Think Big

Paris, Poison, Paloma Picasso Mon Parfum (1980–1989)

It was the decade of Dynasty, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, and Falcon Crest. Yet for all its tacky excesses, the 1980s was also the last decade in perfumery of unselfconsciously grand perfumes. Chypres, mossy-fruity-animalics, and complex Oriental perfumes still gave perfumers’ imaginations—and its wearers’ noses—a workout. Perfumes got so strong and loud in the 1980s that New York restaurant owners were putting signs in their windows that said PLEASE, NO WEARERS OF PASSION, GIORGIO, OR POISON.

Gauloises by Molyneux (1980)

Named after the intensely strong, powdery, and almost-perfumey brand of French cigarettes, Gauloises is a rosy, tobacco-y floral chypre with fresh-green top notes and a powdery base. Perhaps one of the last perfumes to pay homage to smoking culture, with a bottle that looks like an open pack of cigarettes and juice inside that—reminiscent of 1930s perfumes like Scandal—was probably made to harmonize with (cover up) the smell of cigarette smoke.

Top notes: Bergamot, aldehyde, green note, coriander, hyacinth

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

Base notes: Musk, sandalwood, vetiver, oakmoss, amber, civet

Ivoire by Pierre Balmain (1980)

A 1981 ad for Pierre Balmain’s Ivoire

If you relied solely on random reviews of Ivoire on the Internet, you might believe that this early-1980s perfume merely screams “old lady” and “soapy” and call it a day. That would be a pity, because you’d miss out on a scent experience equivalent to going to a Sherwin-Williams paint shop and realizing, after an hour or so of comparing paint chips, that the shades in between stark white and cream can be staggering and infinitesimal.

Ivoire is an olfactory meditation on how a clean fragrance can have depth and texture, and how its individual notes can reverberate and resonate with one another to signify “clean” and “fresh” in a complex, even sensual, way. By evoking the tusk of an elephant or the keys of a piano, the name Ivoire asks us to think about the richness of white—its “off-whiteness” rather than its purity.

Upon first whiff, Ivoire gives us the whitest paint chip on the olfactory color wheel: fresh, bright, and citrusy top notes, further lifted by aldehydes. This first impression is a white of the blinding-flashbulb variety. This is only for a second, as the aldehydes die down and the piquancy of galbanum provides a wonderful first variation on clean—the resiny, piney, vegetal version, backed up by a hint of lemon and bergamot. Ivoire then moves subtly and almost seamlessly to its floral, spicy, and, yes, soapy heart.

Where Ivoire gets interesting for me is in the drydown. Its woody-incense finish is followed by ambery musk, like the burn you get when lighting incense is followed by its mellow diffusion. A whisper of the warmth from these notes moves you subtly from that white paint chip to the cream one. Or you could say they move your eye from the smoothness of the ivory tusk to a nick filled in with dirt that creates an interesting texture on the pristine surface. Like a Mark Rothko painting meditating on white, Ivoire’s notes hum and vibrate in unison.

Top notes: Green accord, galbanum, bergamot, lemon, aldehydes

Heart notes: Lily of the valley, rose, hyacinth, jasmine, carnation, orris, orchid, geranium

Base notes: Cedar, musk, oakmoss, amber, raspberry, sandalwood

Macassar by Rochas (1980)

Perfumers: Nicolas Mamounas and Roger Pellegrino

Macassar Ebony is a kind of wood with dinstinctive, contrasting streaks that was particularly popular with furniture makers during the Art Deco period. In an ad for Macassar perfume by Rochas, the image of a handsome man in a tux sits atop the pattern from Macassar Ebony wood, and his right cheek bears the mark of its unusual pattern.

Little known outside of the small circle of ex-lovers still mourning its loss, Macassar by Rochas is a stunning leather/woody chypre that balances aromatic herbs, fruit, spice, and florals with moss and leather. Its rich amber and spice notes could easily move it over into the Oriental category.

Bitter artemisia, fruit, and green notes launch Macassar, and it evolves into smooth, sweetish cedar warmed by a mossy animalic base. Hours into it, a camphory bitterness predominates, as its aromatic, mossy base reminds the fruit and florals who is boss.

Top notes: Bergamot, artemisia, green note, pine needle, fruit note

Heart notes: Jasmine, carnation, patchouli, vetiver, geranium, cedar

Base notes: Leather, oakmoss, castoreum, amber, olibanum, musk

Murasaki by Shiseido (1980)

Murasaki, which means “purple” in Japanese, is a green floral that starts off with a galbanum pucker of brightness soon softened by fresh florals and a subtle chypre base. (Rose and lily’s quiet duet can be heard most prominently.) Perfectly balanced and secure enough to not have to shout, Murasaki is poised somewhere between a 1970s green chypre and a 1990s clean scent. An hour into it, musk and amber turn Murasaki into a gorgeous, clean skin scent.

Top notes: Galbanum, bergamot, gardenia, peach, hyacinth

Heart notes: Orris, rose, lily of the valley, jasmine, lily

Base notes: Sandalwood, oakmoss, vetiver, leather, musk, amber

Antaeus by Chanel (1981)

Perfumer: Jacques Polge

A soft cloud of cedar, coriander, and olibanum (with its cinnamon facets) hangs over the kingdom of Antaeus, named after the son of Gaia and Poseidon, Greek mythological deities of the earth and sea. Antaeus is a perfect balance of citrus, floral, spice, herbs, leather, and amber, and projects a dreamy and gentle Eros rather than a raunchy one, in spite of a base with a roster of the usual (animalic) suspects. Unlike some men’s fragrances from the 1980s that haven’t aged well, Antaeus could be a new release from a niche house, and easily considered unisex. Gorgeous.

Top notes: Bergamot, lemon, lime, fruit note, coriander, cedarleaf

Heart notes: Orris, thyme, basil, rose, jasmine

Base notes: Patchouli, leather, amber, olibanum, musk, castoreum, moss

Giorgio by Giorgio of Beverly Hills (1981)

You know it. You may love it. But once you put it on, you won’t be able to get away from it, and those around you may hate you forever. That’s right—I’m talking about Giorgio. Giorgio of Beverly Hills.

In the late 1970s, Gale and Fred Hayman decided they needed an exclusive fragrance for their clothing boutique on Rodeo Drive. This exclusive fragrance, ironically (or, more likely, intentionally), ended up scenting every magazine, mall, big-haired salad eater, and Gucci bag–carrying Texas debutante in the 1980s like the “airborne toxic event” that threatens the characters in Don DeLillo’s surreal fantasia on consumerism and suburbia, White Noise.

This airborne toxic event starts off with a bright hit of green, followed by a massive synthetic-smelling accord of fruit notes plus orange blossom plus every cloyingly sweet facet that could be wrenched from Giorgio’s florals. There’s something kind of pleasant about the powdery and slightly rich drydown, but you can’t really experience it because the tuberose-gardenia-fruit monster stuns your nose into submission.

Giorgio doesn’t really develop so much as Enter the Building and stage a sit-in, demanding to be noticed: inert, bright, soapy, floral, and in-your-face sweet. It’s sunny and pretty in the way an immaculately made-up face Photoshopped within an inch of its life in a magazine is pretty, but there is no movement, multidimensionality, or life inside.

Giorgio is always described as a “big” scent, like many 1980s scent bombs, but it’s not Giorgio’s bigness or boldness that bothers me. I like the perverse Poison by Christian Dior, in small doses, and what some say is Giorgio’s reference scent, Robert Piguet’s Fracas, is as alive as a carnivorous plant. It’s Giorgio’s inorganic obtrusiveness that offends.

I may just be unable to objectively assess Giorgio’s aesthetic merits because there was a time growing up in Texas that I simply could not get away from it. It arrived with every fashion magazine that came in the mail in scent-strip form. (It was, in fact, the very first perfume that advertised itself not only through an image and a tagline, but also by actually smelling up the room.) You couldn’t go to the mall without being inadvertently sprayed with it. And on top of everything, its celebration of “exclusivity” (it’s from Rodeo Drive!) was a bit ridiculous. (If you’ve ever watched soap operas, it’s as if Giorgio is being positioned as the “exotic” European dude who stirs up trouble for the townsfolk in Port Charles.)

