The New Look, The New Scents

Vent Vert, Femme, Miss Dior (1940–1949)

With the darkness of World War II dominating the first half of the decade, it’s not a surprise that renewal and rebirth in perfumery, in the olfactory form of green scents, would help to represent the reinvigoration of a world in disarray. And no perfumer dominated the 1940s in the way that iconoclast Germaine Cellier did, almost single-handedly jump-starting perfume with adrenaline shots to its olfactory heart with a dizzying array of scents, including Bandit (1944), Coeur-Joie (1946), the galbanum-overdosed Vent Vert (1947), Fracas (1948), and Fleeting Moment (1949).

Some women had to play dual roles in the 1940s—working outside of the home when men were off to war, but then returning to a traditional kind of femininity in the home when they came back. Christian Dior’s New Look in 1947 responded to their homecoming/traditional role with fashion’s return, as has been said, to a kind of Belle Époque femininity: full skirts, soft shoulders, and cinched-in waists. Cellier, one of the few female perfumers of that time, created scents that reflected an awareness of the multiple roles women were supposed to play in the 1940s and scents that seemed to question the idea of gender itself. If one looks at her fragrances from this perspective, their wildly gender-bending ways make historical sense: From the butch, leather-clad masculinity of Bandit to its counterpart, the aggressive, almost-drag femininity of Fracas, these perfumes suggest that gender is something constructed, as arbitrary and labile as a perfume one could put on or take off.

Platine by Dana (1940)

“For the precious blonde,” Platine perfume had silver flecks floating in it like confetti, and its ads were often co-branded with jewelers, such as this one from 1944, with Harry Winston.

A fresh floral aldehydic chypre on the green lily of the valley side, Platine (or “Platinum”) was marketed “for the precious blonde,” complete with platinum flecks floating in its Art Deco bottle. In ads, the platinum blonde woman who was its namesake seemed remote, untouchable, and unreal. Its freshness, perhaps due to vetiver and sandalwood, is much more soft, friendly, and approachable.

Notes not available.

Tailspin by Lucien Lelong (1940)

Perfumer: Jean Carles

A perfume name that matches its character, Jean Carles’s whimsical Tailspin sends you careening and spinning from one incongruous perfume accord to the next, making your olfactory brain work overtime trying to figure out what’s going on. It starts out with an herbal, vegetal green freshness with minimal sweetness, moves to a rich floral that’s hard to identify, then to a tobacco-y, cinnamon spice base that resolves into a soapy floral. Its cinnamon spice seems very Carles-like, like the marriage of cinnamon with gardenia in Carles’s Ma Griffe. The jarring and odd part of Tailspin is a confusing, coal-tar aspect that disappears as quickly as it arrives.

Notes not available.

Chantilly by Houbigant (1941)

In the same way that some perfumes smell insurmountably gendered, some notes smell resolutely old-fashioned; for example, the “powderiness” that sometimes comes from carnation, orris, and sandalwood, all three of which are in Chantilly. If you can get past this modern prejudice against powdery scents, Chantilly will knock your socks off. If you can’t, spicy baby powder will be all you can smell, which would be a pity.

Chantilly starts off with fresh lemony/fruit top notes, evolving into a powdery, spicy floral with flashes of animalic leather and musk. It’s hard to discern specific floral notes, although the carnation’s spice builds a bridge to its rich undertow of sandalwood, and rich balsams. A classical powdery Oriental that smells old-fashioned in one sense and sexy-animalic in another. If you can handle the dichotomy, you’ll love Chantilly.

Top notes: Bergamot, lemon, neroli, fruit note

Heart notes: Jasmine, rose, ylang-ylang, carnation, orris

Base notes: Sandalwood, vanilla, leather, benzoin, tonka, musk

Bandit by Robert Piguet (1944)

A bottle of Bandit perfume pierced and shattered by a dagger evokes the perfume’s provocative scent and shocking debut on the designer’s catwalk in this 1947 advertisement.

Perfumer: Germaine Cellier

Perfumer Germaine Cellier was said to have been inspired to create Bandit when she took a whiff of models changing their undergarments backstage at a Robert Piguet show. In a fitting debut for the perfume, models dressed as pirates, complete with masks, toy guns, and knives, introduced Bandit to the public during a Robert Piguet fashion show. Lore has it that one model smashed a bottle of Bandit on the runway, turning on her heels as the bitter, gorgeous, butch perfume filled the air.

