, I see that costus oil and absolute are — you guessed it! — prohibited, as a severe sensitizer. So now I treasure my tiny little vial of EO all the more. Black market costus! (And no, I’m not going to rub the pure stuff on my skin, nannykins, okay?  I have been using it as an ingredient in mixtures I call scents of place, as an element that adds that necessary bit of urban funk.) Rumeur is full of it.

So can I expect a rash? I’ll let you know.

But back to the scent. I get aldehydes at first, a tiny bit of floral (carved in stone, though, like those carved flowers over doorways in some old cathedrals) and some stone fruit. And civet, a little. The aforementioned costus. Leather leather leather, and it smells like the birch tar kind, not the synthetic “leather” note IBQ. A little smoke. I guess you could call it a leather chypre, as there’s oakmoss in it, too. 

I brought along some 1990 Chanel No. 5 EDT and some vintage Arpege extrait for comparison, when I was still thinking that this would be an aldehydic floral. The Chanel in particular gave me that “Why haven’t I been wearing this more often!” thrill. The Rumeur is an intellectually challenging fragrance, one that I found to be a little, er, disconcerting, similar in that way to Coty's Chypre.

I would love to get my hands on some Remeur extrait. It must be amazing.

Certainly, this is one that would scare the horses.

Remember this is vintage Rumeur. Reviews on the new one, released in 2006, range from “absolutely awful” to “not as bad as all that.”

I know the photo of Ava Gardner is out of time. It's a publicity still for "The Killers," from the late Forties. But it's such a great photo, I just had to use it. I have not been able to find the name of the photographer.

Perfumer was Andre Fraysse, who also created Arpege for Lanvin. "Rumeur" was released in 1934.

A quick search of our favorite auction site revealed…nothing. Not one bottle. But there’s always tomorrow, and some decant sellers might have it.

Full disclosure: I got my sample in a swap.

Arpège vs. My Sin

Wardrobe malfunctions are nothing new, as this infamous photo of Sophia Loren and Jayne Mansfield, taken at Romanoff’s restaurant in 1958, proves. I chose it to illustrate this post because it comes from the era of the knock-em-dead perfumes, formulated to stand up to a room full of other ones and a fog of cigarette smoke, the ladylike-at-first Arpège and the don’t-mess-with-me My Sin. Also, let’s face it, “versus” had to be the reason why these two ladies were seated (and photographed) together!

My mother wore Arpège, but I don’t remember ever smelling My Sin. I suspect that My Sin wasn’t supposed to be applied while children were around, while Arpège could be worn, by the daring, during the day. In my own time of madly collecting the classics, I got a nearly full quarter-ounce bottle of My Sin extrait. I received the matching bottle of Arpège not too long ago from a generous perfume pal. Both are vintage, in the rectangular flacon with the squared Bakelite top. My best guess is that these bottles are from the Fifties or Sixties. 

Of the two, the My Sin is by far the most abstract, the most modern, in the sense of modern art. It’s nearly non-representational, and hugely aldehydic.


 I waited for the florals to appear. And waited. And waited. They really never did. Instead, there’s incense, clove, more aldehydes, an abstract idea of flowers -- and it’s only an idea. “My Sin” is a chewy, challenging perfume, one I’d be very unlikely to wear in daylight. Maybe to an after-hours place. This is a night perfume. Late night.

Arpège opens aldehydic too, but the abstract notes are less so, and within a minute or two I can detect rose, and a sweet suggestion, probably of ylang-ylang. These are flowers, not a cubist painting of them. It’s much sweeter than My Sin. Much more pleasant, but also less challenging. It could be worn during the day. It could be worn to the bank, in a time when people actually went to banks, and although it fades faster than My Sin does, that errand-running Fifties housewife might want to get home before the drydown kicks in, because that part is, well, not quite, um,  nice. 

When I think of the aldehydic florals, the spinsterish Madame Rochas comes to mind; the equally abstract Chanel No. 5, and this.  My Sin would take them all out in less than one round. That said, it is the most intellectually interesting, the most demanding, the least wearable in our time, but the most essential as a reference.