Giorgio set the volume way up. Among other loud scents of the decade: Obsession, Poison, Amarige, and so many others. It actually makes sense that by the 1990s, our exhausted noses were proffered androgynous office scents that had wiped off all their fuchsia lipstick and purple eye shadow and retired their sequined evening gowns. Improbably, Giorgio is still available, but to me, it smells as dated as Robin Leach’s sign-off sounds: “Champagne wishes and caviar dreams!”

Top notes: Green note, bergamot, fruit note, orange blossom, aldehyde

Heart notes: Tuberose, gardenia, ylang-ylang, orchid

Base notes: Sandalwood, cedarwood, musk, amber, moss, vanilla

K by Krizia (1981)

Perfumer: Maurice Roucel

Created for designer Mariuccia Mandelli for Krizia, a brand known for designs with bold shoulders, animal imagery, and intricate pleating, K by Krizia is a grand floral chypre that screams ’80s in the best possible way. Like Arpège or Crescendo, K is a creamy floral whose hint of velvety peach adds ripe fruitiness to this already lush perfume.

Top notes: Aldehydes, peach, hyacinth, bergamot, neroli

Heart notes: Jasmine, narcissus, tuberose, rose, lily of the valley, orris, orchid, carnation, orange blossom

Base notes: Sandalwood, vetiver, musk, amber, moss, civet, vanilla, styrax, leather

Kouros by Yves Saint Laurent (1981)

Perfumer: Pierre Bourdon

Anyone who has ever had her nose directly in the armpit of a man who is sweating and not wearing deodorant knows that the sharp, ammonia-like sting can either be pleasurable (say, you like the man) or unpleasurable (you don’t know this man from Adam and he’s raised his arm in front of your face on public transit).

Kouros’s extreme evocation of body odor arrives simultaneously with the scent of men’s cleaning products: fougère aftershave, the Pinaud powder that someone sprinkled on a man’s neck after a haircut, and, for those who despise Kouros, the oft-cited smell of a urinal cake in the men’s bathroom of the club where he ended up. It’s an olfactory deconstruction of the ’80s man, from the moment he “smells,” to the shower he takes, to the aftershave he throws on, to his putting on a leather belt and shoes.

This olfactory slap in the face—bitter, sour, nose-clearingly spicy, and animalic—has to be smelled to be believed. It’s as if Bourdon took Robert Piguet’s Bandit’s training wheels off and decided to ride down the stink highway screaming, “Look, Ma—no hands!” The artemisia in Kouros is some of the bitterest, thorniest, and sharpest I’ve ever encountered in perfume, in spite of friendlier notes of honey, geranium, and bergamot.

Kouros belongs in that rarefied “love it or hate it” Difficult-Smelling Perfumes drawing room where Poison, Angel, and Bandit are smoking cigarettes, drinking scotch, and trading war stories. For those who love Kouros, its incense and woods are wrapped in the Eros implied by the name, which is the Greek word for the white statues of nubile young men that dot Greek islands. And for the others? The following sentiment from a commenter on a perfume forum says it all: “I would rather burn money than buy this fragrance.”

Top notes: Aldehydes, artemisia, bergamot, coriander, clary sage

Heart notes: Geranium, iris, jasmine, carnation, patchouli, vetiver, cinnamon

Base notes: Oakmoss, honey, leather, musk, tonka, civet

Must de Cartier (1981)

Perfumer: Jean-Jacques Diener

In the same way that certain chic people are able to mix stripes with crazy prints, Must de Cartier combines fresh notes with a decadent gourmand base in a daring way that reads as beautiful for some people. For me, it bypassed rational analysis and went straight to my limbic system’s Decider, who nodded her head and said, “Yes, please. More.”

Must’s backstory, as recounted by Michael Edwards in Perfume Legends, is interesting. When Cartier was sending around perfume briefs to perfumers that described their ideal first fragrance, they had in mind two perfumes: a fresh perfume for daytime, and a more-seductive perfume for nighttime, probably in the Oriental family.

They were most interested in the young Givaudan perfumer Jean-Jacques Diener’s brief, so he decided, essentially, to put two fragrances together. Diener said he was inspired by Shalimar’s animalic-vanilla base, but wanted to change the top note from bergamot to galbanum, as he loved the way Aliage’s top notes were constructed. (Aliage is a green “sport scent,” remember!) He also gave it a civet overdose to make it even more animalic than Shalimar. Must’s “cool/warm accord,” according to Edwards, inspired Obsession, Roma by Laura Biagiotti, and Dune, among others.

The early Must eau de toilette was not constructed by Diener. It was supposed to be the “fresh” Cartier fragrance they had originally envisioned, which (rightly) confused the Must-lovers audience, who just expected a less-concentrated version. Cartier scrapped it in 1993 and replaced it with Must de Cartier II. (So if you want to try this odd perfume for yourself, either go to Sephora and spray it on, or get the vintage parfum. The vintage eau de toilette was not a favorite of mine.)

Must’s beguiling rush of galbanum and brightness at the beginning soon evolves into the lush floral, vanillic Oriental that is its true character. It goes from galbanum-pineapple to vanilla-amber-civet in a roller-coaster lurch that might make your stomach feel funny but Must’s intoxicating, animalic/gourmand drydown is 1980s excess at its unapologetic best.

Top notes: Bergamot, aldehyde, lemon, rosewood, green notes, peach

Heart notes: Jasmine, orris, carnation, orchid, ylang-ylang, leather, lily

Base notes: Vanilla, amber, benzoin siam, opopanax, oakmoss, sandalwood, vetiver, musk, civet

Nocturnes de Caron by Caron (1981)

Perfumer: Gerard Lefort

Nocturnes has all the hallmarks of a femme fatale perfume, but its restraint and subtlety mark it as a charming ingénue rather than a dangerous lady. A restrained, balanced, and yet multifaceted floral with a lot going on, Nocturnes de Caron could change the minds of all but the most stubborn haters of the floral category.

A combination of green notes, the freshest facets from florals (such as lily of the valley and rose), with a touch of ripe fruit and mandarin, Nocturnes gets a little curvier and more erotic with the introduction of rounder, fatter notes of vanilla, benzoin, and amber in the drydown, with a veil of powdery orris to blur and soften all the angles and curves.

Nocturnes starts off with an intense and gorgeous contrast between sharp green/fruity notes and the undertow of a voluptuous vanilla/amber base. The richer notes actually seem to rise up to meet the green beginning, only to disappear and rejoin them later after the florals have had their say.

Nocturnes’s spirit reminds me a bit of Ysatis, a lovely floral with a touch of coconut to fatten things up, or YSL’s Y. Its balance is my favorite part, managing to project “fresh and joyful,” with creamy warmth in the base.

As I’m sniffing my slightly sweet, slightly spicy/woody, gorgeously floraled hand, I wonder where all those well-behaved and yet still-interesting florals are now? There are a few contemporary florals that interest me (Frédéric Malle’s Carnal Flower, Mona di Orio’s Carnation), but they’re few and far between. What with all the ouds and exotic notes out there in perfume, it would almost be more subversive to make a truly interesting floral. Or, you could just buy some vintage Nocturnes de Caron.

Top notes: Aldehydes, bergamot, mandarin, leafy green, fruity note

Heart notes: Lily of the valley, rose, jasmine, cyclamen, lily, orris

Base notes: Vanilla, sandalwood, vetiver, benzoin, musk, amber

Nombre Noir by Shiseido (1981)

Perfumer: Jean-Yves Leroy

If Vent Vert smells like the color green, then Nombre Noir (“Black Number”) smells purple. Jammy, plummy, woody, and rosy, with a specially sourced osmanthus flower and high-powered damascones—molecules that come from Bulgarian rose oil and can impart rosy, fruity, woody, and/or tobacco facets—Nombre Noir was Shiseido’s first Western perfume under the creative direction of Serge Lutens and Yusui Kumai.

In the drydown, the woody-rosy, lipstick-waxiness of Nombre Noir settles into a bed of powdery honey with a not-unpleasant little chemical kick.