So does this bitter, smoky, leather chypre live up to its myth? Yes. Its dominant twin notes—the sting of galbanum with the warmth of leather—encircle any sweetness that could emerge from jasmine or rose. Although Haarmann & Reimer’s perfume notes listed below don’t include isobutyl quinoline (a synthetic leather note that often smells rubbery and bitter), it was Cellier’s daring 1 percent overdose of that ingredient that makes it infamous. Galbanum and isobutyl quinoline make Bandit an extreme scent: Picture a bouquet of flowers wrapped with a black whip instead of a shiny ribbon.

Bandit’s sharp angles make you pause and think. Its cacophonous notes are at the core of its appeal, like an instrument playing off-key in an atonal modern musical composition, or a modernist portrait of a woman with a blue face and green lips. Dry, leathery, mossy—call it what you will, but Bandit makes being bad smell good.

Top notes: Artemisia, bergamot, gardenia, aldehydes, galbanum

Heart notes: Jasmine, orris, rose, carnation

Base notes: Castoreum, patchouli, vetiver, myrrh, oak moss, amber, civet

Femme by Rochas (1944)

This 1957 ad for Femme by Rochas features the curvy bottle inspired by Mae West’s hourglass figure.

Perfumer: Edmond Roudnitska

Like the inside of a woman’s butter-soft suede purse that has accumulated the feminine smells of perfume, lipstick, and other womanly objects, this classic fruit chypre smells like softness. Roudnitska created Femme in 1944 for Marcel Rochas to give to his wife, and the bottle was designed to recall Mae West’s hourglass figure. Its reformulated versions with cumin seem more wearable and modern.

Top notes: Peach, plum, lemon

Heart notes: Jasmine, rose, rosewood

Base notes: Patchouli, musk, amber, civet, leather, oakmoss, sandalwood

Réplique by Raphael (1944)

Réplique smells like a lot of good ideas thrown together that just don’t add up.

It first challenges you with its herbaceous top note—sweet, citrusy qualities—followed by its spicy, animalic, almost gourmand base. This complex, overloaded Oriental perfume smells sickly sweet and uncomfortably creamy in the drydown. To me, it’s this herbaceous green quality that throws me off, creating a difficult minor-key element to an already dark-toned perfume.

If Réplique were a drink, it would be Fernet Branca, a mix of herbs, vanilla, and orange in a dark iteration. Was it inspired by Tabu, and a precursor to Opium, Obsession, Youth Dew, and other big-bosomed perfumes? Once it settles down, the drydown gets sexier and more tolerable—a dark Vermeer painting of a perfume.

Top notes: Bergamot, neroli, orange, coriander, clary sage

Heart notes: Clove bud, rose, orris, ylang-ylang, jasmine, tuberose

Base notes: Patchouli, amber, moss, leather, musk, vanilla, civet

Woodhue by Fabergé (1944)

In spite of being advertised as a scent “for the casual you,” the spicy, vanillic, and animalic Woodhue has a darker, more-mysterious vibe than its ad would suggest. As often happens with vintage perfume, Woodhue’s top notes were a bit off the first time I sniffed it, and in this case, initially smelled like hairspray.

Woodhue was most seductive when it was in the last stages of the drydown. A delicate, orris-like veil of powdery softness blended with the spices, vanilla, and touch of civety musk. Perfume historian Octavian Coifan sees Woodhue as built around a floral spicy note that sits between the “fresh rose facet of Chanel No. 5 and the soft, sweet, spicy carnation of L’Air du Temps.”

An hour or so in, a natural vanilla scent blended in with my skin to create a comforting, ambrosial, lightly sweetened milkiness. Occasionally, sniffing my wrist with my nose up close to my skin, jasmine would pierce through the softness like rays of sunshine through a cloud. The rocky road to this drydown is worth it, so if you get some of the old stuff, give it a chance to sputter, screech, and blow smoke like an old jalopy you started up after fifty years of its lying inert. It’ll be worth it once this scent hits its stride, and the resulting ride is smooth.

Notes from Octavian Coifan: Jasmine, ylang-ylang, orris, clove, a green violet note, methyl ionone, ionones, benzoin, vanilla, opopanax, myrrh, amber accord, nitromusks, civet, sandalwood, cedar, vetiver

Antilope by Weil (1945)

Is the woman who holds up antelope antlers and a bottle of Antilope perfume supposed to be hunter or prey?