I noticed in researching Arpège that the notes list “Ambrein” as one of the ingredients. (Just how many variations on the phrase “fake ambegris” are there?) Ambrein, according to one source, is a conglomeration of bergamot, vanilla, coumarin, civet, benzoin, opoponax, Tolu balsalm and labdanum, all standing in for real ambergris. Another source says it’s merely extracted from purified landanum. Who to believe? At any rate, I think that this Ambrein contributes softness and smoothness to Arpège, while styrax, civet and those gargantuan aldehydes make My Sin a rough ride.

What are these vintage perfumes to us, anyway? To me they are a way to touch the past, and I love wearing them. But I’m careful about where, because, truth be told, I’m actually a wimp when it comes to offending others. I can just imagine what a guy in his thirties might say about “My Sin.” I did wear it once, though, to a late night art opening, but I layered it with vintage Habanita. I know, that sounds strange, but it got compliments. Lots of them. Mostly from men, mostly of an age unlikely to have ever smelled “My Sin,” or “Habanita” for that matter. 

But back to Sophia and Jayne. “Arpège” just seems like a blonde’s perfume, while “My Sin,” with all its darkness, would be better, more fitting, somehow, on a dark-haired woman. Sophia, I’d say. (But, geez, Jayne, that dress!)

If you want to try these vintage perfumes, leave me a comment by midnight, U.S. Eastern Daylight time, July 25th. I’ll pick a winner at random, and send her (or him) a generous sample of each.

The photo of Jayne Mansfield and Sophia Loren is from Wikipedia, and its usage here falls under Wikipedia’s fair use definitions. 


“My Sin,” called "Mon Péché" in Europe and  introduced by Paris couturier Mme. Jeanne Lanvin in 1925, was discontinued in 1988. The perfumer was one “Madame Zed,” who was apparently a White Russian exile who created a number of perfumes for Mme. Lanvin prior to 1925. “Notes” include aldehydes, bergamot, lemon, clary sage, neroli, ylang-ylang, jasmine, rose, clove, orris, Lily of the Valley, jonquil, lilac, vanilla, vetiver, musks, woods, tolu, styrax and civet.

“Arpège,” also from Lanvin, was introduced in 1927. It’s still available, albeit in a 1993 reformulation. The perfumer was Andre Fraysse. “Notes” include bergamot, neroli, peach, rose, jasmine, Lily of the Valley, ylang-ylang, sandalwood, the accord “Ambrein,” vetiver and musk.

Moon Drops

 I just got back from Florida, where I spent a couple of days with Carol, who writes WAFT. There were brush fires burning all around us, from months of drought. It was too smoky to walk outside, or go to the beach, or much of anything. So we hung out indoors, sniffing perfume, for two days. 

I spotted a green box in her collection that looked familiar. Pulled it out and turned it over. It was vintage Moon Drops.

I’ve recently returned from Memphis, where I was an extra in the forthcoming film "Woman's Picture", which concerns mothers, daughters and perfume. Moon Drops was my mother’s signature scent during a difficult time, the 80’s, when we lived on opposite sides of the U.S., and didn’t get along for long on my visits home. I thought of myself as hot stuff then, rising fast in a wicked and glamorous career, and I think that she, a lifelong wife and mother, might have been a little jealous. She made a point of being unimpressed. 

I didn’t know whether I should try the Moon Drops. I’d always turned my nose up at it. Drugstore stuff. Cheap. Revlon, for God’s sake! I’d been disappointed in her for putting away her Arpege and Moment Supreme and adopting as her signature...this? I was hesitant to smell it, afraid that it might bring back bad memories. But I decided to be brave, and sprayed some on my wrist.

Here was the slightly bitter alcohol and aldehyde blast I remembered. She would apply it generously, just before she’d leave the house, and that smell would linger in her wake. Then, I smelled some sort of white flower, followed by -- surprise! -- the trajectory of a Chypre. Orris. Green. Not sweet. Lily of the valley. Carnation -- probably eugenol, quite a bit of it. And finally, moss. Lots of moss.

The “notes” lists things I don’t smell much of -- ylang-ylang, fruits, honey, cedar. It’s the bitters I smell now. Perhaps the top and midnotes degraded with age, leaving only the structure, the dry bones. Sweetness tends to do that over time.

“The whole fucking world,” says Miriam, of “Woman’s Picture,” to her clueless boss, “is mothers and daughters, Grant.”  I’ve been turning that statement in my mind ever since I heard it. Is it true? 