Top notes: Aldehydes, coriander, fruity note, bergamot, marjoram, rosewood

Heart notes: Rose, geranium, orris, jasmine, ylang-ylang, carnation, lily of the valley, osmanthus

Base notes: Sandalwood, vetiver, honey, amber, musk, benzoin, tonka

Ombre Rose by Broussard (1981)

Perfumer: Françoise Caron

In Michael Edwards’s Perfume Legends, we learn that Ombre Rose got its start as an old Roure perfume base, with a cosmetic note that smelled like vintage face powder. (Roure was a perfume school started by perfumer Jean Carles that is now a part of Givaudan.) “The fragrance of the original base has a very cosmetic note,” perfumer Pierre Bourdon said of Ombre Rose’s predecessor. “It rings a bell. That’s why it is so successful.” From there, Françoise Caron gave it a huge dose of coumarin (along with vanillin) to create a praline note. Perfumer Pierre Bourdon goes so far as to say that he considers Ombre Rose the first gourmand scent that was ever created.

One defining characteristic of postmodern texts is self-reflexivity—a self-conscious reference within the film, book, poem, or painting, for example, of its constructedness as a text. Ombre Rose is the first instance I’ve encountered in perfume of self-reflexivity; it’s a perfume that reflects on its Perfume-ness. Where Balenciaga’s Fleeting Moment addresses, in its name, perfume’s evanescent nature—its character as a substance that by definition disappears as soon as you encounter it—Ombre Rose calls out perfume as a medium for memory and nostalgia by using, as its base, a vintage perfume formula that smells like vintage face powder.

That reused Roure perfume base was itself being self-reflexive: By reproducing the scent of face powder (rather than a flower or something “natural”), it’s commenting on its own status as a cosmetic, but also on itself as an aesthetic medium. It reflects; it doesn’t merely reproduce. (I wonder if Ralf Schwieger, the nose for Frédéric Malle’s Lipstick Rose, was influenced by Ombre Rose. Lipstick Rose was constructed to smell, in part, like vintage lipstick—some say vintage Chanel, others vintage L’Oréal.)

Angela Sanders of the perfume blog Now Smell This wrote a post once about wit in perfumes. It seems to me that there’s something inherently witty about a perfume that calls attention to the scent of cosmetics, and to women’s relationship to the whole culture of cosmetics: the ritual, the aesthetics, and (let’s face it) the fetishization of it. What could be more fetishy than liking the smell of lipstick or face powder? Maybe wanting to smell it in your perfume and on your skin!

Top notes: Aldehydes, rosewood, geranium

Heart notes: Rose, sandalwood, orris, lily of the valley, cedarwood, vetiver

Base notes: Vanilla, musk, tonka, cinnamon, heliotrope

Sophia by Coty (1981)

There are some perfumes one encounters while sniffing through the twentieth century that don’t entirely fit into the style of that era. It’s as if the perfumer—in the case of Sophia Loren’s namesake perfume, unknown and unsung, as so many perfumers were—didn’t really bother to conform, and just did whatever he or she felt like doing.

Sophia is a little drugstore gem that is considered by many to be the first celebrity fragrance. It could be mistaken today for a $200 bottle of niche perfume, in terms of its quality and complexity. Caught on the cusp of the 1970s and ’80s, Sophia also smells like it could be a Lucien Lelong or Ciro perfume from the 1930s.

Although Sophia initially blooms with fresh, aldehydic florals and citrus notes, it balances its dry, spicy, and incensey qualities with its fresh, sweet ones. The voiceover in Sophia’s television commercial tells us that it is “the most female fragrance you’ll ever experience,” which is essentially meaningless when, thirty years later, one could say that leather, incense, and musk don’t exactly read as feminine.

This 1980 example is another in the genre of perfume ads that touted the newly liberated woman’s dual roles—in the boardroom and the bedroom—the latter role aided by perfume.

Top notes: Aldehyde complex, bergamot, orange, spice oils

Heart notes: Clove, cinnamon bark, jasmine, rose, orris, ylang-ylang, orchid

Base notes: Musk, amber, vetiver, sandalwood, vanilla, benzoin, leather, incense

Drakkar Noir by Guy Laroche (1982)

Perfumer: Pierre Wargyne

As a woman who loves green fragrances, I sidle up pretty quickly to men’s green scents, as they often take greenness to an extreme that happens only rarely in women’s fragrances. In Drakkar Noir’s case, this green is sustained throughout, from the herbaceous top to its piney center, down to its mossy, patchouli base. A hint of spice radiates from its center, but its freshness is its predominant character. From a comparison of notes, the difference between the 1972 Drakkar and its more-popular, ’80s “noir” version is largely the addition of leather and patchouli.

Top notes: Bergamot, artemisia, lemon, rosemary, green note

Heart notes: Cinnamon, cardamom, basil, pine needle

Base notes: Patchouli, moss, cedarwood, leather, amber, sandalwood

Island Gardenia by Jovan (1982)

Soft, subtle, and warm, like a humid gardenia flower midday in some tropical paradise, Island Gardenia is a sturdy little rendition of this voluptuous flower. There’s not a lot of development to it, but gardenia is backed up by tuberose’s wonderful bubblegum and rubber note, with a touch of creamy coconut. For a quick gardenia pick-me-up that didn’t break the bank, Island Gardenia was a wonderful drugstore choice. I can’t vouch for the present-day version.

Top notes: Green notes, coconut, peach, aldehydes

Heart notes: Gardenia, tuberose, jasmine, orange blossom, cyclamen

Base notes: Vanilla, civet, benzoin siam

Le Jardin by Max Factor (1982)

There’s a happy and secure tuberose in Le Jardin, pulling the same tricks it often does in other more-expensive perfumes, but this time, without making a big deal of itself. The momentary menthol plus tuberose combination reminds me of a less-potent version of mentholated tuberose in Serge Lutens’s Tubéreuse Criminelle. Although no one would mistake Le Jardin for Patou’s Joy, this little floral perfume manages to create a good impression on a small budget.

The fruit and green notes of Le Jardin’s opening are aerated by a subtle and charming spearmint note, made even more exotic with tarragon. This green, herbal aspect joins with buttery tuberose and light-green freshness from lily of the valley, and dries down to a powdery woody base with a smidge of spice, moss, sandalwood, and civet.

Le Jardin is a child of the ’70s much more than of the sweet ’80s, and an example of the kind of quality sadly missing from today’s drugstore fragrances.

Top notes: Fruit notes, green notes, bergamot, spearmint, tarragon

Heart notes: Jasmine, tuberose, cyclamen, lily of the valley, orris, rose, magnolia, ylang-ylang

Base notes: Cedar, sandalwood, moss, musk civet, amber

Amouage Gold by Amouage (1983)

Perfumer: Guy Robert

For their first fragrance, “Go big or go home” seems to have been Amouage’s perfume brief to perfumer Guy Robert, who called this fragrance the “crowning glory” of his career. Jasmine and rose are transformed into the Platonic Ideals of those flowers, casting off any dross, smoothing down their gowns, and flying up to the heavens in a purifying, religious ascension. As Amouage Gold dries down and the florals get more powerful, resinous myrrh warms them, and frankincense adds its cinnamon-like spice. The animal drydown pulls the perfume right back down to earth, with ambergris, civet, and musk melting with resins and florals into an animal/warm skin whisper.

A green aspect subtly merges with its lush, animalic base, and the slight cinnamon/incense of frankincense helps light up this perfume with a golden light from within, making the flowers feel even warmer and more opulent than they already are. Amouge Gold demonstrates the difference between couture versus a run-of-the-mill floral perfume. Seamless, beautiful, sensual, and heavenly.

Notes: Rose, lily of the valley, jasmine, frankincense, myrrh, orris, ambergris, civet, musk, cedarwood, sandalwood

Diva by Ungaro (1983)

Perfumer: Jacques Polge

When I was a teenager in the 1980s, my mother bought me a giant bottle of Diva in the crystal bottle with glass stopper. I would wear it occasionally, but it struck me as inappropriate, the equivalent of a fourteen-year-old in a pleated Emanuel Ungaro evening gown with plunging neckline.

