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Share Your Expertise: Vintage Perfume and Biochemistry
One of the ironies of fragrance is that organic compounds used by plants as natural pesticides and toxins (to repel predatory insects and herbivores) are some of the key ingredients in perfumes … which are used by human beings to attract, not repel, other human beings (in theory, anyway). 1
These organic compounds (known as secondary metabolites) are present in many of the essential oils used in perfumes, but their key components weren’t manufactured synthetically until the late 19th century. Along with synthetic molecules created in the lab, advances in chemistry at this time meant that traditional extraction processes could be standardized and mass-produced, resulting in a high quality (and quantity) of essential oils and natural isolates. Oils extracted by traditional small-scale methods varied greatly in quality, and could be sludgy and burnt-smelling due to high contaminant levels.
The availability of synthetic compounds and the use of standardized production techniques meant that perfumers could choose from a much larger selection of raw materials, at a much higher quality and lower cost, than ever before.
Coumarin was one of the first aromachemical superstars. Paul Parquet, perfumer for the French house Houbigant, used it to create the fragrance Fougère Royale (Royal Fern) in 1882. Coumarin is present in Tonka beans (Dipteryx odorata), which have a fresh, grassy scent with notes of hay, almond, and vanilla. The synthetic form of coumarin was isolated from coal tar in 1868 by English chemist William Henry Perkin, and was used in the 1880s and 1890s for perfumes and for flavoring cigarette tobacco. 2
Coumarin molecule
The anticoagulant drug warfarin (trade name Coumadin) is synthesized from dicoumarol, which is formed in nature when sweet clover hay goes moldy in a wet environment and the coumarin in the clover interacts with certain species of fungi. A series of wet summers in the US and Canada during the 1920s, and the resulting moldy clover hay, led to an epidemic of cattle and sheep bleeding to death. After the compounds responsible for the hemorrhaging were isolated, warfarin was patented as a rat poison … and as a blood thinner in humans.
In humans, dermal use of synthetic coumarin (as in perfumes and cosmetics) is safe. And essential oils containing natural coumarin have never caused any adverse reactions when used on the skin. 3 So no need to panic when you see coumarin or Tonka listed as a perfume ingredient!
Houbigant’s Fougère Royale was a ground-breaking scent that became wildly popular. It created the fougère family of masculine fragrances, which is still going strong today. 4 Traditional fougères contain notes of citrus, lavender, coumarin, geranium, and oakmoss. They’re fresh and bracing when first applied, and then become richer and deeper with mossy-earthy facets from the oakmoss and hay-almond notes from the coumarin.
Houbigant Fougere Royale
Sharp, spicy aromatic fougères were very popular for men in the 1970s and 1980s – think Fabergé Brut, Azzarro pour Homme, Yves Saint Laurent Kouros, and Guy Laroche Drakkar Noir. Davidoff Cool Water added aquatic and ozone notes to the classic fougère formula. There are scads of Cool Water knock-offs; any men’s fragrance that’s colored blue and has “Sport” in the name is almost certainly a Cool Water wanna-be (my advice is to avoid these like the plague).
I was fortunate enough to run across a bottle of Houbigant Fougère Royale eau de cologne that dates back to the 1950s. It was still sealed when I bought it, though about three-fourths of the fragrance had evaporated. The citrus notes had disappeared almost entirely (citrus oils are very volatile and don’t last long), but the lavender was still cool and minty, and the coumarin-oakmoss base was deep and complex with hay, vanilla, toasted almond, and tobacco facets. The overall effect is rich but never sweet or cloying. It’s a lovely masculine scent, very classic and poised. Unfortunately the modern version of Fougère Royale lacks the deep, rich base notes of the vintage formulation, due to recent limitations on the use of oakmoss in fragrances.
Other aromachemicals that took the perfume world by storm at the turn of the 20th century include vanillin (synthetic vanilla; Guerlain Jicky), eugenol (spicy clove-carnation; Roger & Gallet Blue Carnation), and C-14/gamma undecalactone (ripe peaches; Guerlain Mitsouko).
The most famous perfume of all, Chanel No. 5, gets its shimmering, glittering texture from three aliphatic (fatty) aldehydes – C-10/decanal (waxy orange rind), C-11/undecanal (clean and “perfumey”), and C-12/lauric aldehyde (clean waxy floral). These aldehydes were used at very high levels by Ernest Beaux, who composed No. 5, as a way to lighten and enhance the gorgeous rose-jasmine accord at the heart of this perfume.