My father wore Mennen’s Skin Bracer, the after-shave. I wouldn’t have been afraid to sniff that. The bottle of Moon Drops, though, seemed to hold a malevolent spirit, and I held the box for a moment while I considered it.

I appreciate my mother much more now that she’s gone. Hers was a tough life, always moving, raising her kids in the Sixties, that era of generational war, fought across the kitchen table every night; expectations, disappointments. I’m wondering now about her giving up the first-rate French perfume for this drugstore stuff. What was that about?

Practicality. An attempt to conform to small-town life. A bone-deep fear of being thought pretentious. That’s a generational thing, too, far from my era of single-malt Scotch and McMansions with five bathrooms, a time now coming to its own ignominious end. 

Carol loved the Moon Drops. As surprised as I was at its classic quality, she told me that she, too, had turned up her nose. She’d had the box for a while and hadn’t even opened it. Once she smelled it, she couldn’t stop spraying, evaluating, exclaiming.

I didn’t, though. It’s not that I don’t like the fragrance. I do. But when I had a signature scent, it was the lush floral oriental Bal a Versailles -- an attempt, I now know, to carve my own identity into that opposite coast, as far away from home as I could get. 

I came back with a decant of the Moon Drops, and another of Charlie, something else she wore back then. I’ll put them in my “Mom Kit,” I joked to Carol, “along with the Arpege and the Woodhue and the Moment Supreme.”  

Here’s the thing though: I’ll do just that. In a way, it’s the least I can do.

“Notes” for Moon Drops include aldehydes, gardenia, peach, bergamot, lily of the valley, rose, jasmine, ylang-ylang, carnation, orris, honey, sandalwood, musk, cedar, moss, styrax, amber and benzoin.

Eclipse photo used under license from Dreamstime.com; © Emiliau | Dreamstime.com

Special Valentine Edition: Vintage Must

When I was in my late twenties, I lived next door to an older Englishwoman who worked the perfume counter at Saks in Beverly Hills. She would feed my cat salmon croquettes, so I usually knew where to find him -- at her back door -- and she would bring me samples of all the latest perfumes. 

It’s hard to imagine this now, but there was a time when perfume companies actually gave out samples of extrait. I think back on some of the stuff she gave me. Diva, Moschino, Nahema -- Chanels, Balmains. You get the idea. I still have a few of these, but they’re cooked. I didn’t know back then that you weren’t supposed to let perfumes sit in bright light. I kept them in a silver bowl on my dresser, which was next to a south-facing window. The horror! 

Anyway, she gave me a big sample of Le Must de Cartier Parfum. I made it last.

The modern version of Must that Luca Turin called “cheap Russian chocolate” is a sort of generic, overly sweet amber which hardly resembles the original at all. It was one of the first decants I ordered, when I discovered decants, and that was when I also discovered that some perfumes weren’t quite the same. All I knew about Must back then, and it was all I needed to know then, was that it made me feel like a messy, luscious early-eighties femme fatale. That’s powerful stuff.

People who don’t wear perfume fail to appreciate one very important thing. It’s not about smelling this way or that way to others. It’s about feeling, and projecting, a certain persona. If you feel beautiful and alluring, it gets out there. Others pick up on it. It’s the real reason for perfume.

The Must, to me at 28, smelled like a night spent in bed, not alone. So I’d wear it when I went out, which I did a lot, because I worked in the music business and had to keep up with the new. I had a taste for the underground, too. (Last night, “Less Than Zero” was on and I watched it for a few minutes. Remember the scene where the couple combs late-night L.A. , looking for their coke-addled friend? All the speakeasy clubs and so on? Uh-huh; I recognized every one of them.) But if I knew I’d be going to a place where all the women would be wearing black, I’d sometimes wear white -- and Must. Look like an angel; smell like the devil herself.

In one of those strange synergies, I’d been expecting a package from a reader who had seen a comment I’d left somewhere about the original Must, and offered to send me a mini -- of the perfume! I forgot to pick up some mail, but remembered this morning, and there it was. (Thank you, Sharon! Your generosity overwhelms me.)

Alright, already, what does it smell like?

Galbanum. Musk. Amber. Leather. Tobacco. Vanilla. More.

