Timing is everything in pop culture. Though Denis Villeneuve’s Timothée Chalamet-starring Dune Part 2 was considered by many space geeks to be an Oscar-worthy Science Fiction masterpiece, it was released near the beginning of February 2024. Any spiced melange buzz it may have created at that time will have fizzled with the last minute contenders like eighties ‘pop-corn actress’ Demi Moore, who is currently having a moment with her Golden Globe win for feminist gore-fest The Substance; other, more garish and contagiously edgy films have edged their way into the Academy’s fray like Anora and Emilia Perez; overcostumed good guys and bad guys, giant sandworms suddenly seem a little passé. Brian De Palma’s politically difficult Vietnam film, Casualties Of War featured a performance of poisonous and brilliant intensity by Sean Penn, but the director released it in 1989, after a surfeit of Awards Season Mania for Platoon and Born On The Fourth Of July. No matter how good the film, the theme felt tired. People were ‘Nam’d out.
Pop music is even more hyper-plugged in to what feels new or cool and what doesn’t. Culture Club were Pop Emperors in 1983, nailing some androgynous lipsticked need the public had – especially in Japan, which was experiencing an epidemic of imperial Boy George hysteria – but their chameleon had atrophied by 84 and was plugged in to life support : by the end of that year they were considered has-beens; Katy Perry, similarly, in chart terms, is now considered defunct.
Popularity is not always easy to achieve. As with music, perfumes can be commercial hits or misses. The albeit legendary house of Rochas is a bit like that; Femme (1944), Madame Rochas (1960), Eau De Rochas (1970 – for those in the know) and Mystère (1978 – a cult hit) aside, no matter how many perfumes Rochas release they are never quite finger on the pulse; always slightly too late and somewhat unnecessary, or not quite what the public wants; either too future forward (Lumière, an incredibly sheer and beautiful solar beach jasmine that was simply before its time and wasn’t, to my knowledge, a hit). Yes there were mid-tier successes like Byzance (1987) a great floriental, but – though this is debatable – do weigh in- it was no way near as to-die-for as the masterpiece it was copying, Givenchy’s Ysatis (1984). And anyone remember Globe?
Sometimes the big houses, just like singer/artist megastars, can have bifurcated success or failure. Lady Gaga’s big ‘comeback’ single from November, ‘Disease’ was a much fêted and superproduced ‘return to form’ to the bluster and boister of Bad Romance and Applause and all the other rugged hits, and like all of her most effective earworms, it ate our brains for a few weeks until we were crying out for surgery. But the metaphors and emotional aggression and ultrafashion in the video ultimately all felt a little forced – a turd can always be smelled a mile off, and the song debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 at 27, disappearing completely from the charts the following week. ‘Die With A Smile’, the global duet with Bruno Mars which was released in August and which to me is much more of a grower (and more genuine/ emotionally accessible), on the other hand, finally reached Number One in America last week after being the world’s most popular single the entire summer.
Fragrance houses also wrestle with similar issues; will the smell, like a melody or vibe, actually resonate with the person on the street? There is never any guarantee. Much as I loathe Dior’s Sauvage personally, as you know, I do understand its core strengths in terms of theme and olfactive construction – and the way it has manifested what the mainstream populace is searching for means that the powers that be at Christian Dior – to use its eighties name – were definitely right ( for some reason this scent does speak to many; and you should see how it flies off the shelves in department stores in Tokyo – Chinese tourists making the most of the weak yen, buying in bulk – there are whole designated areas for it in-store, in all its loathsome, haggard J Depp iterations). But what, you may ask happened to ‘Joy?’ Aside the utter travesty of stealing the name of the Patou classic, this was Vileness Bottled, truly execrable, and I can’t deny a certain schadenfreude in seeing it flop – it is no longer in display in Japan as far as I can see – because it was a chemical disaster from the pits of atrocity that no one needed to have inflicted on them as they innocently trot along the pavement – suddenly felled by an industrial migraine, parading as an aqueous and iridescent, ‘ delicate ‘ pink bloom.
GUY LAROCHE CLANDESTINE (1986)
The fact that Clandestine was released in 1986 never fails to astound me. The whole endeavour feels so late to the party. I actually feel a great deal of tenderness for this scent – it makes me feel like a teenager going to my first school disco with early Wham! and the Human League blasting under the flashing lights with my girlfriend Jessica and her hooped earrings and pink lip gloss, all fruity and full of plum. It captures some of that excitement, yet is automatically jaded.