You’d think that a perfume called Antilope would be a little more, well, gamey or animalic, but Antilope by Weil lives up more to the habitat of the antelope than to the animal the name evokes. One gets the sense that the leaves, woods, and flowers that went into Antilope have dried into a haylike concentration whose scent is stirred into recognition only by a hot sun or a brief summer wind. I imagine a sleeping animal on a bed of herbs, dried grass with flowers in the distance. In sum: dry, sweet, and woody.

Top notes: Aldehydes, spice note, citrus oils

Heart notes: Jasmine, rose, orris, lily of the valley, violet

Base notes: Cedarwood, vetiver, leather, musk, amber

Notes from PerfumeIntelligence.co.uk: Tangerine, neroli, galbanum, acacia, farnesiana, narcissus, hyacinth, ylang-ylang, may rose, lily of the valley, oakmoss, civet, sandalwood, and musk

Visa by Robert Piguet (1945)

Perfumer: Jean Carles

There was a little mix-up years ago when I began to collect and write about vintage. I thought I’d ordered vintage Visa, not realizing there was a reissue, and I was baffled as to how on earth a vintage perfume could smell like Thierry Mugler’s Angel. I finally figured it out, got the vintage perfume, and I now realize the two are so different they should be on different planets.

Vintage Visa is a deeply erotic rose scent with a fatty, voluptuous base of Animalis (also in Baghari) and perhaps woods, spice (carnation? cinnamon?), and leather. Leave it to “the whore’s perfumer” (there, I said it!) to make rose, a usually demure floral with a good, old-fashioned reputation, into Rose Red with a Scarlet A on her too-low-cut dress. There’s almost a wine-like element to Visa’s rose, but it’s dancing very closely to Animalis. What any of this sexiness has to do with Visa and air travel is anyone’s guess!

Notes: Aldehydes, rose, florals, and, according to Denyse Beaulieu of the blog, Grain de Musc, Animalis by Synarome. (Animalis was a perfume base with a mix of animal notes: civet, musk, castoreum, and the animalic costus, a plant-based ingredient that’s been described as smelling like wet animal fur or the sebum from unwashed hair.)

Coeur-Joie by Nina Ricci (1946)

Perfumer: Germaine Cellier

When Germaine Cellier does butch, she does butch, and when she does femme, like Fracas and Fleeting Moment, they’re practically in drag. Coeur-Joie (“Joyful Heart”), however, pulls out all the stops. Where Fracas is still a naughty and provocative tuberose, and Fleeting Moment a little inward and reserved, Coeur-Joie, like its bitter-green counterpart Vent Vert, throws open the window and squeezes the beauty out of every floral it touches. Coeur-Joie’s powdery sweetness lifts everything up into a chorus of flowers followed by a warm and buttery base.

Notes from 1964 Dictionnaire des Parfums de France: “A citrusy floral featuring jasmine absolute, violet absolute, iris (from Provence), rose (from the Orient), neroli, acetivenol, and aldehydes.”

Ma Griffe by Carven (1946)

Perfumer: Jean Carles

Composed by a perfumer who had become anosmic (unable to smell), Ma Griffe is nevertheless a more-wearable Bandit or Cabochard, in spite of opening with the magnificently bitter galbanum note. The opening aldehydes will knock you down, but the cinnamon and gardenia will cushion your fall. Many a perfumista has mentioned that her grandmother has tagged Ma Griffe as “the prostitute’s perfume.” I think what they really mean is that it’s the perfume of a woman doesn’t give a damn.

Bright, green, comforting, and yet slightly dangerous—the comfort and the danger, I think, come from the same source: cinnamon—this is one of those fragrances that shouldn’t work, but does. Perhaps I’m reading into this after the fact, but although Carles composed this from his scent memory, it does give one the impression of a perfume based on cerebral abstraction rather than sensual experience.

Top notes: Aldehydes, clary sage, galbanum, bergamot

Heart notes: Gardenia, jasmine, ylang-ylang, rose

Base notes: Cinnamon, tonka bean, vetiver

This World War II–era ad from 1943 touts Pinaud’s bullet-shaped perfume Ammunitia as a military perfume (parfum militaire) that is “[d] edicated to the brave women of America.”