The torn-leaf galbanum hits first, and then the leather. It’s not a bitter overdose of isobutyl quinoline, but something smoother and deeper. There are ambers, but they’re not sugary. Musks, deep down. Opopanax. (I’m still not the greatest at identifying “notes.”) But I can tell you that it’s a rich, not sweet, complex, dark, after-midnight scent, similar to vintage Shalimar but with a smoother ride. I guess if I had to classify it now, I’d call it a leathery Oriental. 

Of course, back then I just knew it smelled goooood...and made me feel, well, I already mentioned that. 

I’ll wear this the next time I go out, with my husband, to whom I’ve been married nearly twenty years. I was wearing Must the night I met him.

Happy Valentine’s Day, everybody!

(Check here Tuesday, Feb. 15 after 6 a.m U.S. Eastern time, when I’ll post the name of the winner of the Barbara Bui and Miller Harris samples.)

The painting is “Love on the Lookout” (some sources say “Cupid on the Lookout”) by William Adolphe Bouguereau, 1890. Image in Public Domain, from WikiMedia.

A Risky Business

Recently, I’ve been looking for a small “bat” bottle of vintage Shalimar perfume. I guess this means I’ve become a collector, as I seem to need it. I have a pretty good vintage perfume collection now. Not having Shalimar is sort of like not having “Blonde on Blonde” in any respectable vinyl collection. But these prices!

So I’ve been going to estate and garage sales. My utter lack of success at these has made me wonder. How often do good perfumes really turn up?

I posted the question on a couple of fragrance forums. I asked readers if they had ever “scored” big at a tag sale, and, if so, how many sales did they attend before that, as a number or as a percentage. Perhaps naively, I expected lots of responses.

The answers -- and there have been few so far -- were enlightening. People listed in detail the perfumes they had found. Other forum members oohed and ahhed over the treasures listed. Some suggested asking the host of the sale. Although there were vague references to going to sales “for years,” no one got specific about how many such sales they’d attended. 

While certainly not a scientific sample, I thought these results were interesting. I began to wonder if people who frequent estate sales regularly just don’t want to admit it. Kind of like playing the lottery: the big winners tend to be the daily ticket-buyers, reflecting simple laws of probability. But you’d be hard-pressed to get anyone to admit that they’d spent the milk money that way.

My own experience with estate sales has been gloomy. Some old lady dies, and leaves behind a house full of stuff. Once the heirs have taken what they want, an estate sale company comes in and picks over what’s left. After pigeonholing the valuable items, or so I’ve heard, they put the bleached bones on sale to the public. Nothing, it seems, is sacred. The first time I saw used lipsticks with price tags on them, I started calling this “the vulture culture.”

The estate-sale proprietors here in the South are unfailingly well-groomed and well-spoken, polite even to the gentlemen coming through asking if there are any guns to be had -- I saw that twice in one day last week. And I know that you can't take it with you. This is where much of the merchandise in flea markets, antique stores and  ebay comes from. In a way, by paying their markups, I’m paying for the privilege of not having to do this myself.

As I wander through these houses, I wonder about the people who lived in them. At some, like one I went to last year, there are few secrets. At others, there are many. Childrens' rooms, in particular, bother me. What happened to the kids? Why was a little girl living with an obviously older -- you can usually tell by the amount of home-health care stuff for sale -- lady? What happened here? At one particularly disturbing house I saw, it looked as though the whole family had simply evaporated. OK, I know I’ve got a too-fertile imagination, but I kept wondering about that one. Was there a car crash? A plane crash? Or was this house kept as a sad shrine to offspring that had grown up and moved on? A hundred houses, a hundred stories.

Maybe I don’t need that Shalimar after all.

And so I put the question out once more: do you go to estate sales? (You don’t have to say how many.) What have you found at them? Do you end up buying stuff other than what you were looking for? (I bought a nifty brand-new western styled leather daypack for twenty bucks at one last week. See, even me. I “scored.” What is this compulsion to brag all about, anyway?)

Maybe this. Maybe we boast about our finds because it makes walking through these spooky houses easier. Makes the experience less horrifying. It diverts attention from what none of us want to think about, namely this: someday, this could be my stuff.