Honeyed, creamy, spicy, and soft, Diva is at once fresh/floral and animalic/rich. The sweetness of ylang-ylang and jasmine are tempered with the soft-focus effects of orris, musk, and cistus (aka, labdanum), the resin from the rockrose bush that lends lush creaminess to scents. Patchouli, vetiver, and oakmoss add rough drama, while civet and honey (the civet more subtly than honey) add a touch of Eros to Diva’s ladylike demeanor.

One way of wearing such an outmoded scent like Diva today would be to put on a judicious amount early in the morning, with at least an hour for it to rest on your skin. (I have the parfum concentration, and one tiny drop has filled the air in a friend’s tiny apartment. Beware.) In the drydown, Diva retains its character while mellowing out enough so as not to scare your neighbors. Diva is like one of the big cats at the zoo: less intimidating, almost friendly while it’s napping.

Top notes: Bergamot, aldehyde, coriander, rosewood, hyacinth

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

Base notes: Patchouli, vetiver, honey, oakmoss, civet, musk, cistus

Jardins de Bagatelle by Guerlain (1983)

With a retro violet leading the way, Guerlain’s Jardins de Bagatelle has a lovely warm sweetness that pushes a green aspect. It doesn’t get interesting until its drydown, when its fruity-violet-lemon top, and heart that’s both green and sweet, settles into a spicy base with a hint of civet.

Top notes: Violet, blossom-calyx notes, bergamot, aldehyde, lemon

Heart notes: Rose, jasmine, narcissus, cassie, ylang-ylang, orris, orchid, lily of the valley

Base notes: Vetiver, cedarwood, civet, musk, patchouli, benzoin

Jil Sander Woman 2 by Jil Sander (1983)

Feminine, masculine. Floral, leather. Sweet, bitter. Rich, dry. Light, intense. It’s hard to believe Jil Sander Woman 2 came out in the ’80s, the decade that brought us scent bombs I love like Poison and Loulou. Known for her minimalist fashions and even called “The Queen of Less,” German designer Jil Sander became famous for her separates in black, white, and cream that could be mixed and matched, made for working women with big bank accounts and an eye for avant-garde style.

But her complex perfume is a different story. Jil Sander Woman 2 is a stunning, enigmatic floral-chypre animalic perfume that comes closest to Piguet’s iconic Bandit than any modernish perfume I’ve come across so far, in character if not in notes.

It opens with a burst of juicy-sweet green fruit and bergamot reminiscent of Miss Balmain’s mouthwatering intro (and that of Sikkim, Aramis, and Azurée), which contrasts with its Mojave Desert of a base: leathery, woody, bitter, dry—and ridiculously chic.

Woman 2 may also have a touch of IBQ (isobutyl quinoline), which is the love-it-or-hate-it arochemical Cellier so famously overdosed Bandit with. It creates a rubbery-tobacco ash-and-leather accord that sent some scared Bandit sniffers running for the hills. I’m sniffing my wrists now and get IBQ plus patchouli, sandalwood, moss, and incense, combined with the faintness of the green fruit/floral top and heart. A huffer, for sure.

Top notes: Aldehydes, fruit note, neroli, green note, bergamot

Heart notes: Tuberose, jasmine, rose, lily of the valley, orris, orchid, carnation

Base notes: Amber, cedarwood, castoreum, patchouli, civet, sandalwood, olibanum, benzoin, moss

Niki de Saint Phalle by Niki de Saint Phalle (1983)

Befitting a perfume that shows two entangled snakes on its cap, Niki de Saint Phalle is a heady green floral chypre that practically hisses and rattles its tail. Sour, green, fruity, and intense, the perfume smells like the collision between a lime, a peach, and rattlesnake venom. As it dries down (I visualize this poison elixir literally dripping down a wall), the florals snake their way past the hissing top notes, and the mossy, musky, woody base provides some antivenom to the bracing beginning.

Niki de Saint Phalle was a French model-turned-painter-sculptor-filmmaker-provocateur-perfumer who was influenced by Spanish architect Antonio Gaudi. Her most famous work is a sculpture garden in Tuscany called The Giardino dei Tarocchi (The Tarot Garden). Opened in 1998 after twenty years of work, The Tarot Garden pays homage to tarot card symbolism, and its garish colors and found-object style of construction informs the style of this extreme perfume. (She also did “shooting paintings,” in which colors underneath a plaster canvas were not revealed until she used a shotgun to expose them. No shrinking violet, this one! Way to move on from a modeling career!)

Initially the cacophony of green notes, fruit, spearmint, and herbaceous artemisia/marigold at the beginning just scared me off.

Now I’m more receptive to its nuances: the way the amber and olibanum hum their low, warm, sweet songs at the opening as the top notes are screeching; the fact that the spearmint note adds an unusual freshness; and the way the rich florals are almost guarded by the top notes, as if we’re thrown off the treasure by the snake-guards / top notes. (Or maybe the true character of this perfume lies in the top notes? I think so.)

A lot of floral chypres mellow significantly from their bright top notes to their chypre bases. Niki de Saint Phalle’s joyous and intimidating green/sour/sweet/floral freshness sings through the chypre base. It’s there hours into the drydown, and as I’m sniffing my wrists now, I smell a mossy/woody green note kissed with a touch of fruit.

Top notes: Green notes, tagetes (marigold), artemisia, peach, bergamot, spearmint

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

Base notes: Oakmoss, vetiver, sandalwood, olibanum, leather, amber, musk

Paris by Yves Saint Laurent (1983)

Perfumer: Sophia Grojsman

How does a perfumer compose a fragrance that smells like joy, hope, and innocence? Ask Sophia Grojsman, the nose behind beauties such as Calyx, White Linen, and Eternity. The word joy was the first word that came to mind when I revisited her perfume, Paris, the rose-based scent that doesn’t so much scream rose as it does interpret, with the help of other notes, what this flower stands for in the popular imagination.

Green, fresh, and bursting with sweet—but not oppressive—florals, Paris knocks you over with its good mood. If you’ve ever been to Paris in the spring, you know the kind of blinding beauty it can offer. At times it can seem like everything about Paris was made to give you sensory pleasure—the food, the architecture, the smells—and Grojsman’s Paris translates that flash of joy into perfume notes.

Violet and hyacinth bloom most prominently around Paris’s intense rosiness, while cedar and sandalwood give it an almost cinnamony spice. The drydown is a powdery whisper of musk and orris, which soften the perfume’s floral brightness.

What’s interesting to me about Paris is how recognizable the floral notes are, and yet their composition together signifies an idea, a mood, and a place. It’s also a painterly fragrance. You can almost “see” the artist painting her canvas made of flowers—a giant rose with a dab of lily here, a splash of violet there, creating (to switch metaphors) a kind of musical tension in its notes that sustains a happy, almost bittersweet mood, like a bubble that just might burst, or happiness that surely couldn’t sustain itself.

Top notes: Green notes, bergamot, hyacinth, blossom-calyx notes

Heart notes: Violet, rose, orris, jasmine, linden, lily of the valley, ylang-ylang

Base notes: Musk, cedarwood, moss, sandalwood, heliotrope

Sand and Sable by Coty (1983)

A simple but beautiful little drugstore tuberose/gardenia gem fattened by a suntanlotion-like accord, with green notes to offset the richness.

Notes: Tuberose, gardenia, jasmine, rose, green notes, and peach

Trussardi by Trussardi (1983)

Seeming more like a perfume from decades before it, heir to Fête de Molyneux, Miss Balmain, and other chypre-leather animalics, Trussardi is beautifully balanced between green/mossy and sweet/warm. It starts off with a rosy-green galbanum/rose/coriander accord that’s offset with a surprising touch of sweetness from sensual tuberose and ylang-ylang. Its freshness continues with transparent florals and leafiness, with geranium and lily of the valley leading the pack.

Once we reach Trussardi’s drydown, this gorgeous fragrance’s basic (basest) instincts come out with a dose of patchouli, musk, and leather. Aside from the amber and vanilla, it’s like a who’s who of animalic notes. Hours into it, the fresh, green, incensey-woody-mossy-leather impression remains, touched by subtle greens and florals. If you like Sinan, Paloma Picasso’s Mon Parfum, and other intense chypres, you’ll love Trussardi. It was clearly a child of the 1960s and 1970s.