The perfume feels as though it should have been brought out in 1982, 83 at the latest. The artwork is pure Visage/ early Duran Duran – it even smells like the Rio album or even the eponymous first release, Duran Duran – not Notorious (1986), when they had lost their cool – at least in the UK and gone all Nile Rogers. Groundbreaking and mesmerizing freshness was just around the corner in the world of perfumery – the unrivalled, green orange blossom gleam of Romeo Gigli (1989)- a masterpiece of florality – which smelled so new and nineties, even before the decade had begun (the mark of true fashion instinct) – see Deee-Lite in music – not to mention the coming Calone Catastrophe in the form of Aramis New West and the rest. Eternity came out the same year as Clandestine, but it was as if the latter had been living under a rock.
The perfume also suffers from a problem common to many from the era – a generic fust, a ‘perfumey’, ageing and very dated base note that just reeks of tired glamour. Parfums Lagerfeld’s divine Chloé (1974) by the creator Betty Busse – who also made a slightly anachronistic but lovely Fleurs De Fleurs (1982 – pretty and very 80’s movie secretary initially, but far dirtier than you would ever imagine in the base – good grief, she is now having her way with Charlie Sheen under the desk ) has one of the most exquisite tuberosesque green sheens ever in its opening accords – just swoon – but always, unfortunately, ends up smelling like a pair of old tights. (I was quite excited recently at Isetan when I saw, in the Chloe Atelier Des Fleurs collection, that among their floral library, all transparent fleurs with singular, flower titles, that there was a Tuberose 1974, which was doing exactly what I wanted; to take the beauty of the top notes of the original Chloe while snuffing out the climax). Clandestine suffers from the same problem to First Chloe; wear it and you will smell forever like a teenager with one foot in the grave. It is no wonder that the still popular Drakkar Noir by Guy Laroche outsold it by about ten million to one.
COURREGES IN BLUE (1983)
In more timeless, contrast, the lagune-chic promise of the beautiful Courrèges In Blue (‘un parfum de rhythme’), created by the great Edouard Flechier ( just two years down the line the perfumer would unleash the Dior Secret Project No 2, Poison) still holds true. Like all the best perfumes, Blue holds something slightly beyond your reach; keeping its inner mysteries intact. It is fresh, almost aqueous – a pre-aquatic – but also baroque-spicy, floraciously vivid – a whole tone of marigold up top which keeps things glinting. I proudly possess this soapy, vivacious, but still somehow demure perfume in edt and parfum (thanks Helen), and it is one of those creations whose bottle I love just looking at, as well as wearing once in a while – to just close myself off from the world and daydream. A friend of a friend at university, a somewhat cutting and moody, sybaritic blonde named Dawn, studying Art History at Queesn, who would laze about all day in satin pyjamas smoking and fretting and sending us out to buy cigarettes and sandwiches for her – looking back, she was a bit like Dianne Ladd in Wild At Heart; beautiful, self-centred, slightly daunting….Dawnting – — but what taste in perfume! I had never smelled Balmain Ivoire or Courreges in Blue until I went to her rooms, and she always smelled gorgeous beyond belief in whichever of the two she was emanating. Like a cat near a radiator I would sit near her perfumes – she had others too, perhaps Chanels I am not sure, but I had rarely come across a situation in which a perfectly chosen duo of signature perfumes were so becoming. She smelled tasteful; sleek, but ravishing and ravishable.
Courreges in Blue is a great example of pre-mid eighties perfumery. Flowers were then bouquets; but they were getting gradually stronger and stronger – Guerlain’s Jardins De Bagatelle – also 1983 – was blindness-inducingly overconcentrated, yet still sharply seductive with the best tuberose/cedar/ musc scent trail, in history – this is, after all, the perfume I began my book with. Before that there had also been Caron’s equally delightful mandarin/ stephanotis/ vetiver/ vanilla semi-seductrice, Nocturnes (1981), which I wore today and loved. Despite superficial appearances, these perfumes were not for stiffs; some may have found them conservative but there was also a lot of sensuality beneath the starch. Courreges in Blue, similarly, has echoes of tuberose, peony, violet, orange and blossom, and predominantly rose, but a rose sharpened up like a pencil with aldehydes, blackcurrant, coriander, basil and bergamot, and that mandarin/marigold watering glitter up top that guiltily seals the deal for me,, while a spiced (clove) semi-chypric base of oakmoss, amber, patchouli and musks brings you off to the tighter, more erotic conclusion. Whenever I smell this scent, I think of a silent someone. in the most luxuriant white bathrobe, slowly opening a door of a high mirrored room to an as yet unseen other in an uptown hotel.
CREATION by TED LAPIDUS (1984) and CAPUCCI DE CAPUCCI
(1987)
One problem in talking about vintage perfumes is : how can you be sure you have good specimen standing there before you when you are discussing and analyzing a liquid that came out into the world over forty years ago? Is it still the scent it once was? Is it off? Has it changed in other subtle ways over the years, meaning that you shouldn’t necessarily be even talking about it? I don’t know, but both of these perfumes, at least the ones I have, smell pretty pristine to me and yet I don’t really like either of them especially – feel free to enlighten me if you have a more positive perspective.