Écusson by Jean d’Albret (1947)

Aldehydic floral Écusson (“Emblem”) distinguishes itself from the well-heeled pack of this category by being quickly and insistently sensuous, animalic, and erotic in the base. This perfume told me, before I even looked at its notes, that it contained civet and nitromusks. A delicate cinnamon spice bridges its girlish flowers from its sensuous base. Écusson is a study in the way a perfumer can add depth to lightness without any appreciable caloric difference.

Top notes: Aldehyde complex, bergamot, orange blossom, peach, strawberry

Heart notes: Jasmine, rose, narcissus, ylang-ylang, orris

Base notes: Sandalwood, musk, cinnamon, civet, benzoin, cistus, tonka

Farnesiana by Caron (1947)

Perfumer: Michel Morsetti

An almondy richness reminiscent of heliotrope radiates from the center of Farnesiana, named after the powdery-sweet blooms of the Acacia farnesiana, or mimosa tree. Its violet and lilac heart gives the impression that Farnesiana is a floral confection wrapped in a diaphanous veil of sweet, powdery paper. An anise aftertaste underlies its candylike yet sophisticated sweetness, followed by subtle spice and woods. Unmistakably vintage, multilayered, and beautiful.

Top notes: Cassie, mimosa, bergamot

Heart notes: Jasmine, violet, lily of the valley, lilac

Base notes: Opopanax, vanilla, sandalwood, hay, musk

Iris Gris by Jacques Fath (1947)

In this 1949 ad, artist René Gruau turns a woman’s body into the stem of the iris flower, from whose roots come the powdery, buttery orris note that is the centerpiece of this legendary perfume.

Perfumer: Vincent Roubert

If you’ve ever smelled orris butter, made from the dried roots of the iris flower, you can appreciate how faithful to that sumptuous note Iris Gris is, adorning it minimally to enhance its waxy richness while adding the delicate, milky peach note, Persicol. Peach-scented pastry dough, an oft-used description, is probably the most accurate description of this perfume.

Iris Gris starts out spicy sharp and moves into a smooth, buttery peachy richness, which gives Iris Gris a girlish lightness. It is oily and rich, but rich in the way a stone fruit mixed with cream is both aromatically fresh and rich. It provides the olfactory equivalent of “mouth feel,” a foodie reference describing the tactile pleasure of having something rich in one’s mouth.

Notes from Octavian Coifan: Delta-undecalactone (Persicol), orris, cedar, vetiver, jasmine, lily of the valley, heliotrope, lilac, musk

Le Dix by Balenciaga (1947)

Perfumer: Francis Fabron

Often described as Chanel No. 5 with violets, Le Dix (“The 10”), with its nose-tickling aldehydic sparkle and haunting violet note, holds its head up high among vintage perfumes, like a handsome older woman in a sturdy 1940s suit, hat, and full makeup standing in a sea of Forever 21–clad teenagers. She has to be proud; everyone is telling her she smells “powdery,” “old,” and “soapy.”

Its initial impression of softness and conventional femininity is bound up with a perfume note that has perhaps always signified nostalgia and melancholy: violet. Le Dix is faithful to the melancholy connotations of violet but adds gourmand richness to round it out, and a spicy/woody backbone and the fatty, burnt-caramel note of nitromusks to give it some edge.

I can detect Francis Fabron’s authorial signature in the final stages of Le Dix’s drydown. He’s the nose of one of my favorite perfumes, Robert Piguet’s Baghari. In Baghari’s drydown, there is an absolutely heady and intoxicating richness (courtesy of a boozy-creamy balsamic plus Animalis base) that makes me make swoon. Although Le Dix’s drydown is powdery and gentler, it still packs a punch. (Baghari and Le Dix have the following notes in common: aldehydes, bergamot, lemon; ylang-ylang, rose, lily of the valley; and vetiver, musk, and vanilla.)

Top notes: Bergamot, lemon

Heart notes: Ylang-ylang, rose, lily of the valley, iris (definitely violet, but not listed)

Base notes: Civet, musk, vanilla, sandalwood, vetiver

Miss Dior by Christian Dior (1947)

Perfumers: Jean Carles and Paul Vacher

Miss Dior exemplifies a perfume for the late-1940s woman whose sexuality was, perhaps, under wraps. The first time I smelled it, I detected an animalic note, strangely enough, before I smelled its lushly floral bouquet, the animal dirtiness before the ladylike polish.

