Rusé Corday 1966 Parfum

Corday is one of my favorite vintage brands. The fragrances created and offered back then are far too precious to simply forget and leave in the past. They deserve to be noticed even today.

Rusé - or clever, sly, etc. - is such a special treasure, even though perfumes of this scent direction are usually not among my favorites. It doesn't happen often that a fragrance convinces me as much as Rusé and I perceive it as a work of art.

When I applied it, I could already sense its grand entrance from a distance.

It's like a walk through a dark forest. The ground is almost everywhere covered with soft, dark green moss. Here and there stands a lush green fern or a tuft of that soft grass that only grows in the woods. There are hardly any flowers here, at most in spring a few anemones or heaven's keys, in May a few lily of the valley bloom in the open spots, and on a nearby clearing, lady's slipper in white and heather in purple stand. The leaves of the trees let the sun's rays flicker through at best when the wind moves the crowns.

This appearance of Rusé is extremely spicy bitter, almost harsh, and is likely to deter lovers of today's fragrances. But for Rusé, one needs above all: patience.

The bitter-herb note fades after about an hour, but the dark green spicy, woody impression remains. This fragrance is so elegant and noble that I seriously wonder why it is no longer available. It occasionally reminds me of Farouche, but is significantly stronger, lacking the floral qualities I usually know. If I had to assign a color, I would choose dark green silk satin that gets golden flecks in sunlight.

The sillage allows for very good scent distribution, so that in projection the fragrance is unmistakably perceptible. Very elegant, feminine, classically noble. It lasts easily 24 hours or more.

The base is soft and warm, still with the same scent note, almost olive green - just as if the golden flecks had mixed with the dark green. I haven't encountered such a fine base, entirely without vanilla or animalistic notes, in a long time!

This fragrance fascinates me, although the first hour takes some overcoming. It reminds me of a poem I learned in kindergarten when I was four years old, and which is still one of my favorite poems today. It is in Czech, so my translation does not rhyme:

I know a crystal brook
where the forest is deepest,
there grows dark fern and
around it purple heather.
There birds and deer go to drink,
under the maple trunk,
the birds in the white day,
the deer only at night.
When the deep forests fall asleep,
and everything around is still,
then heaven and the brook
are full of golden stars.

Fragrances like this are unfortunately no longer created or produced today. It leaves a gap in the world of perfume!