“Scentsational” Fragrances for Olfactory Nostalgia
By Mildred Moss
Psychologists say that smell is more likely to trigger a memory than all our other senses combined. One might catch a whiff of Lancôme’s Magie in the subway and suddenly recall a magical evening back in 1958. Or a wisp of Chantilly may drift by and inspire a happy childhood memory of watching Mom dress up for a night on the town.
Perfume makers and fragrance sellers have created new perfumes laden with scents of the 1950s, aimed at baby boomers that hope to purchase memories in a bottle.
Body aroma has been important to us humans ever since we learned to stand upright. In fact we might not be standing around today had it not been for our distinctive body odor.
According to controversial anthropologist, Louis Leakey, we owe our very survival to our early ancestors’ smell, which was so rank it turned the stomachs of predatory animals. Saber-toothed tigers and their co-carnivores considered Homo sapiens so unappetizing that they left us alone until we could protect ourselves with weapons. Only then, through the extraordinary process of evolution, did our unpleasant stench begin to disappear.
It wasn’t long after we lost that stench that we began to seek a sweeter smell. The word “perfume” comes from the Latin per fumum, or “through smoke.” Our progenitors chose certain woods to burn for the aroma of the smoke, the better to waft their prayers up to the heavens. Enter incense.
By the time recorded history began, perfume was no longer the exclusive luxury of the gods; it was commonplace among the privileged classes throughout the known world. Legend credits Cleopatra with being the first woman to heighten her sex appeal with fragrance, but Queen Nefertiti was actually history’s first lavishly perfumed lady. But Nefertiti (whose name means The Lovely Stranger) didn’t have Shakespeare or Elizabeth Taylor around to give her marketing advice, so Cleopatra received the acclaim.
The Egyptians daubed their bodies with heavy pastes made from the oils of aromatic trees. Variations on that theme remained stylish until distilling was invented circa 1000 a.d. The essences of flora could then be suspended in water, and what better aroma to extract than that of the rose? It was called rosewater, and both women and men sprinkled themselves liberally with it. Some 1000-plus years later we’re still dousing ourselves with myriad rosewaters bearing fanciful names – packaged in ornate bottles, and sold to us via elaborate and costly advertising campaigns.
The priciest of all natural ingredients is the oil of an iris grown in the lush valleys of Italy and Morocco. The iris rhizomes (underground stems) are dried for 18 months, then peeled by hand. A pound of iris root costs about $8,000.
Another center of flower-and herb-growing for the perfume industry was Provence, France. The men of Provence who treated leathers masked the unpleasant odors of both the hides and themselves with perfume, and in so doing, became the early “noses.”
A “nose” or, in French, a nez, is still a valuable and highly paid asset to a perfume-maker. He – and usually it is a he – knows how to choose and mix components to achieve just the right combination of scents a fragrance designer is looking for.
The nose-nez’s job is to select three combinations of essential oils. On the analogy of a musical scale, the oils that evaporate the quickest, usually within one to two hours, are called top notes; oils that evaporate within two to four hours are middle or heart notes; oils that take the longest to evaporate are bass notes.
After the blends are established for all three notes, the fragrance-maker must decide what strengths to bottle and offer for sale. Perfume is composed of 78 to 95 percent specially denatured ethyl alcohol; the remainder is essential oils.
• Perfume is the costliest form of fragrance, carrying 22 percent essential oils.
• Eau de Parfum has 15 to 22 percent essential oils.
• Eau de Toilette has 8 to 15 percent oils.
• Eau de Cologne has 4 percent essential oils.
• Eau Fraiche has 1 to 3 percent oils. It is the utmost dilution of fragrance.
No matter what strength or combination, there are major fragrance categories: Floral, Oriental, floriental, chypre, green marine, and fruit. Plants with familiar names like lily, pine, rose, apple, gardenia, lavender, plus scores of others, are combined to fulfill these categories.
To the perfume manufacturer falls the awesome task of accurately reading the savvy scent-buyer’s mind. If a fragrance is to bear a celebrity’s name (think Elizabeth Taylor), the pressure is on. The fragrance must appeal both to consumers and the famous lady in question.
New scents are introduced to match the mood of an era as determined by unnamed soothsayers whose business it is to keep their fingers on the pulse of fashion. If a perfume continues to sell well after 10 years, it is termed a classic. Examples of such are Shalimar, Youth Dew, Chantilly, Arpege, and Joy. Top of the list is Chanel No. 5, which, introduced in 1921, continues to sell in 2006 at the rate of one bottle every 30 seconds worldwide.
Coco Chanel named her scent after her favorite number, 5, and it was she who encouraged women to bring fragrance out from behind their ears. Chanel also believed that a woman should wear a perfume wherever she hoped to be kissed. Chanel No. 5 is now being marketed as a spray with two refills in an effort to garner more users who will consider it an everyday finishing touch, rather than a precious endowment to be used sparingly.