The Haul

I’ve never much liked miniature anything, but I seem to have amassed quite a little collection of “minis” -- ‘fumefreakspeak for those amusing little bottles used mostly as promotional items. I don’t know exactly how many I have, maybe 100 or so now, and I say “now” because I just bought a “lot” -- fleabay for quantity -- of those darling functional li’l minis.

You don’t always know what you’re going to get, with these collections. I look for vintage and cross my fingers. Besides the dreaded 100 ml bottle with 1/4” of cologne left in it, the vintage mini is the most likely to be “off.”  Unless it has been stored in one of those duty-free boxes with those little custom cut-outs. I’ve always thought of those as the guilt gift -- daddy went to Paris on business, done some stuff he shouldn’t oughta have done but is bringing home French perfume (which he bought from the cart as the plane began its descent into wherever he lives) and for God’s sake there’s even a drawing of the Eiffel Tower on the box! These coffrets usually contain stuff no one has ever heard of or ever will, but I digress.

So anyway I “won” this collection of minis -- auctionspeak for “snagged the privilege of paying more than anybody else” -- around 25 of these, including five mystery bottles, a couple of real treasures and a few dogs. About average, I’d say, for a typical lot. 

 (Does anybody know what “Replique” in perfume is supposed to smell like btw? This is an actual 1/4 oz. perfume bottle, sealed, but the juice looks and smells like Jagermeister mixed with patchouli cough syrup. Um, anybody?)

So let’s see. Here we have 5 mls of vintage 80’s “Joy,” and it’s fresh. Score. Two minis of “Ysatis,” vintage also. Five mls of “Ombre Rose,” a soft and powdery rose.  A good-sized “Norell,” which smells green like money. “Amariage,” which didn’t deserve the drubbing The Guide gave it -- it’s just an in-your-face tuberose blend. “Fendi,” possibly the original version and my favorite of these, which smells like a modern niche woody/amber. 

But then…"Bill Blass," the dreaded synthetic-pineapple smell, probably developed in the wake of “Giorgio.” A tiny bottle of “Ma Griffe,” which has turned to nail polish remover. The aforementioned “Replique,” unless it’s supposed to smell like that, and it may be, for all I know. “L’Interdit,” which has turned badly or is the reformulated version -- here’s that pineapple again and a fleeting, ruined violet. Kenzo’s “Parfum d'ete,” one of those watery 90’s things that might make a pretty bathroom spray. Nice leaf bottle though. 

The most interesting item, at least to me, is one of the five “mystery” scents. It smells like Bal a’ Versailles. I wonder if somebody filled some cute little bottle with Bal, or if some lab did a pretty good job of replicating it. The others, well, they’re forgettable. Who knows what they are. This lot, like most, is all about the bottles. Even the Mystery Scents are. It’s fun, though, to try to identify them. One is the Halston bottle, and the juice smells like “Halston Couture” -- if so, a score. Stenciled on two of the tiny bottles -- I had to get out the jeweler’s loupe to read them -- are the words “Parfums International, Miami.” Uh-oh. Dreck. Destined for a duty-free cart in the sky?

In the photo, the mystery bottles are the five in front and the ones that get their very own photo. Anybody care to try?

Which brings me to my point. I’ve been doing Nose Calisthenics to prepare for my participation in the Mystery of Musk event, presented by the Natural Perfumers Guild, in which bloggers and forum participants will evaluate a dozen musk-based scents developed by natural perfumers. Another blogger and pal, Carol of Waft...what a fragrance fanatic thinks  is asking some of us to evaluate some mystery scents she scored in a haul I can only dream about: a professional perfumer’s estate collection.

Well good heavens, I’m going to be in some high-cotton company here! I’m honored, a little surprised, and a lot apprehensive, because my nose knows but sometimes my brain takes awhile to catch up, and I still revere those who can pull off a quick and delicate sniff followed by reciting a list of notes. I’m getting better though. Last night I actually identified some iris -- the flower even!

So yeah, I’ll be ready -- I hope.

Posting schedule change: After this week, I'm switching from Monday to Tuesday, except for special events like group blogs. Usually the post is up by 11 am or so.

The “Mystery of Musk” group project is being presented by Anya's Garden and Perfume Shrine.

The bottles pictured are from a lot I bought at auction on Ebay last week.