Top notes: Coriander, green note, aldehydes, hyacinth, galbanum, bergamot

Heart notes: Ylang-ylang, jasmine, rose, tuberose, orris, geranium, lily of the valley

Base notes: Cedarwood, sandalwood, patchouli, styrax, olibanum, moss, vanilla, amber, musk, leather

Coco by Chanel (1984)

Perfumer: Jacques Polge

Fruity, spicy, and warm, Coco’s honeyed amber, benzoin, and vanilla represents the ’80s version of tasteful excess, with a perfect balance of shiny fabric, gold bracelets, rings, and glossy makeup. I really love the dose of patchouli in Coco, which gives it a touch of wildness and noir excitement that belies its other, friendlier notes.

Top notes: Fruit note, mandarin, pimento, aldehyde, coriander

Heart notes: Rose, carnation, ylang-ylang, cinnamon, orris, patchouli, vetiver, sandalwood, tuberose

Base notes: Olibanum, amber, benzoin, vanilla, musk, honey, civet

Lutèce by Houbigant (1984)

Lutèce is a spicy, powdery Oriental perfume that balances bright orange and lemony geranium with a rich base of woods, spice, and vanilla. Its nutty, confectionary heliotrope and vanilla recalls Ombre Rose, but it tones down the gourmand aspect and ups the citrus, dry woods, and cinnamon spice. Surprisingly well-balanced for a powdery, ’80s Oriental perfume. (The Dana version is largely the same.)

Top notes: Aldehydes, mandarin orange, brazilian rosewood, geranium

Heart notes: Peony, rosemary, orris root, vetiver, lily of the valley, cedar

Base notes: Tonka bean, cinnamon, musk, vanilla, heliotrope

Maxim’s de Paris by Cardin (1984)

Featured in Gigi, mentioned in Jean Renoir’s La Grande Illusion, and frequented by a who’s who of twentieth-century icons including Jean Cocteau, Marcel Proust, Maria Callas, and Jackie Onassis, Maxim’s was a legendary restaurant in Paris famous for its Art Nouveau decor, beautiful women, and visiting luminaries.

Maxim’s de Paris, the perfume, doesn’t stun its wearer into submission like many ’80s fragrances, balancing as it does floral and green notes, and sweetness with spice. (Its base is reminiscent of Rumba’s.) Maxim’s, in short, speaks softly, although it carries some big olfactory sticks.

Top notes: Bergamot, tagetes, green note, fruit note, mint, melon

Heart notes: Lily of the valley, cyclamen, rose, jasmine, ylang-ylang, orris, tuberose

Base notes: Sandalwood, musk, honey, vanilla, heliotrope, amber

Paloma Picasso Mon Parfum by Paloma Picasso (1984)

Daughter of Pablo Picasso turned Tiffany jewelry designer and perfumer, Paloma Picasso added her name and input to one of the best scents of the 1980s: the castoreum-rich green chypre that bears her name.

Paloma Picasso Mon Parfum has the sillage of an ’80s perfume but the gravitas and depth of a 1940s chypre. Green, floral, woody, spicy, mossy, and animalic—Mon Parfum is overdosed with castoreum, a leather note prominent in men’s scents, making it a classic feminine scent with masculine signifiers. It’s one of my favorite chypres of all time.

Subtler yet more animalic than the versions in black plastic bottles, Mon Parfum in the white glass bottle roars with a savage blast of civet and aldehydes in its opening, combined with innocent and transparent rose and lily of the valley. Leafy coriander and geranium then encircle the florals, both narcotic (tuberose, jasmine, ylang-ylang) and delicate (rose, lily of the valley), transposing them into another, more haunting key.

Every time I would put on Mon Parfum, I’d notice another nuance. Sometimes lily of the valley and rose seemed to waltz in with civet in the opening, and at other times the civet hid from me, and all I could smell was aldehydes. With the later formulas, there’s an everything-all-at-once quality, like a meal that was blended together, taking away your pleasure in sampling each part at your leisure. You get all the notes, but they’re roughly corralled and herded into your nose; you miss the delicate entrances, exits, and interplay of notes.

If you can only find Paloma Picasso in the black plastic bottles (and they are everywhere to be found), you’re still going to have a gorgeous fragrance on your hands, but what will be missing is what I got to finally experience with this Mon Parfum in the white bottle: real development, movement, and depth.

Top notes: Coriander, rosewood, bergamot, green note, aldehyde

Heart notes: Rose, geranium, tuberose, jasmine, lily of the valley, ylang-ylang

Base notes: Patchouli, vetiver, amber, musk, civet, benzoin, oakmoss

Sinan by Jean-Marc Sinan (1984)

The love child of Coriandre and Paloma Picasso’s Mon Parfum, Sinan has everything the adventurous chypre lover would want: soul, depth, eroticism, and wearability, with a whiff of the exotic. This spiced chypre, shot through with angular green florals, is the olfactory equivalent of putting on a turquoise-blue caftan and wearing big gold hoop earrings. (Think of brocaded silk, or Loulou de la Falaise during Yves Saint Laurent’s Orientalist phase.)

Sinan starts off green and herby, and its coriander, although prominent, is dosed with a lighter hand than it is in Coriandre. Geranium’s piquancy, lily of the valley’s green facet, and ylang-ylang’s sharp sweetness—all are lightly cloaked with the musty damp herbaceous blanket that is coriander.

Top notes: Bergamot, green note, coriander, aldehydes, rosewood

Heart notes: Rose, geranium, lily of the valley, jasmine, orris, ylang-ylang, cardamom

Base notes: Patchouli, vetiver, amber, moss, musk, cistus

Ysatis by Givenchy (1984)

Perfumer: Dominique Ropion

Ysatis is not only a pleasure to pronounce (look in the mirror, purse your lips, and whisper “Eee-saht-ees, by Jee-vahn-shee” just for kicks), it is also a gorgeous and sensual floral. The surprise (and indispensable) note is coconut, giving the perfume a hint of richness, fat, and calories. It acts like a soft-focus camera lens to blur the crisp florals and give them a vaguely nutty, milky, and ever-so-slightly sweet tropical feel that could have veered into gourmand territory but stops short. It’s Ysatis’s hint of the tropical that makes it interesting, and its sexy drydown is my favorite part. That’s when the notes, all tucked into bed and spooning together, melt onto your skin.

Top notes: Green note, aldehydes, fruit note, rosewood, coconut

Heart notes: Tuberose, jasmine, narcissus, carnation, rose, ylang-ylang

Base notes: Patchouli, sandalwood, castoreum, civet, oakmoss, amber, honey, cistus

Anne Klein II by Anne Klein (1985)

Subtle, by ’80s standards, the distinguished and lovely Anne Klein II bowed to the decade’s passion for Oriental fragrances with amber-colored hues but comes out unscathed: It doesn’t smell too outré or dated.

Anne Klein II starts off surprisingly green, and then transitions to a beautiful blend of flowers. Orange blossom and ylang-ylang in particular continue to peek through the perfume’s third stage, which is the perfume’s primary character: creamy, ambery, woody, and orris-caressed vanilla.

Top notes: Bergamot, green note, peach, rosewood, lemon

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

Base notes: Vanilla, amber, sandalwood, musk, patchouli, civet, benzoin

Derby by Guerlain (1985)

Perfumer: Jean-Paul Guerlain

Not many scents have mint notes in them—not only because of the association mint has with things like toothpaste, and, in England, cleaning products, but because it would take a steady hand to figure out how much to add in order to keep mint from taking over. But Derby, Guerlain’s chypre leather, puts peppermint to good use. What would otherwise be a beautiful but typical chypre leather transforms, through the addition of peppermint, into something sparkling, shot through with a cold, almost metallic quality, as if something otherwise dark were lit from within.

Top notes: Bergamot, lemon, artemisia, peppermint (fresh herbaceous)

Heart notes: Pimento, rose, pepper, mace, jasmine

Base notes: Leather, vetiver, sandalwood, patchouli, moss (leathery, mossy, woody)

La Nuit by Paco Rabanne (1985)

Perfumer: Jean Guichard

Three words: spiced, honeyed leather. (It’s also a contemporary version of Schiaparelli’s 30s scent, Shocking.)

