Jean Patou - Vacances

The Garden of Eden

Oh, you're going to be mad at me for this one. This perfume is gorgeous, sublime and very much discontinued. If you can find a bottle, grab it. I have the bottle below, with the green glass stopper, and my only regret is that I can't spray it on myself to cover me from head to toe.

Jean Patou first released Vacances in 1936. It was created by Henri Almeras, the same nose who created the famous Joy. It's a shame that they aren't making this anymore because it's a really beautiful, fresh green floral.

Vacances starts with a big wash of green galbanum and the spicy-green scent of hyacinths. There is also something floating and sweeter, which may be the hawthorn. It reminds me of trees in bloom in the spring. The heart is more green with a touch of lilac and sweet mimosa.

Vacances blends grassy greeness with light sweet flowers that sometimes seem tart and sometimes powdery. Wearing feels like springtime in the Garden of Eden, when everything was new and innocent and pretty. Lie on your back while the grass tickles your toes and watch the gently waving blossoms and leaves in a cloudless blue sky.

House: Jean Patou
Nose: Henri Almeras
Notes: Top notes: hyacinth and hawthorn. Heart: lilac, mimosa, and galbanum. Base: musk.

My 15 vintage minutes in Maclean's

A little while ago, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Kim Pittaway and dishing about vintage perfume. Kim is a perfume lover too and I told her all about my favourite store, Fritsch Pharmacy in Kitchener, where I have spent many happy hours smelling vintage perfumes.

Kim wrote a great article on vintage perfume and Fritch's and little old me was quoted! I am thrilled.

Weil - Weil de Weil (Vintage)

How green was my valley

This Easter I did a little shopping for vintage perfume at Fritsch Pharmacy. I focused on green perfumes and chypres, which is all I want to wear these days. They are perfect for the weather, and, although they are beloved by perfumistas, green chypres are a neglected category in contemporary perfumes. It may be that one of the essential ingredients, oak moss, is restricted by EU rules. Maybe the bracing, bitter and dry, green category doesn't sell well, I would put two current perfumes, Estée Lauder Private Collection and Chanel No.19 as two of the best still available; heck, I think they are two of the best ever made. And Weil de Weil ranks right up with those two as one of the best green chypres I have ever smelled. It is an under-appreciated beauty.

Weil de Weil was released in 1971 and is now discontinued, which is a shame because it's lovely and the very soul of spring. It starts with a bracing green note, then a lightly floral and spicy breeze bows in, carrying the fresh scent of spring flowers like hyacinth and daffodil. The heart is grassy and green with some honey sweet flowers and is slightly powdery. Throughout the whole progression of the perfume I can smell the base notes: bitter, dry oakmoss, earth and wood. I don't smell the civet, but I'm not very sensitive to it. Maybe it's in the background, making the perfume more personal, melding it to my skin, instead of being too distant and abstract as something dry and green can be.

Green chypres can be like a beautiful but cold woman with an acerbic wit. She seems like a real bitch but once you get to know her, she's fascinating and one of your favourite people, all the more so because she wasn't easy, if you know what I mean.

I took a couple of days to warm up to it, but now Weil de Weil is on my desert island list: the limited list of bottles I would take with me if I had to be stranded. Yes, it's that good. If you love the green chypre category of perfume, you must try Weil de Weil someday.

House: Weil
Nose: ?
Notes: Top: tangerine, neroli, greens, galbanum and hyacinth. Middle: lily of the valley, honeysuckle, ylang-ylang, mimosa, rose and daffodil. Base: sandalwood, vetiver, civets, musk and oak moss.



Photo by wuu.

Lancome - Magie Noir (Vintage)

Beautiful Witch

Magie Noir was launched in 1978. The generous JoanElaine at Redolent of Spices recently sent me  a vintage sample of it that has me bewitched.

Although it's classified at an oriental floral by Fragrantica, to me Magie Noir smells like a chypre. Its opening notes are those of a traditional chypre base. Dark, mossy and bitter, the opening of Magie Noir slaps you in the face with its "chypre-ness" and a healthy animal note of civet. She growls.

The earthy darkness of the opening stays throughout, but Magie Noir's gorgeous bitchiness softens after a few minutes. It has a sort of backwards progression from that of most perfumes. After opening with traditional base notes, honey, fruit, and flowers join Magie Noir and seem to smooth out her mood. Nevertheless, it still feels like the fruit and flowers are under the base notes, not the other way around. The red and black fruit, cassis and raspberry, are present but only if you smell closely. From arms length, I still smell mostly the patchouli and oakmoss.