Photos © Olfacta, aka Pat Borow. All rights reserved.

Down the Drain

I’ve been haunting a particular antique store lately. I would call this a second-tier place, up from the flea markets, down from the fine-English-antiques emporia that cater to those who didn’t inherit anything from Grandmother but would like people to think that they did. This one has all kinds of great stuff. Lots of costume jewelry that reminds me of “Mad Men.” Some furniture, hats, knick-knacks, handbags, china, you know. 

The reason I’ve been hanging around there is that I’ve been looking for a new perfume cabinet. To say I’ve outgrown the last one is just a, um, slight understatement. I’ve searched for six months now, and finally found The One. I had more in mind something funkier and, er, less expensive, but they had a nice Heywood-Wakefield cabinet, and although I don’t know that much about mid-century furniture, I know enough to realize that the price on this one was a steal. So,the routine: check the prices online, authenticate, then stop by the store, measure it surreptitiously, go home, measure the space, go back to the store, pretend to be casually looking around, ask questions, bargain a little -- the proprietor looked at me like, “Are you kidding me?” -- a steal, like I said, but hey, one always tries.

So I went home and I said to the DH, “It’s got three drawers. You could have two of them and I’ll take the cabinets.” (He’s always complaining that he doesn’t have enough drawer space. When the guys have to own twenty brassieres to go with every conceivable style of clothing, not to mention all the other underwear, and stockings and socks and all those nightgowns and gym clothes and swimsuits, well, then they can have more drawer space. But I digress.) Anyway, it worked. I went back to the store and bought it and it’s being delivered today.

In my ever-so-casual looking around, I noticed that the proprietor had a bottle of Wind Song that looked like it was in pretty good shape. There were also many empty bottles, some quite recognizable, in cabinets and on shelves behind glass. Many. The only one with perfume in it was the Wind Song, in the little crown-shaped bottle. I began to wonder what had happened to all the perfume. I asked her.

“Oh,” she said. “That stuff’s old. I pour it down the drain.”

Stop my heart, why don’t you? I had visions of vintage Mitsouko, Joy, Shalimar, perhaps a birthday or anniversary gift, kept in its box in a drawer, maybe never opened or maybe just dabbed once or twice for the most special nights, still golden and luscious, glug, glug, glug down the drain.

Should we tell them?

This is something I wonder about. What will happen to all those $2 bottles at estate sales if the antiques network finds out that “old” doesn’t necessarily mean “spoiled?” What if they discover the new ingredients regulations and realize that there isn’t going to be any more deep-voiced oakmossy perfume? I think some have already. Witness the skyrocketing prices on fleabay. That could be what-the-market-will-bear thing, but I don’t think that’s all it is. 

I gave her my card. I told her I had a vintage perfume collection. I asked her to call me the next time she was preparing to pour something out.

I see some truly shocking prices for vintage perfumes now on fleabay, especially for things in perfume strength. Sixty or eighty dollars for a quarter ounce of something, not necessarily the best of the best, either; those go for many hundreds, sometimes well over a thousand, dollars. Bottles of eau de toilette I could’ve had for $10 two years ago are now $40 or $50. In a time when so many people are pinching nickels until they scream, I’m not sure what this means. Nostalgia? Maybe, but I don’t think so. I suspect that it’s the start of a run on the vintage perfume market, which would be nothing unusual in a time of scarcity.

Or maybe it’s you. Are we bidding against each other, this few hundred of the converted, the true fragrance freaks? Are you cruising fleabay every day? Are you "r****a"? 

Damn it, r****a, knock it off, willya? I’m trying to complete my collection here!

I’m just not good at rummaging.  I never find anything. Dirty shirts. Electric skillets with heat elements that don’t work or don’t have a cord. A yogurt maker without any jars. Tupperware stained with Aunt Effie's spaghetti sauce. Moldy books hiding hundreds of silverfish. And I just can’t seem to haul my behind out of the bed at six on Saturday morning. When somebody on my street has a sale, the Early Birds start ringing and knocking at five a.m. They park in front of (sometimes in) our driveway. They bring the dogs and kids. And it looks like a demolition derby out there.

So what does one do?

I guess I’m going to have to get creative.

Drain image © Valdore from Dreamstime.com.