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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?
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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
One scent I can’t stand is Ciara by Revlon. I hope nobody here wears it and gets mad at me. It’s very very musky and strong, and it crawls up your nostrils and reminds you of dirty underwear and you just want to die. I was trapped in an elevator with a Ciara woman once. I also had an aunt who wore it, and thank goodness she lived in another state.
You mean you couldn’t still smell it from there? :-)
Ha! If it had been fewer than 4 states away, probably.
I actually did like it. And Youth Dew.
In high school, we all wore Heaven Scent. And Shalimar.
This post made me think of a book a friend lent me a while back. Took a bit of Googling, but I found it. That was one crazy, creepy story, but I confess, it was a page-turner. And the descriptions of the (albeit, fictional) perfume-making were fascinating.
Apparently, it was made into a movie. I had no idea. Seems to have gone over better with audience members than critics.
Left a small bottle of Youth Dew in my purse once, then set the purse on top of the car while loading the trunk and forgot all about it when it was time to take off.
When I realized what I’d done, I made my sister turn around and carefully retrace our route. Found my purse, flattened out in the middle of the road, where it had clearly been run over several times. That was one great-smelling intersection.
I think it’s wonderful that people love and hate different fragrances.
According to the reviews I had read, I should have liked Passage d’Enfer. People called it stuff like austere but heavenly incense mingled with a whiff of lilies. In other words, what you’d smell in church during Easter Vigil. And I, personally, would love to smell like a church during Easter Vigil.
I eagerly bought a small, secondhand bottle of it. And… Windex. It smelled like Windex. Maybe it smelled like other things, too, but I couldn’t get past the Windex.
Bois de Jasmin writes she has a similar unpleasant association with cherry-almond odors because that combo is frequently used in cleaning products.
And in the tropical greenhouse at our local public gardens, there are these blooms that smell like latrine sanitizer. I would guess the folks scenting latrine sanitizer probably intended it to smell like those blooms, but I run across more latrines than I do tropical gardens, and so all these efforts to make latrines smell like a tropical paradise instead leave me thinking a tropical paradise… smells like latrines.
When I worked in Africa and travelled back to the USA I started a tradition (must have been around 1985) of buying my wife a Hermes scarf when I went through CDG. I’ve continued it for her birthday – she has a drawer full of them – they are works of art. Nothing sexier than a woman in Hermes.
Love the post as well. However, it reminded me of this book by Patrick Suskind; “Perfume, the story of a murderer”. I picked it up a few years back and thought it was great, creepy, read. They actually made it into a slightly meh movie a few years back that was on Netflix at one point. The secret ingredient to the ultimate perfume the main character designs is a creepy twist…
@annam, what a great post, so interesting!
I don’t wear perfume, both my husband & I seem to get sneezing fits from just about every kind – but I’ve always thought that the bottle & packaging of these essences were really something rich & beautiful to behold. Are most perfumes clear liquid, or do they have color – I notice you mention one is green, above? Do they color the glass of the bottle sometimes to preserve it from light, or just to enhance its visual appeal?
In college a friend gave me her bottle of 4711, with just a little left in it – I thought it was a lovely scent. Don’t know where the bottle is now but I kept it a long time just because it was striking. Found this online, this is what it was like –
– so elegant.
I began wearing Paloma Piccaso when it came out in the mid 80’s and stayed with it for years until the formulation was changed. The new formulations just smell…. cheap and shallow and do not dry down to the sensuous richness of the original.
My mom was a Channel No5 girl.
Red Violin-ish?
Heh, heh:
http://www.ogallalabayrum.com/
I do not like it either.
I bought a bottle of perfume at Bonwit Teller’s in Boston once upon a time called Sweet Pea, and it has always been my favorite fragrance. Unfortunately, I was never able to get another one. No one has ever heard of it when I ask at perfume counters.
Loved this post. Thank you.
As did mine, up into her old age. I still have her last bottle of #5, and her Channel #5 bath powder. Well, that’s not true, I gave the perfume collection from the 40s through the 90s, to my grandson, along with all the oddly shaped bottles and containers. One tiny bottle had an angel with wings as the stopper, one had a silk tasseled sprayer, another was a unicorn, 3 of the Avon car collection after shaves for men. I gave him the lot so will tell him to research before he ever tosses them.
You sneeze, I get a headache whenever I smell perfume. You’re right about the packaging. Some of those bottles are so pretty.
@marcin: was it one of these?
Vintage Hermès Calèche extrait (the highest concentration – parfum strength) is one of my all-time favorites! The eau de toilette is a little too aldehydic on me, but the extrait is perfection … the orris and vetiver drydown makes my eyes roll back in my head.
Hermès uses this style of bottle (it’s called the “carriage lantern” design) for lots of its fragrances. I agree, it isn’t phallic at all. ;-)
Not even a little bit …
I’m saving up so someday I can afford a carré (scarf) from Hermès. I’m not usually a luxury-goods kind of person, but Hermès carrés are amazing.
I could browse their House of Scarves all day!
Wow! Ciara is one vintage frag I’ve never tried. It’s good to know that I can cross this one off my list without hunting down a sample. :-)
I had a (somewhat) similar experience with Passage d’Enfer; I love incense perfumes, and finally got my hands on a sample of it. I took one eager whiff and … meh. To my nose it was a weak, bland, rather synthetic fragrance; absolutely nothing special (though I know many people who love it). Go figure!
It doesn’t have any lilies in it, but otherwise Comme des Garçons Avignon smells exactly like High Mass in a European cathedral! Incense, damp stone, varnished cedarwood, and vanilla-y lignins from the prayerbooks – it’s all there. I’m also partial to CdG Kyoto, which evokes a Japanese temple in a moss garden on a damp day.
They’re both worth a try – I hope neither one smells of Windex or latrines for you!
Hey! Just a minute. One person doesn’t like and one does.
Ha!
My mom was too.
When my daughter went to Dijon, France, for her semester abroad, my mom asked her for just one thing: a bottle of Chanel No. 5. So my daughter brought a bottle home for her grandmother. My mother treasured it for years.
Wow. Maybe. Holy cow.
It was so light and fresh. People often asked me what I was wearing for perfume. (Not in a bad way. :) )
What? How could you not like this:
Ciara was presented in 1973, in a gleeful and merry breeze of bergamot, lemon and neroli at the beginning. A floral wave of jasmine, iris, palisander and ylang-ylang form the heart, while base notes include incense, myrrh, raspberry, sandalwood, patchouli, cedar, leather, musk, opoponax and vanilla. From here.
Look here. It’s where I found ’em.
Looks like the Main Feed now smells purty.