For whatever reason, the fuzzy tropical fruit bonanza of so many perfumes of this slightly predictable ilk – Creation is similar to Azzaro No 9 and countless others, with its shining pineapple palisades but with an extra splayed open mango salad decorating its flagrant and fluorescent florals – the scent just doesn’t speak to me. On Fragrantica, that repository of dreams, some fans describe Creation as a garden of Eden; an extremely emotionally positive fragrance, exuberant – and I can see that ( D quite liked it when he smelled it) but in the miniature I have at least there is something unbalanced in the heart – a bright alacrity and overlit quality, that to me, acts as some kind of a deterrent.
In Woody Allen’s depressingly brilliant film Interiors (1978), a furtive and melancholy drama about neurotic, cheating intellectuals who just think too much about everything but don’t have much sense of humour, there is an unforgettably poignant, yet also somewhat bleakly hilarious, scene in which the patriarch of the family, having left his depressive artist of a wife (whose heart is completely destroyed in the process), introduces his new flame – Pearl, a doll and a very condescendingly perceived-to-be-crass older woman in a blazing red dress who finally brings a bit of colour into the muted surroundings of the family gathering – but who totally disgusts the snobbish sisters and their ash-mouthed philandering husbands (“she’s a vulgarian” – mutters one of them under her breath). Though these perfumes hadn’t been invented yet, and you imagine that Pearl might probably have been wearing Cinnabar, or one of its lustieroff-shoots like J’ai Osé – because her obliviously gusto entry into this disfunctional family is indeed very daring; you would ideally have her wearing Giorgio Red (1989 – genius, ingredients; everything in the kitchen sink, as rich as sugo di pomodoro), though, in actual fact you suspect she may actually have gone instead for Capucci De Capucci, an Italianate, bright and brassy chypre floral with spiced carnations, an intriguing, almost manly pinch of fougere patchouli – huskily sensuous in some ways, and a touch of coconut in its mossy, generic base. It’s fine, it’s okay, it’s floral, it’s fruity, and you wouldn’t mind smelling this on a relative you meet once a year around the Christmas tree; but unlike the best eighties megaliths, it doesn’t have enough distinctiveness, sufficient originality, to be truly memorable. I am afraid that, ultimately , we are back to tired hosiery.
COME ON IN: THE CERRUTI IS FRUITY – CERRUTI CERRUTI (1987)
I am a sucker for the 80’s spiced chypric fruity, and Jean Claude Delville, creator of Caron’s densely packed amber blackcurrant sandalwood cassis freakshow of a mimosa from the same year, Montaigne – love it – delivers a very competent example of the form that will please perhaps the likes of those like me who enjoy the unfettered pleasures of perfumes like Diva (Ungaro, 1983, a rose-spiced precursor to Coco by Jacques Polge). The proportions of the ingredients in the Cerruti lead to a more generic, less recognizable scent – after all, perfumes in any given decade end up copying each other to a greater or lesser degree – have you been to a Duty Free recently? – and can very often end up blending into a bit of a much of a muchness, but I do know that were some fine dame to saunter up in a fur coat drenched in Cerruti, it would lend an enjoyable twang to any evening out on the town; perfumes like this are always so sassy, gregarious, generous, and sexily self assured.
VERDICT :
As will probably be obvious, I do love this era, even if in truth I am not as nostalgic a person as I might seem( I go back and forth between all the eras of my life , from earliest memories, to yesterday to everything in between on a whim as we all do in our active minds and subconsciouses on a moment’s notice; it is piercing and yearnful and heartrending to let your mind go back to years in the past sometimes – though I have no desire to live there; if there is a time I long for more than any other it’s more like 2016 than 1986 for me when life still seemed future oriented… but it’s still interesting to see those from younger generations almost cos-playing the eighties perfumes now in (semi-ironic) Dress You Up mode, purposely donning vintage scents from the decade to further decorate the package with fragrance and coolly expedite the 80’s ness. For me, the icons speak for themselves: if they didn’t have that extra element of originality or uniqueness that separated them from the other wannabes in the fashion pack, they wouldn’t have survived until the present day. Whether in reformulated format or not, the essential DNA flesh and bones of a big commercial success – like the chord structures of a song – have to hook the interested party in some way that makes it stand out. That’s why Poison will always be Poison, and Eternity will be Eternity for eternity. You can’t UNREMEMBER these perfumes, even if you hate them. The perfumes we were looking at today, instead, are, at least in my opinion, much more forgettable – background noise — with the exception, perhaps, of the Courrèges In Blue, which I personally think is something of an undersung classic. There was a cool, greedy poise on the breeze in the eighties : and this complex, yet unruffled, chic Parisian perfume effortlessly captures that essence.