Top notes: Citrus, basil

Heart notes: Rose, honey

Base notes: Oakmoss, woods, leather, patchouli, civet

Obsession by Calvin Klein (1985)

Perfumer: Jean Guichard

Until I picked it up recently, I hadn’t sniffed Obsession since the 1980s, so I was surprised at how restrained it seems to be in hindsight, and how well it’s held up. Part of Obsession’s success lies in its ability to take you in two olfactory directions at once: It balances a sensual, ambery, and powdery base with a radiating orangey heart that’s kept fresh with green notes and bright fruit. Spice and animal warmth never threaten to undo the paradoxical green freshness at its heart. Although updated with the ’80s obsession with bright fruit accords, its Shalimar-like structure of bright/sensual/animalic is familiar, and it works.

Top notes: Bergamot, green note, peach, lemon, rosewood

Heart notes: Jasmine, ylang-ylang, rose, cedarwood, sandalwood

Base notes: Vanilla, amber, musk, moss, civet

Poison by Christian Dior (1985)

For many, this monster floral is aptly named. It is a true love-it-or-hate-it fragrance. (Ad from 1985)

Perfumer: Edouard Flechier

It’s hard to believe that Poison is almost thirty years old. This much-maligned and equally beloved ’80s scent bomb with a bad reputation still grips my imagination. With its aubergine-colored, fairy-tale apple meets vintage apothecary bottle with a crystalline stopper, Poison is nothing if not provocative. You either love it or hate it—usually for the same reasons!

Rich, woody, spicy, and occasionally veering into a grape-bubblegum accord, Poison is like Shiseido’s Féminité du Bois with the cedarwood turned down and the tuberose-jasmine turned way, way up. The continuum of berrylike scents from Femme, to Magie Noire, to Féminité du Bois, shows the versatility of the berry/Prunol note, as well as its goth-erotic sensibility.

Although Poison comes on strong, the scent balances its intensity with a symphony of background notes that keeps it from being one-dimensional. Poison’s spice (cinnamon, coriander, carnation), woods, and musk temper its floral sweetness. It mellows out with an opiate-like softness, partly sweet, partly woody, musky, and incensey. Perfumer Edouard Flechier confirms that IFRA restrictions have continuously changed its original formula since its inception.

Top notes: Coriander, pimento, plum, anise, mace, rosewood, carnation

Heart notes: Rose, tuberose, ylang-ylang, carnation, cinnamon, jasmine, lily of the valley

Base notes: Cedarwood, vetiver, sandalwood, musk, heliotrope, vanilla, opoponax

Sables by Annick Goutal (1985)

Perfumer: Isabelle Doyen

If bigness is the mark of a 1980s scent, then Sables (“Sands”) is very much of its time. This out-of-character Goutal fragrance for men explodes on your skin with the smells of burnt sugar, fenugreek, the savory-sweet Immortelle flower, buttery sandalwood, and amber, like a dessert doused with brandy and lit on fire.

In addition to its bigness, Sables also smells like a twenty-first-century unisex niche perfume, its striking weirdness due in part to its being built around the maple syrup/savory bacon/ham note of the Immortelle flower. (This “Everlasting” flower is notorious for challenging perfumers to construct something that doesn’t simply smell like Sunday brunch.) Sables’s slight anisic, herbaceous, and celery-like scent recalls the dried cooking herb, fenugreek, which is used in curries and Middle Eastern cooking.

The perfume’s heat—suggested in notes like cinnamon and pepper—is also the metaphorical heat from sand dunes, summer, and perhaps the oft-imagined “exotic” winds that carry floral and food spices from markets across stretches of desert. It places itself, then, in the middle of this recurring trope in perfumes such as Lucien Lelong’s Sirocco and Serge Lutens’s olfactory Orientalist fantasy, Chergui (2001), both names for hot, Moroccan desert winds. (Speaking of Serge Lutens, his Christopher Sheldrake–composed Santal de Mysore [1991], with its buttered popcorn and cumin notes, smells like a toned-down homage to Sables, minus the cinnamon and maple syrup.)

Sables takes a few tries to get, and you might just end up appreciating it without loving it, but that it came out in the 1980s—the era of big flowers and big fruit—is a testament to Isabelle Doyen’s prescience, brilliance, and daring. (Get thee to an Annick Goutal counter and try this stuff! Miraculously, it’s still around.)

Notes: Immortelle, cinnamon, pepper, black tea, sandalwood, amber

Calyx by Prescriptives (1986)

Perfumer: Sophia Grojsman

Equal parts guava and grapefruit, Sophia Grojsman’s stunner Calyx is arguably one of the best of its fruity genre. Its genius? Reproducing the funky fruit-going-bad ripeness of tropical fruits like guava, jackfruit, and durian. Added to Calyx’s overripe sweetness—more aromatic than sweet—is the bitter freshness of a grapefruit accord so authentic-smelling I can almost taste the rind.

Calyx’s initial slightly rotting fruit note dips down low, like an orchestra that opens by allowing the musical saw to sound its first wavering, carnivalesque note. Once the rest of its song gets back on its feet to a “normal” register, that fruit-on-the-verge-of-going-bad note lingers, coloring the way the rest of Calyx’s fruity floral notes are experienced.

With as much fruit that’s packed into this perfume, you’d think that it would be cloying and overbearing, like the fruit bombs that stink up Sephora’s perfume aisles today. But, again, Calyx’s intelligence belies its often ditzy fruity-floral perfume category.

Top notes: Peach, apricot, cassis, green notes, tagetes (marigold), spearmint, bergamot

Heart notes: Lily of the valley, lily, jasmine, rose, cyclamen, melon, orris

Base notes: Cedar, musk, moss, raspberry

Jil Sander Woman 3 by Jil Sander (1986)

JSW3 starts off with a juicy galbanum-laced start, its pronounced masculine feel (perhaps) from the coriander, rosewood, and bay leaf combo. JSW3’s heart is gorgeous: It retains traces of the green, fresh top notes, and then moves to a powdery orris that transitions to spring-fresh florals. By the time it begins to dry down, you feel you’ve been on a roller-coaster ride of personalities. As the fresh green opening hovers over florals and powder, its animalic base rounds it all off with with a mossy, incensey, leathery, creamy sandalwood finish.

As much as I like Jil Sander Woman 3, it confuses me a little. Its pieces don’t fit together or even clash in a way that makes sense. It feels unfinished, although each time I sniff my wrists I get something gorgeous. It resembles a scent you could find at Barneys now—niche, and a little experimental.

Top notes: Green note, bergamot, coriander, aldehyde, rosewood, bay

Heart notes: Rose, ylang-ylang, carnation, jasmine, lily of the valley, geranium, orris, tuberose

Base notes: Patchouli, castoreum, sandalwood, olibanum, benzoin, amber, moss, vanilla

Panthère by Cartier (1986)

Perfumer: Alberto Morillas

There was once a myth that the panther was the one animal that smelled so amazing that its prey would voluntarily approach it just to catch a whiff of its narcotic fragrance. It seems that Cartier missed an opportunity to make this perfume as animalic as its name suggests. Instead, Panthère is a voluptuous, complex, sweet floral that dries down to woods, and balances fruit notes with white flowers.

Top notes: Karo Karounde, tagetes, peach, mace

Heart notes: Coriander, jasmine, gardenia, rose, heliotrope, carnation, ylang-ylang

Base notes: Cedar, sandalwood, patchouli, moss, musk, amber, vanilla, tonka

Parfum de Peau by Claude Montana (1986)

Perfumer: Jean Guichard

Known as the “King of the Shoulder Pads,” and an influence on wild designers like the late Alexander McQueen, Claude Montana gifted the 1980s with extreme, sculptural silhouettes and shoulder pads Lady Gaga eagerly borrowed from. But alas, the House of Montana, founded in 1979, went kaput in 1997.

Parfum de Peau starts off with tangy green notes, ripe cassis, and peach, laid over a veil of pepper and spices (cardamom). The unspecified green note almost has a vegetal green pepper smell—an odd note to marry with ripe fruit! Spicy ginger, sandalwood, and carnation join classic florals to the divine base that lasts for hours and evolves into a true “parfum de peau” (skin scent/perfume).