Vintage Chanel No. 5 also contains nitromusks – which are byproducts of TNT (trinitrotoluene, the explosive) that were discovered by German chemist Albert Bauer in 1888. These musks have a rich, intense, animalic smell that’s characteristic of many mid-20th-century perfumes. When some nitromusks were found to be phototoxic (causing allergic reactions on skin when exposed to sunlight), their use was discontinued. 5 Modern Chanel No. 5 is nitromusk-free, and doesn’t have the rich animalic base notes of the vintage formula … so if you have a bottle of old-school No. 5 that belonged to your mother or grandmother, treasure it!
What vintage perfumes have you worn, or do you remember your parents or grandparents wearing?
________________________
1 There are always exceptions … it could be argued that Axe is in fact a type of scent-based pesticide designed to repel anyone with a functioning olfactory nerve.
2 Simon Garfield, Mauve: How One Man Invented a Color that Changed the World (2000), 173.
3 Robert Tisserand and Rodney Young, Essential Oil Safety, 2nd ed. (2014), 544.
4 Derek B. Lowe, The Chemistry Book: From Gunpowder to Graphene, 250 Milestones in the History of Chemistry (2016), 176-7.
5 Charles S. Sell, ed., The Chemistry of Fragrances, 2nd ed. (2006), 96-8.
N.B.: Both images were found on Wikimedia Commons, and both are in the public domain. The Fougère Royale image is courtesy of the Osmotheque.
Published in Group Writing
It’s a wise man who know his faiblesse & provides for it!
As for your ol’man, so long as he wasn’t giving the baths…
Thanks for the story.
Perfumes don’t always smell on your skin the same as it smells in the bottle. I had a terrible time finding one that didn’t reek when I wore it. A friend who lived in France would bring me tiny little sample bottles from famous houses every visit. Even she agreed on me they stank. Then in the late ’70s she brought a tiny sample of Givenchy III and it smelled perfect on me. The next year she brought me the smallest amount they made. <grin> As the years went by, I got more and larger bottles, some that sprayed. I still have a near full 2 fl oz of the stuff. Gave one of my daughters a bottle of it, and I think a granddaughter got the bottle of spray. I love the smell of it, but cannot use more than a tiny drop at my wrists. otherwise it overwhelms me.
Another favorite in my teens was Heaven Scent, late teens-early 20s was Adam’s Rib. My girls got me this when they were on vacation in OR with my mother. Wasn’t too bad, at least it didn’t stink when I wore it.
http://myrtlewoodfactoryoutlet.com/products/myrtlewood-perfume-holder
Thanks, guys! Be careful what you ask for, though …
… olfactory receptors (the chemical sensors present in your nose) exist in most organs throughout the body, and are even present in sperm – which use their odor receptors as a chemical guidance system.
And the human prostate responds positively when exposed to beta-ionone, one of the main aroma compounds in violets – apparently the scent of beta-ionone (violets) inhibits the proliferation of prostate cancer cells.
Make of that what you will …
Yes, skin chemistry is very important! I had a friend in grad school who couldn’t wear perfumes because every single one smelled like vinegar the instant it hit her skin. My skin tends to emphasize sweet or powdery notes, so I gravitate towards dry perfumes and masculines.
Givenchy III is wonderful – a dry oakmossy chypre that ages very well. I have a 1970s mini bottle that’s lovely. It’s great that you have a stash of it!
That’s a creative solution! I read about one perfume collector who took any perfumes she didn’t like, or that had turned, and doused old rags with them – then she hung the rags around her garden to scare away the deer.
A story goes that Jacques Guerlain added a massive dose of vanillin to a bottle of Jicky (1889), and from this experiment or accident – depending on how the story is told – one of the world’s greatest fragrances, Shalimar (1921), was born.
I love the indoles of vintage perfumery, which provide the “stank.” The classic French style had something “dirty” lurking in the bouquet for sensuality. In undiluted concentrations, indoles are best described as smelling… fecal. Indoles are provided by animal notes like civet (from the glands of the civet), musk (from the musk deer), castoreum (from beaver), and ambergris (produced in the digestive system of sperm whales) but also from certain white florals: gardenia, tuberose, orange blossom, honeysuckle, lilac, and, most especially, jasmine.
In small doses, indoles provide something erotic. The indoles were definitely present in old versions of Chanel №5 and №22, Shalimar, and such, but as natural animal products have been banned, indoles have gone. The American and Asian preference to smell hygienic has also lead to indoles’ phase-out. If one wants to experience them, Jean Patou’s Joy (1929) still uses heavy doses of jasmine:
The brilliant, sadly discontinued Kingdom by Alexander McQueen (2003) was a blast of indoles from jasmine and synthetic civet; when combined with cumin, it made for a unique, shocking, gleefully vulgar fragrance that was quintessentially McQueen:
Glad to hear this, because I doubt my friend will send me more of it. I’ve never had to buy any, as my friend and her parents found something they could gift me with. I had so much of it I started giving it away to family members so now down to the one bottle.