Soon after No. 5 was introduced, other perfume houses realized they had their work cut out for them. Guerlain’s Shalimar, containing liberal quantities of those $8,000 iris roots, was launched in 1925. It also bore a secret ingredient dubbed Guerlinade – the “X” factor that is still added to every perfume bearing the Guerlain name.
Jean Patou’s Joy, also containing oil of iris root, appeared in 1935 and in 2000 was voted “Scent of the 20th Century” at the Fragrance Foundation FiFi awards.
The FiFis are the Oscars of the perfume industry. Established in 1949, the ceremony takes place in New York every April with the awards presented by fashion, media, movie, and TV celebrities.
Among the 2005 winners was The Healing Garden in Bloom, by Coty. This product line includes everything from aromatherapy to bath products to perfume. It won the Women’s Popular Appeal award, as did Spirit Antonio Banderas, by Puig Fragrances for Men. The line, Europe’s hottest men’s fragrance, is now sweeping the U.S. and also won a FiFi for Best Packaging. The Chanel No. 5 Seduction Collection won the prize for best Bath and Body Line of the Year, and Lanvin Paris took home the crystal trophy as its Arpege was admitted to the Fragrance Hall of Fame.
So what’s happening fragrance-wise in the first decade of the new century? Women in the 50 to 70 age group are the perfume industry’s best high-end customers, and the most loyal. While younger women often go for the hottest performer’s fragrance like Curious by Britney Spears and Lovely by Sarah Jessica Parker, the tendency among more mature purchasers is to select a scent that smells wonderful on them, no matter what name is on the bottle. The United States is the world’s largest fragrance market, and the baby boomers constitute the industry’s target audience.
The perfumist’s crystal ball recently unearthed a curious revelation: The earthy and unisex scents of the 1990s would have to be replaced with an old-fashioned, sophisticated, heady fragrance stirring olfactory nostalgia. Even the new perfumes are said to have a ’50s “feel” to them. Traditional notes of fruits and flowers are “in” once again. Last year’s Miss Dior Cherie toys with its wearer before settling into a violet base note. DKNY’s Be Delicious has an apple-infused fragrance that, like all Donna Karen products, aims to celebrate New York; it won a Consumer’s Choice FiFi last year. Cinema, by Yves St. Laurent, is another floral that’s selling well, and Lancôme’s Attraction has a distinctive iris base note. A popular re-issue from the ’50s is Lancôme’s Magie.
To launch a new perfume, millions of dollars are spent in the laboratory, in designer packaging, and innovative advertising. It’s called “branding.”
One of the most successful branding efforts ever done worldwide was by Georgio of Beverly Hills a quarter century ago. The store’s yellow-and-white-striped awning on Rodeo Drive was pictured everywhere. It was impossible to open a magazine without being overwhelmed by the Georgio scent on a sample strip, and stylish women were hired by classy department stores to mist entering customers with the Georgio eau de cologne. It outsold every other fragrance for three consecutive years in the early 1980s, and so overpowering was its essence that women were asked to refrain from wearing it out to dinner. Restaurant managers complained because it eclipsed food aromas.
Perfume historians say Georgio was so popular partly because it managed to smell the same on almost everyone, but mostly because all three of its notes were in tune with the times. It mirrored the excesses of the ’80s and indeed played a significant role in the me-me-me decade of power lunches, power dressing, and power perfumes.
In that era new designer scents were marketed fiercely, and for the first time blatant erotic advertising generated enormous media attention, which led to the success of 1985’s Obsession by Calvin Klein. Its heavy smell of vanilla won fickle fashion’s favor over Georgio’s indefinable aroma.
A bit of Internet surfing will turn up many perfumes that have again become available after it appeared they were lost forever. One such re-issue is Jungle Gardenia (whispered in the 1960s to be an aphrodisiac). Author Patrick Dennis wrote in his Auntie Mame that this perfume was preferred “by every madam in Manhattan.”
In a new massive marketing effort to appeal to a well-heeled yet sentimental consumer, perfume and cosmetic design houses like Dior, Guerlain, and Lancôme are now producing limited-edition perfumes for a few months only, packaged in bottles destined to become collectors’ items; eBay does a brisk trade in such bottles, filled or unfilled with perfume.
A bit of advice to perfume purchasers from every perfume-maker: Never buy a scent you like on somebody else. The overwhelming majority of fragrances smell different on different people because of nuances in an individual’s body chemistry. Also, don’t buy perfume quickly. Apply a scent you think you may like from the sample bottles at the perfume counter, keeping in mind that the top note will soon evaporate. It’s more important to know what the heart and base notes do for you.
With the top notes of old and new scents screaming a discordant aromatic opera on, say, on a crowded elevator first thing in the morning, one has to wonder how a hungry saber-toothed tiger would feel about being the last passenger on the car. If, also through evolution, that tiger had gained the gift of speech, it would probably say: “No thanks. I’ll take the next one.”