But when the flowers do hit—wow. Bruised flowers on a base of leather, moss, and patchouli, sliced with something sharp and green to cut through the lushness and make it sing, the way lemon zest can make a creamy risotto even more delicious. Although this is not a Guerlain, Miss Dior seems to be operating under Jacques Guerlain’s olfactory principle: “Perfume should smell like the underside of my mistress.” It’s said that when Christian Dior debuted his revolutionary “New Look” on February 12, 1947, the runways were also scented with his new perfume, Miss Dior.

Top notes: Gardenia, galbanum, clary sage (sauge sclarée), aldehydes

Heart notes: Jasmine, rose, neroli, narcissus, iris, eyelet, lily of the valley

Base notes: Patchouli, cistus-labdanum, oakmoss, ambergris, sandalwood, vetiver, leather (Cuir de Russie)

Robe d’un Soir by Carven (1947)

Sensual and elegant perfumes are often pitted against each other, as if one precludes the other. But Carven’s Robe d’un Soir (“Evening Gown”) proves that a perfume can be both, with its balance of fresh top notes, classical florals, and a sensual base that’s a balance of woods and creamy balsam notes.

This sensual, powdery rose scent marries a Rose de Mai as its queen to the powdery warmth and sensuality of orris and carnation, and a base that is by turns creamy and woody. Like an evening gown, the balance is what makes it special. Sexiness with elegance, skin with structure, voluptuousness with reserve.

Top notes: Bergamot, aldehyde complex, neroli, peach, mandarin

Heart notes: Rose, jasmine, ylang-ylang, carnation, orris, lilac

Base notes: Vetiver, amber, cedarwood, vanilla, sandalwood, benzoin

Vent Vert by Balmain (1947)

With its famous overdose of the ingredient galbanum, which imparts a bitter-green freshness to scents, Vent Vert is herbs, bent stems, and roses. In this advertisement, renowned fashion illustrator René Gruau expresses the perfume’s wild beauty by drawing a laughing woman with flowing green hair. (Ad from 1949)

Perfumer: Germaine Cellier

Composed by the amazing Germaine Cellier, Vent Vert (“Green Wind”) is a synesthete’s dream: It smells like the color green. It sounds off with a bitter, verdant blast of galbanum like a trumpet’s call, and shortly thereafter other flower notes run and swirl onto the stage like ballet dancers in a production of Nijinsky’s paganistic The Rite of Spring.

Composer Harry Revel claimed that Corday’s perfume “Toujours Moi” was the inspiration for turning scent into melody. The result was his interpretation of Corday perfumes into theremin-driven tunes that the album boasts “is probably the only successful attempt to capture and reproduce … the ‘sounds’ of fragrance and scent.” (The operative word here is probably.)

There is something savage, fierce, and raw about Vent Vert, recalling the first lines of T. S. Eliot’s poem, “The Waste Land”: “April is the cruellest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing / Memory and desire, stirring / Dull roots with spring rain.” Hope, desire, rebirth, renewal—these are all primal feelings, and the perfume respects that with its scent of freshly picked flowers, a green soapy rose, and bent stems with crushed herbs mixed in for spiciness.

Top notes: Galbanum, citrus oils, gardenia, leafy green, peach

Heart notes: Rose, lily of the valley, hyacinth, orris, jasmine

Base notes: Oakmoss, vetiver, styrax, musk

In this 1940s advertisement, a “blackamoor,” the racist figure whose image was ubiquitous in the first part of the twentieth century, opens a bottle of Jet perfume.

Named after a voodoo good-luck talisman, Gri Gri perfume by Weil trades in stereotypical African totem imagery.

Fracas by Robert Piguet (1948)

Perfumer: Germaine Cellier

Germaine Cellier had a camp sensibility about gender and perfume, evidenced in the gender hyperbole of Bandit vs. Fracas, the butch/femme couple of the vintage perfume world.

If Bandit perfume was meant for the butch lady in leather with the sidelong glance and the cigarette dangling out of her mouth, then voluptuous Fracas pays tribute to over-the-top femininity of the Marilyn Monroe / Anita Ekberg variety. Green and bright in its top notes, followed by a deluge of white flower notes resting on a creamy, decadent bed of balsams and musk, Fracas is almost a gourmand version of white flowers. Its carnation evokes images of cloves woven into flower garlands, providing sparks of red-hot heat amidst creamy white florals.

