Rossiniopera

I got a parfum mini of this when I was 7, probably from my grandmother. I used to pour it on my prettiest Barbie doll, a platinum blonde with Carole Lombard eyes and a shimmering white, ruffled evening gown. I loved to sniff her hair, thinking that the beautiful, warm, ambery-spicy smell suited her perfectly. I never used it on myself - I guess that I somehow, in my childish brain, realised that this perfume needed an elegant and glamorous woman!

More than 35 years later, I bought a full vintage extrait. It looks very old and sort of classic Hollywood star-like, the bottle perching on top of a small staircase as if to say Hey, I have arrived, please watch me make a grand entrance... The bottle was sealed, the liquid dark. I cut the black and white cord, opened and smelled... and learned something funny. Because when I tried the perfume on, it smelled so unlike the Tabu that I knew, that I wondered if it could really be the same scent. It was so fresh, citrusy, bright and floral, none of that heavy, animalic amber that I knew so well. I was actually a little disappointed.

But then. More than two hours after I applied it, the perfume began to change. The brightness faded away, the scent became warmer, spicier, heavier - and slowly, it became Tabu.

The next day I tried it again, and this time it smelled like Tabu almost from the start. Now, a few months later, the bottle wafts wonderfully of the familiar smell even before I open it. But I have learned not to underestimate the top notes of an unopened bottle, even if they have been resting in there for maybe seventy or eighty years. They may change or even disappear quickly after the bottle is opened, but on that first wearing, they were so strong and so long-lasting that I almost didn't recognize this great classic.

My Tabu extrait is amazingly strong, and I do not think I will be wearing it often. But every now and then, I will apply just a small fraction of a drop, or simply pick up the bottle and smell, closing my eyes... and in an instant, I am surrounded by Barbie dolls and old friends, we're playing, we're happy, in a world that no longer exists... except inside a bottle.

Ah, memories.

This came to me in a set of three small bottles of Paul Boyer perfumes, most likely from the 1940's and sadly not in their best shape. At first sniff, I believed that Haute Mode was ruined - it smelled of mouldy basement with only the contours of a floral bouquet, once probably delightfully fresh and bright, but not so much anymore.

I decided to clean the dirty, sticky bottle and let it air a bit, as sometimes this helps. And I'm happy to say that when I tested it again, it had definitely improved. I could smell a sweet, soft, summery mix of beautiful flowers, mostly I think rose, jasmine and lilac, and probably others too that were hiding underneath. There's a warm base with probably a little musk and sandalwood. Gives me the feeling of a sunny, old-fashioned garden on a peaceful, lazy summer's day, with nothing to do, nothing to disturb you, all you can hear is the wind in the trees and the bees in the air....

It's similar in feeling as the slightly more known Bienaimé Fleurs d'Eté, which I also own, but my Haute Mode is sadly not so well-kept that I am really able to compare them in detail. The basement smell still comes creeping in after a few minutes, I wasn't able to air it all out (not yet anyway...), but at least I now get a much better impression of this long forgotten perfume. It has been standing on my night table for a couple of weeks, giving off lovely little wafts of summer freshness, the way it was interpreted 70-80 years ago.

All I can say is when it comes to perfume, they certainly knew what they were doing back then.

I recently found a bottle of Lancôme Flèches d'Or. The bottle is beautiful, well preserved in its white box, and was still sealed with a crisp layer of thin wax around the stopper. However it was so stuck that it took me two days to open it, trying all the tricks I knew, before I finally just took a piece of cloth and wrapped it four times around the fragile glass stopper, took a small wrench and just turned with force. Fortunately, it worked, without breaking anything.

The perfume opens with a really strong galbanum note, which, mixed with oak moss, gives a heavy chypre feel. Very bitter-green, like freshly cut flower stems. And then on top of that, there's a strong anise note. I find that to be a rather odd combination, as I usually associate spices with orientals, not green chypres. More spices appear, I believe cardamom and maybe a hint of clove. I often use those spices when cooking with apples, so I keep waiting for some familiar sweetness, but this is not sweet. There is a bouquet of mixed flowers, I think lavender, and most notably rose, but it still feels green and dry - I mean that as in non-sweet, not dusty. After a couple of hours, it gets very musky, just like my other very-old Lancôme, Conquête, which is also a rose-centered chypre, but without the spice.