The florals of Magie Noir are subtle but wonderfully complicated. I think I can smell hints of narcissus and a spicy greeness from hyacinth and galbanum. These notes make it a spring time perfume for me. Magie Noir reminds me of early spring, when the everything is still chilly and dark, but the daffodils and hyacinths are just beginning to sprout out of the black earth.

In the end, Magie Noir reverses direction and goes back to base notes of amber, and wood. Like an unpredictable woman, she keeps you guessing.

Unfortunately, Magie Noir has been reformulated and it has suffered. The current formula is harsh and chemical in the opening notes. I can see how the basic structure of dark notes over fruit and florals has been imitated, but the magic is gone. There is something sour about the fruit, and the dark base notes are not as rich, missing the oakmoss and civet. Only after the dry down does the new version become a tolerable, if slightly powdery, facsimile of the original. It's a loss.

House: Lancome
Nose:  Gérard Coupy
Notes: cassis, raspberry, galbanum, hyacinth, bergamot, bulgarian rose, honey, tuberose, jasmine, ylang ylang, lily of the valley, orris, cedar, narcissus, spices, sandalwood, amber, patchouli, musk, civet, oakmoss, vetiver.
Where to buy: skip the new stuff and try to find the vintage online.

Judith Muller - Bat-Sheba Bath Oil (vintage)

A bathing beauty

In the Bible, Bat-Sheba was a beautiful woman who King David saw bathing and was so smitten that he lured her into adultery. The tale does not end well for Bat-Sheba's husband, but the perfume, Bat-Sheba, Exotic Oriental, created by Israeli perfumer Judith Muller in 1966, is still a beauty.

To escape the sounds of football, I ran a bath and poured in my small, vintage vial of Bat-Sheba bath oil. Warm, hints of fruit and rose rose up in the steam and a rich woody base of powdery-sweet balsamic notes enveloped me. I did feel exotic.

After the bath, I dabbed the last of the oil on my wrists and enjoyed the deep woody base notes with a hint of leather. I'm doubtful it will be enough to lure my husband away from the game but I can dream.

I think Bat-Sheba was discontinued in the 80's, but if you find a bottle anywhere, I highly recommend picking it up. And if any of my readers know Hebrew, can you translate the back of my sample box from the photo below?

House: Judith Muller
Nose: ( Rumour is that it was Sophia Grosjman ?)
Notes: I founds many different notes listed on different sites. Octavian at 1000 Fragrances says "green-rose notes (cactus-rosewood) over a vanilla/cocoa/ balsamic/chypre-woody base."  Scentzilla says "aldehydes, jasmine, rose, iris (orris), vetiver, incense, and leather." Yesterday's Perfume lists "Top notes: Aldehydes, cardamom, bergamot, fruit note, rosewood
Heart notes: Jasmine, rose, orris, ylang-ylang, carnation
Base notes: Patchouli, vetiver, castoreum, amber, leather, oakmoss"

Painting: Rembrandt, Bathsheba at Her Bath 1654
Photos: Bat-Sheba bath oil sample, mine.

Raphael - Réplique (Vintage)

A vintage sample is a little thin but has great bone structure

My recent haul of vintage perfume from Fritsch's Pharmacy came with two, very old, carded samples of Raphael Réplique. The juice inside the vials has reduced about half-way, through evaporation, but there's enough left to tell that this was something special.

The top notes are all gone, except for a brief sparkle of aldehydes that must have been stronger once. Then I smell spices, the cardamom still comes through well, and a fruity wood that reminds me of Serge Lutens Bois de Violet.

In the middle of Réplique's life on my wrist, the clary sage takes over and smells like green leather, with the fruity wood and spices still underneath.

In the later stages, the leather fades and the base notes shine on their own. Wood, vetiver, amber, musk, patchouli and oakmoss, make a dry/sweet darkly rich tapestry that is wonderful, even in this attenuated form.

Réplique must have been stunning once. What's left in my vial has become a little too thin over time. There's no sillage left and it doesn't last long. But I can tell the perfume was once a great beauty, and maybe unique. Was it an aldehydic floral? A chypre? An oriental? It seems like a combination of all three. Complicated and grown-up, Réplique was a perfume with style and grace.

