Free Scent and Subversion by Barbara Herman Page A

Spice
by Shulton (1937)
    Perfumer: Albert Hauck
    Old Spice, like so many scents, seems arbitrarily gendered as a masculine fragrance when compared to its contemporaries, and to later women’s spicy Oriental scents (such as Cinnabar and Opium). With citrus and herbal top notes and a spicy balsamic base, Old Spice is simply the more-restrained, less-sweet version of New Spices that came down the pike.
    Top notes: Orange, lemon, spice notes, anise, clary sage, aldehyde
    Heart notes: Carnation, cinnamon, geranium, jasmine, heliotrope, pimento
    Base notes: Musk, vanilla, cedarwood, olibanum, benzoin, tonka, amber
Prétexte
by Lanvin (1937)
    Perhaps we don’t hear about Prétexte as much as its famous siblings because, as the middle sibling in the Lanvin lineup, it has their features (the animalic base of My Sin, the boozy smoothness of Rumeur, and the woods and hint of Scandal’s tobacco), but in diluted and mishmash form.
    Prétexte is a woody-ambery chypre with a smooth, powdery, spicy, and animalic base. At first sniff, I must admit, it does remind me of other scents without necessarily drawing me to it. Still, pretty nice stuff, especially in the sexy drydown. Perfumer Yann Vasnier smelled a spicy powdery rose with hay, leather, and castoreum.
    Notes from
1964 Dictionnaire des Parfums de France: Amber, hawthorn, rosewood, narcissus, oakmoss, patchouli, iris
Shocking
by Schiaparelli (1937)
    Italian designer Elsa Schiaparelli’s friendship with and influence from the surrealist movement was evident in her playful designs, including her iconic dress-form-shaped perfume bottle for the perfume, Shocking. In this charming 1940s ad illustrated by Marcel Vertès, a woman wears bunny ears in Schiaparelli’s signature color, “shocking pink.”
    Perfumer: Jean Carles
    Italian designer Elsa Schiaparelli collaborated with surrealist artists like Salvador Dali and incorporated surrealist elements into her beautiful and whimsical designs. Shocking, her first fragrance, was named in part because of the shocking “hot pink” color that was her trademark. Schiaparelli described this electric pink as “bright, impossible, impudent, becoming, life-giving, like all the light and the birds and the fish put together, a color of China and Peru but not of the West — a shocking color, pure and undiluted.”
    The perfume translation of shocking pink is equally playful and affirming. A powdery, spicy, honeyed-rose chypre, Shocking’s animalic, sensual, warm base belies its coquettish top notes. To get the full effect of Shocking, one must get a pristine, intact bottle, or crack open a nip, which perfectly preserves perfume in a time capsule.
    Top notes: Bergamot, aldehydes, tarragon
    Heart notes: Honey, rose, narcissus
    Base notes: Clove, civet, chypre
Sortilège
by Galion (1937)
    This 1930s perfume gets a psychedelic ad in the ’60s.
    Strawberry, peach, and orange blossom sweeten Sortilège without rendering it teenagerish or immature. Aldehydes are strong in the opening, as orris’s woody powder adds fairy dust to the voluptuous base of balsams, woods, and animal notes. I’ve noticed that sandalwood in vintage scents seems more intoxicating, buttery, rich, and powdery than in contemporary scents. Perhaps I’m smelling the difference between real and synthetic sandalwood.
    Boozy, lush, animalic, but ladylike, this is one of those perfumes that, to the untrained nose, might be described as “smelling like my grandma.” Well, maybe if your grandma was Colette or Marlene Dietrich …
    Top notes: Aldehyde complex, bergamot, peach, strawberry, orange blossom
    Heart notes: Rose, jasmine, lily of the valley, ylang-ylang, orris, lilac
    Base notes: Vetiver, sandalwood, vanilla, tonka, opopanax, civet, musk
Aphrodisia
by Fabergé (1938)
    Aphrodisia (“for the night-blooming you”) is a luscious and complex floral chypre bursting with fruity sweetness and tempered with spice, mossiness, and animalic warmth.
    A great example of an animalic