Vent Vert Balmain 1947 Eau de Toilette

Or should I rather say: the little magnificent green one?
Balmain was an apprentice to Lucien Lelong and later wanted to start his own business with his friend Christian Dior. He couldn't make up his mind, so Balmain launched on his own in 1945 and founded his own fashion company. He shaped a style full of charm and sober elegance. He had no interest in experiments when it came to fashion.
As early as 1946, alongside the couture house, the Balmain Parfums company was established. Balmain's statement about perfumes was that they are much more important for elegance than accessories, jewelry, and shoes.
With Germaine Cellier, he brought one of the few female perfumers of that time into the house. She was the one who, with taste and boldness, created some of his most famous fragrances, including the elegant leather chypre "Jolie Madame".
The post-war years were anyway the era of great chypres of all kinds, whether floral, leathery, fruity, animalic, or green. They pushed aside the very floral, rose-dominated perfumes of the time.
Balmain commissioned the daring Germaine Cellier to create a young, free, cheeky, and unreasonable perfume that fit into the new freedom of the post-war years and emphasized the emancipation of the wearers.
Colette is said to have remarked that this new green scent should appeal to the devils of today.
Cellier got to work and already used a lot of galbanum in the top note. Some of you might be wondering what galbanum actually smells like. Galbanum has a green, spicy-leaf-like scent with woody, coniferous, and balsamic notes. Already upon application, you feel as if you've showered with green soap that has just slipped past flowers. Oh, I love such green-clean scents that signal to the environment, stay away or I’ll feed you grass or tie you to a green meadow with a ring through your nose.
Cellier made sure that the green impression remained in the heart and also incorporated basil, which is not listed here, but still tempers the sweetness of the flowers so that even the lily of the valley cannot enchant with its tinkling.
Iris, in itself, is not very sweet anyway, doesn't powder here, and spares itself its carroty "cohabitation".
No moss, no fun. That could still be said in 1947, and generously incorporating oak moss. Moss? That’s the green, damp stuff that supports chypres and makes them what they are. To enhance it, vetiver flexes its muscles and adds another layer of green. Forget about musk, and I don’t even know why that or resinous styrax is in the pyramid? Cellier refined the base with sandalwood.
When "Vent Vert" was launched in 1947, "Ma Griffe" by Carven was also released. When I compare them, "Vent Vert" is almost softer and more light green than the rough, emerald green "Ma Griffe".
"Vent Vert" was meant to be free like a spring breeze, and it was.
Thanks to AnneSuse for the fragrance memory.