K de Krizia Krizia 1980 Eau de Toilette

This was the perfume that put Maurice Roucel on the map -- a dark floral chypre that Luca Turin identifies as an homage to "the world's most expensive perfume." I first encountered it (in the perfume concentration) in Paris in the early 1980s on the dressing table of slightly bohemian but still impeccably turned out Frenchwoman. Then I thought it was the most lovely perfume I'd ever smelled, better than the No. 5 with which I'd grown up. Poor K has grown tatty over the years and reformulations; how the beautiful have fallen.