Depending on when I sniff my arm, Parfum de Peau gives me spicy fruit, an intense rose, or the amazing spicy-woody-powdery, animalic base that makes this perfume more of a floral Oriental to me than a fruity chypre, as the Haarmann & Reimer Fragrance Guide classifies it. (Or it’s some hybrid of both.)

What makes this fruity concoction sexy rather than innocent or cloying is its animalic nature. Cardamom and cassis are both notes that can reference the body, BO in the first instance and urine (cat pee, specifically!) in the second. Joined with the more-obvious animalics—castoreum and civet—you can see why this is not a perfume to put on before you go to church on Sunday.

Parfum de Peau represents everything the 1980s stands for in the popular imagination: It’s loud, daring, and cacophonous. But it’s also incredibly beautiful, and I’ve had it on my mind since I put it on last night. Even though the version I have is a mere eau de toilette, I can smell its subtle woody-ambery powderiness on my skin almost an entire day later.

Top notes: Peach, cassis, pepper, green note, plum, cardamom

Heart notes: Ginger, rose, tuberose, jasmine, ylang-ylang, carnation, sandalwood

Base notes: Patchouli, vetiver, civet, castoreum, amber, musk, olibanum (frankincense)

Parfum Rare by Jacomo (1986)

Parfum Rare belongs to an uncommon and wonderful perfume category: the animalic fruity-floral chypre. Ripe, spicy, and mossy, it starts at a low register, with hooded eyes and slurred speech, and goes from its fruity-fresh green note to a rottenish base of leather (probably castoreum in all its overdosed glory), amber, musk, and moss. Grab it (or its kind) while you can, before The Man takes away every ingredient that’s special about this perfume from the olfactory palettes of perfumers.

Top notes: Cassis, tagetes, aldehydes, bergamot, green note

Heart notes: Jasmine, tuberose, rose, lily of the valley, orris, ylang-ylang

Base notes: Patchouli, leather, benzoin, styrax, olibanum, amber, musk, moss

Scherrer 2 by Jean-Louis Scherrer (1986)

Pineapple is not a note you encounter often in perfume. In Patou’s Colony, it joined with an unusual chypre leather base and somehow worked. Scherrer 2 almost approaches a chypre elegance and counterpoint to sweet pineapple with its woody base, but it falls short of justifying the use of pineapple.

Top notes: Aldehydes, bergamot, mandarin, pineapple, anise, green note

Heart notes: Lily of the valley, rose, jasmine, lily, orris, tuberose, honey

Base notes: Vanilla, sandalwood, benzoin, amber, musk, heliotrope

Eau Dynamisante by Clarins (1987)

Perfumer: Jacques Courtin-Clarins

One of the most beautiful lemon-forward perfumes available, Eau Dynamisante was marketed as the first perfume with firming, toning, and energizing benefits. It could be dismissed as a mere aromatherapy product, but that would be a pity. With a soaring aromatic-green citrus opening supported by the spice of carnation and patchouli, by the time it blends and dries down on your skin, what’s left is an herbal-citrus skein of happiness. A refreshing aperitif in a decade of rich sauce-heavy entrees.

Top notes: Orange, coriander, caraway, lemon, petit grain

Heart notes: Rosemary, carnation, cardamom, thyme

Base notes: Patchouli

Loulou by Cacharel (1987)

Perfumer: Jean Guichard

I’ve never been into perfumes that are “seductive” in a conventionally feminine way. While some women wear Viktor & Rolf’s Flowerbomb or Victoria’s Secret Very Sexy, I’m happy smelling like overripe flowers (Diorella) or someone’s overripe armpit (Aramis).

This doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate perfume in that girly genre, if done well, and Loulou by Cacharel does it well. With a gently sweet opening of black currants, fresh top notes and florals, and a decadently rich vanilla heart, Loulou dries down to incense and woods, adding mystery to the perfume’s more-conventional come-on. Loulou lives up to the supposed perfume brief Jean Guichard was given by Cacharel: to create a perfume that projects both “tenderness and seduction.”

Loulou was the sequel to Anaïs Anaïs (1978), a straight-up “innocent” floral, and it was also heir to Ombre Rose (1981), whose praline and vanilla notes proved popular. (Until Ombre Rose, vanilla had been out of vogue for decades.) We’re told that Loulou also attempted to soften the harshness of Dior’s Poison (1985) through its intense vanilla note. Among everything else 1980s perfumes overdosed on, apparently vanilla was one of them.

I could never wear Loulou, but its vanilla/incense–sandalwood combination is pretty intoxicating. The vanilla is so rich and gourmand, it runs through Loulou like a vanilla version of the chocolate river that ran through Willy Wonka’s candy factory. By the end, the scratchy-spicy base notes add a maturity and sophistication to the fragrance’s sweetness.

Top notes: Bergamot, violet, plum, mace, cassis (black currant buds), tagetes (marigold), anise

Heart notes: Jasmine, tuberose, orange blossom, ylang-ylang, rose, orris, lily of the valley

Base notes: Cedar, vetiver, sandalwood, tonka, heliotrope, vanilla, benzoin, musk

Passion by Elizabeth Taylor (1987)

In 1957, Audrey Hepburn was the face in ads for Givenchy’s L’Interdit, a perfume created exclusively for her a few years before. In the 1970s and 1980s, untold numbers of Chanel No. 5 ads featured Catherine Deneuve staring impassively at the viewer, her iconicity and elegance synonymous with the Chanel brand. But it wasn’t until the 1980s that the celebrity scent as we know it—the perfume branded with and marketed by the celebrity himself or herself—came into being. Sophia Loren had one (Sophia, in 1980), Cher had one (1988), and Elizabeth Taylor, starting with Passion, ended up with roughly a dozen fragrances.

Passion was La Liz’s first fragrance, and it is surprisingly “difficult” for a celebrity scent, with a lot of leather, musk, patchouli, sandalwood, artemisia, and coriander to offset the easier tuberose-y florals and honey that make it so unmistakably an 1980s scent.

Top notes: Aldehydes, bergamot, gardenia, coriander, artemisia

Heart notes: Jasmine, rose, tuberose, orris, honey, heliotrope, patchouli, sandalwood, cedar

Base notes: Oakmoss, castoreum, civet, cistus, leather, musk, vanilla

Boucheron by Boucheron (1988)

Perfumers: Francis Deleamont and Jean-Pierre Bethouart

Boucheron starts off, well, very sweet: Orange blossom is flanked with fruit and a tiny bit of herbal basil. It’s got that Amarige screech of sweetness that so many ’80s fragrances do, and which today in perfumes stands out like Dynasty-style shoulder pads. The “fruit complex,” which must be laboratory-made, smells very synthetic and contributes to the difficulty I have with this perfume. Its floral heart joins treacly jasmine and tuberose with a dose of some angles (geranium? narcissus?) and lightness, perhaps from lily of the valley. Boucheron’s drydown makes the sweetness a little more tolerable, and it evolves into a warm and woody/spicy base that veers toward the Oriental. I’m not a huge fan, but I may be in the minority.

Top notes: Bergamot, lemon, cassis, fruit complex, basil, orange blossom

Heart notes: Jasmine, orris, lily of the valley, tuberose, geranium, cedarwood, sandalwood

Base notes: Ambrein, tonka, benzoin, oakmoss, olibanum (frankincense), civet, musk

A science brief as perfume ad, Jovan Andron claims that it contains the human pheromone Alpha Androstenol. (Ad from 1983)

Ex’cla.ma’tion by Coty (1988)

Perfumer: Sophia Grojsman

You can detect Sophia Grojsman’s signature of joy in the absurdly named Ex’cla.ma’tion; however, it’s like a Forever 21 dress with great ideas but poor materials. Although lovers of Ex’cla.ma’tion say that it was an affordable perfume at a time when department-store perfumes were too expensive for young women and teens, I just can’t get past how cheap this perfume smells.