House: Raphael
Nose: ?
Notes [According to irmashorell.net, a site that re-creates lost perfumes, this is the original formula]: top notes of Italian bergamot, Sicilian lemon, cardamom, neroli, coriander, clary sage and fresh aldehydes. Mid-notes of ylang ylang, lily of the valley, Egyptian jasmine, mimosa, tuberose, heliotrope and coumarin. Base notes of oakmoss, olibanum, powdery amber, musk, vetiver, patchouli

Photo: Lisa Fonssagrives by Irving Penn

Giveaway - The Perfumer's Workshop Tea Rose

Try the Godzilla rose

If you read my post yesterday, I think The Perfumer's Workshop Tea Rose is amazing. Would you like to try it yourself? I have a vintage carded sample to give away.

Please leave a comment below, on this blog post. Let me know, do you like rose in perfume? and if so, what are your favourite rose perfumes?

The winner will be chosen at random and announced here on Saturday. Please check back to see if you won. You will have to contact me with your mailing address if you are the winner. Yes, I will mail it anywhere, but I can't guarantee what the postal systems will do or how long it will take.

And I have opened comments to everyone. We'll see how that works out. If I get a lot of spam, I'm going back to the "you must have an id" system.

THE DRAW IS NOW CLOSED  Thank you to all who left me a comment, I love getting suggestions of new things to try.

My cup runneth over - and Jacomo Rare Winner

You can't fight fate

This weekend, I saw my parents for brunch and was given an early birthday gift. My mother, knowing how much I love Fritsch Pharmacy, stopped in and picked up a gift for me from Mike Fritsch. It's another box, just like the one I received at Christmas, full to over-flowing with samples of vintage perfumes. Mike had been combing through his collection and gathering them together just for me.

I am so grateful for his and my mother's thoughtfulness, but it does create an interesting dilemma for the future of this blog. I now have enough perfume to review for maybe 2-3 years, based on my past frequency of posting. It seems silly to order more samples. But that means that this blog will become mostly one about vintage perfume, at least for a while.

It's so strange, the twists in the path of life. I never expected this to be a vintage perfume blog. I guess I never expected perfume to have such an presence in my life at all. When I started being interested in perfume, I was not a big fan of vintage, or of bloggers who wrote about these wonderful things that I would probably never be able to smell. I even complained about them. Hello, Irony, please come in - sit down.

But I won't turn away from this opportunity. I have access to things that not many people do; I feel like I have to share them.

I'm too flighty to say that this will be a vintage-perfume-only blog. I still have samples of new releases I ordered in 2010 that I haven't had a chance to write about, and I still occasionally swap with other bloggers for new things. I guess that there will always be new releases (or new to me) that I will want to review. But these wonderful treasures have fallen in my lap,and you can't fight fate. So there will be many vintage perfume reviews coming on this blog. I hope you find some of them interesting.

I also want to mention that the winner of the extra sample of Jacomo Rare is... INES! 

Jacomo - Parfum Rare and a Giveaway!

Mysterious beauty

Parfum Rare is the first perfume I'll review from the box of samples I received at Christmas from the vintage treasure trove at Fritsch Pharmacy. Everything in the box is a mystery to me and I'm looking forward to discovering new gems. The more I smell vintage perfume, the more I wish I had started my hobby twenty years ago.

In the late 60’s, an American named James Kaplan and a Frenchman, Gerard Courtin, a former pianist, came together to open a boutique on 5th Avenue in New York. They called it Jacomo. In 1970, they expanded their business to perfume. They released Silences in 1978. Parfum Rare was released in 1985 and re-released in 1987 as Coeur de Pafum.

Parfum Rare is a rich floral chypre, with some spice and a deliciously dark bitter base. The top notes start with a bright, tart fruit that could be could be bergamot, or black currant and warm, aromatic spices. The heart is a beautiful full rose and dry, not sweet, florals, possibly the iris and marigold mentioned in the notes, or carnation. The base is also dry with bitter oakmoss, as well as some dark patchouli and earthy vetiver.

It's very well blended and has excellent sillage. It seems to take up a three-dimensional physical space when I wear it, as if I can smell dark and light, high and low, at the same time. It's very "perfumey" in an old-fashioned way that I love and it smells like money. I want to wear it with an inky black mink coat and two dozen blood-red, long-stem roses. Pafum Rare is a portrait of a beautiful but mysterious woman. The painting is a contrast of deep dark depths and reflected light, and the woman is young but with an old soul.

A Giveaway!

Appropriately, Parfum Rare seems to have been discontinued, but I'm happy to say I have an extra sample to give away.

Please leave a comment below and tell me about a rare or discontinued perfume you love, or if you can't think of anything, just tell me what you're wearing today. The winner will be selected randomly and announced on the blog on Saturday. Be sure to check back.