A “fracas” is a noisy, disorderly brawl, and in French, Italian, and Latin, it means to shatter (fracasser), to break (frangere), and to make an uproar (fracasso, fracassare). In Germaine Cellier’s hands, this means that the floral category, usually a proper and ladylike one, gets subverted. This quintessential sex-bomb floral is meant to disturb and not merely to seduce, to disrupt and disquiet in addition to subduing. Fracas’s beauty is not quiet and demure; it enters the stage like an attention-getting troublemaker.

Madeleine de Madeleine, Mollie Parnis by Weil, Dior’s Poison, and sheer little drugstore Jovans have quoted Fracas, but she remains the iconic diva, the Marilyn Monroe of floral perfumes. (The reformulation isn’t as rich and voluptuous as the original. Like Fidji’s reformulation, it lacks the depth of the original base notes.)

Top notes: Bergamot, mandarin, hyacinth, green notes

Heart notes: Tuberose, jasmine, orange blossom, lily of the valley, white iris, violet, jonquil, carnation, coriander, peach, osmanthus, pink geranium

Base notes: Musk, cedar, oak moss, sandalwood, orris, vetiver, Tolu balsam

L’Air du Temps by Nina Ricci (1948)

Perfumer: Francis Fabron

The vintage L’Air du Temps (“Spirit of the Times”) in the eau de parfum concentration has one of the most subtle, beautiful carnations I’ve ever smelled in vintage perfume. In Roger & Gallet’s Blue Carnation, that flower radiates from its heart with a peppery force; it is a clove-heavy carnation on steroids. In Caron’s Bellodgia, its cloveyness is woven into a floral garland as an accent or spice; the florals to the untrained nose are practically unaccompanied. But in L’Air du Temps, fruit and floral notes are balanced with the carnation’s unmistakable spicy, aromatic clove, and their balance creates an incredibly romantic, beautiful, and joyous perfume. As it dries down, woods and balsamic notes add a sensuous warmth.

Like Fleeting Moment by Balenciaga (1949), there is a gentle, wistful quality to L’Air du Temps. The name of the perfume references the beginning of the world’s recovery from World War II, when there was hope for a new prosperity and peace, represented by the Lalique bottle with its kissing doves on the stopper.

My first introduction to L’Air du Temps was through my grandmother. It was her favorite scent. When I resniffed L’Air du Temps for the first time in years, I had a vintage from the 1970s, an eau de toilette, which was much sheerer and had a less emphatically joyous character than the older version. If the 1970s version was a little wan, I can’t imagine what reformulations have done to it.

Top notes: Bergamot, rosewood, neroli, peach, spice notes

Heart notes: Clove bud, Rose de Mai, ylang-ylang, orris, orchid, lily

Base notes: Sandalwood, musk, vetiver, benzoin, cedar, amber, moss

Tuvara by Tuvaché (1948)

Tuvara is a soft, light, Oriental perfume with herbal top notes of chamomile, lavender, and barely perceptible florals. Myrrh, creamy labdanum, and vanilla with the match spark of woods and moss make up the drydown.

Top notes: Chamomile, bergamot, lavender, aldehydes

Heart notes: Ylang-ylang, geranium, jasmine

Base notes: Sandalwood, myrrh, vetiver, labdanum, oakmoss, musk and patchouli, vanilla, patchouli, incense

Ambre Cannelle by Creed (1949)

Ambre Cannelle (“amber cinnamon”), Creed’s animalic, spicy, and warm-ambery-powdery fragrance smells like a good-girl perfume mixed in with perspiration and lust.

At first whiff, I was hit with skanky amber—something a little rude, civety, and haunting. The powdery aspect, as well as the skanky quality, could be ambergris. Or it could be Ambrox. Whatever it is, it is heavenly. (It has recently been discontinued.)

Top notes: Cinnamon leaves, juniper berry

Heart notes: Rose, cinnamon, bay leaves, coriander

Base notes: Ambergris, musk

In this beautiful 1940s-era ad, Corday perfumes hang from the branches adorning the head of a perfume muse who stares dreamily off into the distance.