I’m so glad you said that. I thought it was just me. Every perfume I have ever tried, including some I have absolutely loved in the bottle and on other people, smells like cat pee as soon as I put it on my skin. I’ve never found one that smells nice on me, and I’ve given up (if anyone knows what’s wrong with me, I probably don’t want to know . . .)
My grandmother believes a woman only needs one bottle of perfume during her lifetime. No need to change fragrant every season, and just a dab at the neck. Young girls don’t need perfume either. So by her calculation, one bottle is enough.
I think I would like your grandmother.
Shalimar is a classic, and a perfumery milestone, but [shamefaced confession] I don’t like it … I’ve tried it over and over again, but it’s never clicked for me. I have a mini of vintage Shalimar for reference purposes; maybe someday I’ll “get” it! Mitsouko, on the other hand … I could bathe in vintage Mitsouko (a gorgeous peach-oakmoss-vanilla chypre).
I haven’t tried McQueen Kingdom yet; I’m hoping to get my nose on it someday.
My grandmother wore Shalimar. Mom was a Charlie girl, really. I work in a field (and place) where scents are verboten but I like the original Missoni
Le De Givenchy
and Inis
Now, the industry on the other hand…
Mom prefers “Opium” now but when I was little, she’d wear “Wind Song” and Dad’s worn a cologne called “Elsha” for as long as I can remember. When I’d smell those two scents mixing together in the air, downstairs, it meant my parents were going out, or we were having a party.
Back when they were in college, my parents wrote to each other frequently. At some point, my mother started getting scented letters, which seemed a bit out of character for her beau, but the girls in the dorm loved it – they’d pass the missives around, fanning themselves and swooning. Finally, mom asked him about it and that’s when Dad was horrified to discover that the Elsha bottle, which he’d laid on its side in his too-short top dresser drawer, had been leaking onto his stationery. Mom was sorry she’d ever brought it up. She never got another scented letter. :(
They stopped making Elsha years ago, but Dad found an outlet of hard-to-find and discontinued fragrances that’s kept him supplied since. I’d hoped they’d come through for me too, when the one and only scent I ever really loved on me (“Fantasque”, a scent that Louis Feraud did for Avon, ages ago) was discontinued.
But no, I’m stuck scrounging for old bottles on eBay from Avon ladies across the country. As with the vintage bottle from the ’50’s you mentioned finding, they never smell quite as good as I remember, some notes seem to be missing. But it’s the best I can do until I find something I like nearly as much.
Green Irish Tweed by Creed for myself. Eau d’Issey Florale for my lady. Nothing else required.
Yet another charming story, Kel! Thanks!
I must disagree with your grandmother. Not every perfume is right for every age. Coco by Chanel, for example: So many women tell me that the first perfume they bought, often when they were in their last year of high school, was Coco. But Coco is a huge, hulking behemoth of a fragrance; a teenager wearing Coco makes about as much sense as wearing a full-length a mink coat on the beach at Waikiki. Thierry Mugler’s Angel is another example: It is a scent that swallows women in their teens and twenties. They don’t wear it as much as it wears them. I have found that Angel really works best on women in their thirties and forties.
Body chemistry changes with age; the Japanese have a word “kareishū” (加齢臭) for the distinctive “old person smell.” The body begins to produce different aromatic chemicals, so it just makes sense that different fragrances would work better as one ages. Also, older people tend to switch to stronger fragrances because their sense of smell, as with their other senses, begins to dull. That is largely why strong white florals (the so-called “old lady perfumes”) are generally so popular with elderly women.
What’s interesting is that indole is a cell-signal molecule – bacteria use it to communicate. It’s easily biosynthesized and also readily available in coal-tar. The animal products also contain terpenes (e.g, ambroxide), ketones (muscone), and so forth, so there’s a lot else in there.
The legality of ambergris is weird. Isopropyl alcohol is reputed to smell a lot like it, though, though sharper.
Agarwood and spikenard smell somewhat similar to me – both rather like well-rotted manure compost – agarwood being incredibly costly; spikenard affordable. Valerian is reputed to smell like dirty socks – and attract slime molds. Angelica also smells musky. People say cumin, which you already mentioned, smells “dirty” in the sense of “sweaty”. So… between all those and indole-signaling bacteria, it seems nature provides many ways to smell unhygienic even without animal products!