Update Saturday, January 22, 2011: THE DRAW IS CLOSED. MY THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO ENTERED.

House: Jacomo
Nose: ?
Notes:  bois de rose, cardomome de Ceylan, jasmin d'Egypte, iris de Florence, rose de Mai, vetiver, oeillet d'Inde (marigold), coriandre, immortelle, mousses de chene (oakmoss), santal, patchouli

Photo: Isabelle Pascoe, the Autumn Collections, British Vogue, 1985

Jacomo - Silences

A meditation garden

I received a bottle of vintage Jacomo Silences for Christmas this year from my brother-in-law, bless him. He picked it up at the magic Fritsch Pharmacy which I mentioned in my last post. I suppose I should call it Fritsch Fragrances, which is the name on the sign, but it says Pharmacy on the business card and that's the way I always think of it.

Anyway, back to Silences. Silences is a holy grail for green chypres. It is so lovely, I highly recommend it to both men and women.

Perfectly unisex, Silences has a calm, meditative quality that makes me think of Japanese gardens. It starts with a very green, bitter galbanum note, only lightly touched by citrus. As it warms up on my skin, spring flowers join the green, but Silences remains composed and serene, never sweet or romantic. A soapy rose, a green lily of the valley and a touch of spicy hyacinth drift in, smooth as silk. As a whole, the colour of Silences in my mind is the cool grey-green of sage. Even the texture of sage leaves, like soft, little green bunny ears, seems appropriate for Silences, with it's cool, grey, pussy willow feeling. The base (at least in my vintage) is wonderfully dry, mossy woods.

Like all green chypres, Silences makes me feel effortlessly chic and elegant; poised, adult. As a green chypre, it treads a middle ground for me between the headstrong Bandit and the cold-hearted Chanel N^o19. Although it reminds me of spring, I can't get enough of it right now; in the heart of winter, I've found a peaceful green oasis.

House: Jacomo
Nose: Gerard Coupy and Jean-Claude Niel
Notes: Top notes: orange blossom, galbanum, bergamot and lemon; middle notes: hiacynth, lily-of-the-valley and rose; base notes: sandalwood, musk, oakmoss and cedar.

P.S. For all those interested in Fritsch Pharmacy:
Fritsch Fragrances Inc.
201 King Street West
Kitchener, Ontario
519 742-1895


Photo: Nitobe Memorial Garden at UBC by A Hermida
Photo: My bottle of Silences, by me, all rights reserved.
Photo: Frisch Pharmacy, by me, all rights reserved.

Window Sniffing: Fritsch Pharmacy

The Magic Shop

Hello 2011! I took a break from blogging over the Christmas/New year's holidays but it was definitely not a fragrance-free vacation. I was lucky enough to receive perfume from my secret store.

You may recall I mentioned my "secret store" in a previous post, well, I want to start the new year by sharing it with you.  Fritsch Pharmacy, in Kitchener, Ontario, has been owned and operated by Michael Fritsch for decades. Although he once ran it as a full-service pharmacy, Mr. Fritsch followed his heart and turned his love of perfume into a business. The shop now sells only perfume and perfume bottles from his extensive collection. And what collection it is! From floor to ceiling, the little shop has a big exclusive collection of fine, imported perfumes from classic houses like Caron, Coty, Carven, Guerlain, Jean Patou, Lubin, Molinard, Givenchy, Dior, and more. He even stocks the hard-to-find Teo Cabanel, although the last time I was in he only had Julia.


Many of the bottles at Fritsch Pharmacy are vintage, and there are some pre-reformulation gems in there. The photo on the left shows some of the perfume I have bought there, including my Christmas gift, a bottle of Jacomo Silences, and a whole box full of samples put together just for me by Mr. Fritsch. Some of the samples are for classics, like Carven Ma Griffe, and Rochas Femme, but many are perfumes I've never heard of.  If you recognize any of the bottles on the left, you'll see that I've been focusing on green chypres lately, but who knows, I may discover a new love somewhere in that box of sample goodies.

So in 2011, I'll be writing about my discoveries from Fritsch, as well as some of the samples I've received in swaps with online friends, and a few new releases here and there, as they take my fancy. And if you're ever in Kitchener, stop by Fritsch Pharmacy and say hello to Michael Fritsch for me. Just don't buy it all before I can.

Photos: Mine, all rights reserved.

Mandom!

In honour of my man's birthday, I present Mandom!



Don't you love it!? I'm dying to smell this. If anyone has some vintage 1970's Mandom, please let me know.

Happy birthday BÖ.


Update:

There are more!