Witchery seems to have been a buzzword in 1940s perfume ads, signifying women tapping into a powerful and subversive form of seduction. Here, it might be a euphemism for prostitution!

Calypso by Robert Piguet (1949)

Calypso’s rose starts off shy, but soon, this delicate creature flanked by green notes just blooms. That would be enough to make Calypso worth remembering, but its second act is even better. Along with some spice, an unmistakable animal note (ambergris or civet) musses up our sweet rose’s hair and slips her glasses off. Calypso, in other words, is a very sexy rose.

Notes from 1964 Dictionnaire des Parfums de France: Rose, jasmine, carnation, gardenia, patchouli

Good girl, bad girl. Light and dark. White Shoulders and Menace. You get the picture.

Creating a good girl–bad girl split wasn’t just one way to keep women confused; it was also good for business, as perfume brands could find an excuse to market two perfumes to one woman. Adrian’s 1946 Saint and Sinner advertisement depicts this schizophrenic state of affairs.

Diorama by Christian Dior (1949)

Perfumer: Edmond Roudnitska

A cross between Roudnitska’s fruity chypre Femme (in its Prunol buttery plumminess) and Guerlain’s Mitsouko, Diorama might challenge fans of angular minimalism. Its combination of fruity, spicy, and powdery just might be too much. Jean-Claude Ellena, the pope of minimalism himself, declared himself a fan: “No perfume has ever had a more complex form and formula, more feminine contours, or been more sensual, more carnal.”

Top notes: Bergamot, aldehydes

Heart notes: Jasmine, rose, gardenia, peach and plum (undecalactone gamma—peach aldehyde—and Prunol), raspberry, strawberry, galbanum, lily of the valley

Base notes: Patchouli, oakmoss, vetiver, violet (methyl ionone gamma), labdanum, castoreum, civet

English Leather by MEM Company (1949)

A friendly, unassuming leather-and-woods scent that smells like it was meant to be splashed on as an aftershave, English Leather balances a leather base with honeyed rose heart and a fresh, herbaceous top. Tonka’s cinnamony-vanilla provides a slightly sweet warmth in the drydown.

Top notes: Bergamot, lemon, petit grain, orange, lavender, rosemary

Heart notes: Rose, orris, honey, fern

Base notes: Cedarwood, leather, tonka, vetiver, musk

Fleeting Moment (La Fuite des Heures) by Balenciaga (1949)

Perfumer: Germaine Cellier

Has the name for a perfume ever so aptly described the quality all perfumes share? Namely, that poetic condition of being something beautiful and rare yet momentary—evaporated almost as soon as we have contact with it.

Fleeting, too, are the notes that make up the perfume. It is hard to tell what exactly I smelled when I first took a whiff. Soapy and aldehydic, but with a soft, organic, herbal base that smelled like nature refracted through synthetics, helping to blend, soften, and blur the recognizable lines of the flowers and herbs.

Fleeting Moment reminds me of the perfume version of a now-discontinued (of course!) drink from the UK I used to splurge on, called Aqua Libra. This lightly carbonated and ever so delicately sweet drink was infused with herbs: tarragon, cardamom, thyme, sesame seeds. It was so interesting I felt like I was drinking perfume.

Top notes: Citrus aldehydic with a slightly aromatic touch (tarragon-like): bergamot, orange, aldehyde C10, aldehyde C11-enique, neroli

Heart notes: Floral bouquet (ylang-ylang, fresh rose, jasmine) with a very light lily-of-the-valley base (more modern than No. 5), and floral powdery notes (orris absolute and methyl ionones)

Base notes: Soft woody with powdery and musky notes like vetiver (plus the acetate), sandalwood, vanilla, sweet coumarine, and musk (musk ketone and natural musk)

(Notes from Octavian Coifan.)

Méteor by Coty (1949)

In the running now as one of my favorite vintage tuberose perfumes, Méteor certainly rocketed into my stratosphere and took me by surprise. Buttery tuberose joins with jasmine and rose to attack on one side while civet and nitromusks get you from the other. It’s an effective little formula, this My Sin–esque combo of sexy florals plus animal notes. Sumptuous and hard to find.

Notes: Jasmine, rose, tuberose, musk, civet

In this 1940s ad by artist Xanti-Pat, three birds make up the trompe l’oeil eyes and mouth of this lovely woman for Bourjois perfumes.