The perfume is well-kept and no doubt still fresh, with high-quality ingredients. I just find the composition and combination of notes very unusual, and probably also a bit too much of a chypre for my personal taste. Large portions of oakmoss and galbanum tend to get stuck in my throat - I am more of an oriental/floriental lover. Still, I am somehow drawn to it...

Flèches d'Or is cool, full of dark green nuances and shadows, like a garden on a spring evening, just around sunset. I do not yet know all the secrets that are hiding in there, and it may take me a while to discover them (if I ever will), but I am willing to give it a few more tries... maybe one day the full story will reveal itself?

I sometimes wonder about the relatively unknown, long forgotten perfume brands. Why did they go out of business, while other brands have remained until this day? Were their perfumes of lesser quality than those of the larger houses? Did they suffer from not being able to spend as much money on advertising? Were they just unable to recover financially after the war?

Difficult to say sometimes, especially since their perfumes are so hard to find, and we can't compare them to their more known contemporaries.

Recently, I came across a set of three perfumes from Paul Boyer at an affordable price, and I decided to buy them purely out of curiosity. According to Cleopatra's Boudoir, Paul Boyer started their business around 1940 and closed down about a decade later. There doesn't seem to be much information about their perfumes. Their ads say that PB is a perfumer from Provence, "heir of a century's family tradition of cultivating and destilling flowers." Would the perfumes be mostly floral then? Visually, the bottles in my set reminded me of another set I have, from Bienaimé, and I had those in mind too when I went to test my new findings.

One of the bottles, "Pour et contre" (not listed here at Parfumo) was empty. There were cracks in the glass, and what little residue was left had been exposed to air for a long time, and sadly it was not at all possible to determine what it once had smelled like.

The second bottle, "Haute Mode," appeared to have been a fresh floral, but was unfortunately not all that fresh anymore. I could get the overall idea, but it had a sour sting that probably makes it unsuited for wearing.

However, the third bottle, "Coreoba," was fairly well preserved. This too had a sour, sort of mouldy basement-smell at first whiff. When I tried it on my skin, this unplesant opening lasted for 5-10 minutes, then it faded off, and the good notes started wafting around me. Very softly at first, I smelled some sort of resinuous, slightly spicy floral bouquet. Mostly rose, I guess, on a rich, warm, creamy base. At this point I was slightly reminded of Weil's Cassandra. Then after 30 more minutes, the spices were getting stronger. Cinnamon, vanilla, maybe some clove? I am guessing amber, sandalwood and musk in the base. There is also something smoky, probably myrrh. I thought it was quite faint, but then my husband, who is neither an expert nor a great fan of perfume, entered the room and said: "Hey, new perfume? It's got incense? I get Christmas vibes!"

So, sillage probably isn't too bad. It's a lovely scent. Maybe not all that unique, but really very nice, if you enjoy these old, spicy-smoky orientals. I will have to test it against Bienaimé's "Caravane" – I do not remember that one by heart, but I believe they are similar in style.

And now, the treasure hunt goes on...

Around 1990 or so, when I was 14, my mum had a bottle of Fendi. And at that time I hated it deeply. I think she used it as an air freshener in the bath room (yes...), and the dark, heavy, woody scent would fill the whole house within seconds. There was nowhere to hide, and I remember shouting at her to get rid of that HORRIBLE perfume!!!

In the end, I think she did. Or at least, it just disappeared. And needless to say, I now regret bitterly that I didn't just lock it up somewhere safe all those years ago, until I was ready for it... Because now, I know its value.

I have my own Fendi now, and it is one of my most treasured perfumes. Funny how things can change. I wear it in late autumn and winter when the weather is cold, which brings out its full deep and spicy aroma. I find it to be almost liquor-like, like an expensive cognac. It combines elements from both the oriental and the chypre category - a dark, spicy, woody leather rose, in a style that could only have been made in the 1980s. Oakmoss is present, but it doesn't suffocate the wearer, as in some other 80s chypres. Following the rose, I get a lot of coriander, cardamom, musk, patchouli, oakmoss and cypress. I suppose today, it would be considered quite unisex. It is often mentioned as being similar to Chanel's Coco, since they are both spicy roses, but they are quite different beauties. The only other perfume I have found to ressemble Fendi, is Frank Govers from 1974. Slightly greener, but definitely similar. I feel that there is also a vague kinship with Rochas Mystère, with the coriander, carnation, cypress and oakmoss. But again, that is a different beauty. Only Fendi is Fendi.

And despite not liking it all those years ago, I now hope that I will forever have it in my collection.