Kingdom is gloriously weird. I have a stockpile of it. There was a time when one could get it for nothing, and now it’s a small fortune. It came out at a time when a bunch of really strange, idiosyncratic scents debuted: Black Cashmere by Donna Karan, M7 by Yves Saint Laurent (which did agarwood/oud a decade before the oud craze), Gucci Eau de Parfum, Cuiron by Helmut Lang, Castelbajac by Jean-Charles de Castelbajac… All of them are gone, really. Cuiron and an altered M7 are back at greatly increased prices and limited distribution now, but after that time, fragrances began to get really safe and boring.
The opening of Kingdom is really arresting, with the indoles and cumin right upfront, sort of smelling like a filthy homeless man at a taco stand, but it eventually develops to this lush, velvety Victorian rose on a bed of warm, dark sandalwood, vanilla, and amber. It is a gothic fantasy, just astonishing. Perfectly Alexander McQueen.
That sounds amazing! I’ll boot it to the top of my “Must Sample” list.
Have you tried Papillon Salome, Bogue Maai, or Eris Ma Bête? All three are recent releases that aim to recapture the glory days of animalics.
Papillon Salome contains hyraceum (aka Africa Stone), which is the fossilized feces and urine of a small North African rodent called a hyrax. Africa Stone tincture has facets of civet, castoreum, musk, and agarwood – it’s an all-purpose animalic.
Bogue Maai is a lush woodsy-earthy animalic chypre that’s the olfactory equivalent of a panther’s purr.
And Eris Ma Bête is a re-creation of old-school “fur perfumes” like Weil Zibeline; it has lots of indolic jasmine, neroli, and cypriol.
This is why perfumery is fun – you get to say things like “Fossilized rodent feces? Sounds great, I’d love to smell that!”
I don’t use perfume, but I do want to know the scent of Crêpe de Chine. I’ve heard it was quite popular. Grandma lost her only bottle during the war.
“Houbigant”
Is that the origin of Hoobastank?
That’s so sad … Crêpe de Chine is a lovely floral aldehydic chypre, which means that the main notes are citrus, aromatic herbs, and florals on a base of rich woods and oakmoss. The aldehydes give it a gloss and shimmer, as they do with Chanel No. 5.
This review says that Crêpe de Chine smells like “an autumn night …. dry, warm, and elegant …. If it were a color, it would be mahogany with a satin finish.”
I have a small bottle of Crêpe de Chine that dates back to the 1940s. Unfortunately it’s not in the best shape, but it does have that smooth satiny texture mentioned in the review. And the juice is a lovely glowing green color.
Does the description in the review seem to suit your grandmother’s personality?
I love this post, Anna! My mother wore Chanel #5 all my life. I still remember being in my bed, age 4, and when my parents went out she would bend down to kiss me, and that smell always reminds me of her. Like @kayofmt, my skin seems to make a lot of perfumes “turn.” My friend Monique always wore Chloe. I loved it so much. She’d walk away and leave a subtle trail of it wherever she went. So I got some, but it wasn’t the same on me at ALL. I finally found one that smelled nice on me, Cabochard by Gres. But shortly after I put it on, I saw in the mirror that everywhere I’d dabbed it on my skin had a scaly red patch. Allergic! Rats. But then I found my scent: Caleche by Hermes. I love it, it stays the same on my skin, and it’s been my scent for 25 years.
Here’s the spray eau de toilette – the bottle isn’t phallic at all ha (I don’t have the perfume at the moment – gift idea for any man who wants to get in good with me) – I also love the bath powder.
When I met my wife, she was a Guerlain girl (Shalimar). Now she is a Hermes girl (Un Jardin En Mediterranee).
Very interesting post, thank you so much.
@rightangles
a Hermes girl! You would hit it off with my wife.
Or, boar saliva. You know, the usual.
I would be curious to smell that as well.
Ehhh… I’ve heard age, sex, and personality are all supposed to matter, but as long as you don’t reek of the stuff… Smell like an old-school stockbroker one day, a dirty hippie the next… If you like it and you’re not invading others’ space with it… though I guess what others think of you because you’re wearing it will become quite important if you are invading others’ space with it…
Wear the scent near the underarms and people only get it full blast if you flash your pits at them – which civilized girls aren’t gonna do anyhow.
Derek Lowe wrote a book? I must check it out–always found his blog interesting.
You’ve written a fascinating post (and discussion), too, Anna.
Yay! I also have two of their scarves! (They were gifts – I don’t think I’d pay that much for a scarf)
You just don’t get this kind of commentary at RedState, Hot Air, National Review Online, or PJ Media.