Fruity, vanillic, and musky, Ex’cla.ma’tion’s green note is dissonant, putting it in the Eden and Must de Cartier school of perfumes that invite the question, “Where is that strange note coming from?” Haarmann & Reimer list it as a floral, but to me this is a fruity Oriental perfume. The green note and bergamot keep it from being too weighed down (after all, it’s an exclamation point, not a semicolon or ellipses). It’s like a teenager in a woman’s gown. Try as she might, she’s in an ill-fitting dress.

Top notes: Peach, apricot, green note, bergamot

Heart notes: Orris, rose, jasmine, heliotrope, lily of the valley

Base notes: Cedar, amber, sandalwood, vanilla, musk, cinnamon

Fahrenheit by Christian Dior (1988)

Perfumers: Jean-Louis Sieuzac and Maurice Roger

Fahrenheit’s temperature rises from its chilly, fresh opening to its warming base of ambery leather. As its thermostat adjusts itself, the less-volatile climes of violet and cedar create an equanimity that seems like its true personality. Because this is the kind of scent men wore when I was growing up, it smells classically masculine to me, but in comparison to men’s fragrances now, this “masculinity” wrapped itself around a surprisingly floral and sweet center.

Top notes: Bergamot, lemon, lavender, violet, mace, chamomile

Heart notes: Jasmine, lily of the valley, cedarwood, sandalwood

Base notes: Amber, patchouli, leather, tonka, musk

Knowing by Estée Lauder (1988)

Perfumer: Jean Kerleo

Knowing is a bold, green, 1980s-style green floral chypre with fruit and woods, and with a hint of Paloma Picasso’s intense animalic base. In the way that you might pause when eating a delicious Vietnamese meal and wonder, suspiciously, if you just ingested loads of MSG, you might pause when sniffing Knowing and ask yourself which note is synthetic and projecting like it’s on steroids? Sometimes beauty and pleasure can bypass such questions, and for me, Knowing is one of those cases: Ignorance is bliss.

Top notes: Green note, coriander, orange, aldehyde

Heart notes: Rose, jasmine, lily, cardamom, cedarwood, vetiver

Base notes: Patchouli, oakmoss, honey, musk, amber, civet

Roma by Laura Biagiotti (1988)

Take Shalimar, with its bergamot, vanilla, and civet base; add a big dose of amber, a smidgen of black currant, and the scent from Doublemint gum’s powdery foil—and you have the sparkling, warm, sweet-spicy floriental perfume, Roma, by Italian fashion designer Laura Biagiotti.

Like some perfumes in the Oriental category, Roma gets a lift from hesperidic top notes. They seem to linger throughout Roma’s development, lightening the perfume’s mood so that we don’t take it too seriously. The uplift from bergamot and pink grapefruit plus that quirky touch of powdery mint keeps Roma’s character from falling into the brooding or overly decadent. It seems fresh and carefree for a perfume in this category. (The fluted, frosted bottle looks like a Roman column.)

Mint is said to be a difficult note to use in fragrance without evoking Scope mouthwash or toothpaste, so it’s surprising it works so well in a floriental with such prominent vanilla and amber. You’d think it would clash or seem unappetizing, but its freshness works well with richer notes.With a fresh, sparkling opening with extra zip from mint; a floral heart that gives it a soft femininity; and a vanillic/ambery/civet base with creamy/spicy sandalwood for depth and warmth, Roma is an approachable, unpretentious beauty.

Top notes: Bergamot, pink grapefruit, black currant, mint

Heart notes: Jasmine, rose, lily of the valley

Base notes: Sandalwood, vanilla, amber, musk, patchouli, oakmoss, civet

Rumba by Balenciaga (1988)

Perfumers: Jean-Claude Ellena with Ron Winnegrad

To discover that Jean-Claude Ellena was a co-nose of Rumba is like stumbling upon a photo of a chic movie star before she had a stylist, wearing some ’80s getup with big shoulders, a profusion of ruffles, and huge hair. Like a pre-stylist starlet, Rumba is a beautiful, hot mess.

Some may know that before Ellena had his Minimalist Phase (Bulgari’s Eau Parfumée Au Thé Vert, Hermès’s Un Jardin Sur Le Nil, etc.), he was in what could only be described as a Maximalist Phase. Among his Maximalist creations: First by Van Cleef & Arpels (1976), with its huge floral bouquet, and the honeyed floral animalic Rumba, which starts out loud and fruity and dries down to a husky-throated woody-leather-musk affair.

A rumba, derived from the Cuban-Spanish word rumbo, meaning “party” or “spree,” is a ballroom dance based on a folk dance in duple time of Cuban-Spanish-African origins. It’s heavy on the hip-swaying and passion, and Ellena does his best to translate this larger-than-life drama into perfume.

If you can get past the huge fruity-floral opening (usually my least favorite style, but maybe you love that sort of thing), you might find yourself liking parts of Rumba in spite of yourself. It has that Amarige/Poison-like syrupy fruit-tuberose-honey opening that could put you into a diabetic coma, but then in a flash, Rumba gets incensey and a little rough. Rumba’s drydown is, in fact, dry, and such a welcome counterpoint to its fruity treacle: Cedar, sandalwood, and styrax create an incense effect that’s both mysterious and sexy.

Styrax is an interesting note often used to create leather scents. A gum-resin from the bark of a styrax tree, it imparts a leathery, smoky, balsamic (powdery-ambery) effect that perfumer Olivier Polge has said can give a chypre-like quality to perfumes. (Maybe this is why my Haarmann & Reimer guide has categorized Rumba as a floral-chypre animalic, even though there is no bergamot or oakmoss—the usual chypre ingredients—listed in the notes?)

I read a description somewhere of Rumba that stuck with me—that its drydown is like the inside of an old cathedral during mass, the smell of dripping beeswax candles combined with burning frankincense. If this aspect of the perfume were foregrounded and just slightly sweetened with the other notes, what a completely different dance Rumba would be. But then, it wouldn’t be the ’80s fragrance that it is …

Maybe Rumba is the perfume that sent Jean-Claude Ellena fleeing into the arms of Perfume Minimalism, like a drunk to rehab after a weekend bender.

Top notes: Peach, raspberry, green note, orange blossom

Heart notes: Tuberose, jasmine, rose, carnation, heliotrope, lily of the valley, honey

Base notes: Cedar, sandalwood, amber, tonka, vanilla, musk, styrax

Ça Sent Beau by Kenzo (1989)

When I was a kid, I used to love this strange candy at my corner store that consisted of flavored water injected into a wax cylinder. Usually, the candy was very sour or bright, which wildly and wonderfully contrasted with the wax you’d chew to get into the juicy center.

That’s what Ça Sent Beau (“It Smells Good”) reminds me of: a juicy, fruity floral (and not just any floral, a one-two tuberose/jasmine punch brightened by mandarin and orange blossom) embedded in beeswax, amber, and heavy musk. You can smell the sharpness of fruit, orange blossom, tuberose, and lily of the valley, but they’re clouded, enriched, thickened by an inexplicable waxy heaviness. A beautiful chypre base keeps the perfume from being confectionary. It smells good, indeed.

Top notes: Fruit complex, spice, notes, bergamot, mandarin, green complex, orange blossom

Heart notes: Tuberose, lily of the valley, jasmine, rose, carnation, coriander, cumin, orris, cedarwood, sandalwood

Base notes: Vetiver, patchouli, moss, amber, musk

Samsara by Guerlain (1989)

Perfumer: Jean-Paul Guerlain

When I first smelled Samsara a few years ago, I concluded that it was a polite jasmine scent without much character. It didn’t seem to make the most of the opportunity it had to express in perfume form the dramatic Buddhist notion of samsara, or the endless cycle of birth and suffering and death and rebirth.

I still don’t know if a perfume can express samsara, but my thinking on Samsara has itself cycled to a new place. Did I get a better version of Samsara? Was my first sniff of a reformulated Samsara, without the depth? Or perhaps it is I who have become deeper, more open, about what I can appreciate, if not wear?

All I know is, the second time around, Samsara won me over. Its top notes momentarily reference the fruitiness of many 1980s scents, but its main character is a buttery-rich sandalwood infused with decadent jasmine. Smooth and slightly spicy, Samsara is an ’80s power fragrance with more class than crass.

Top notes: Bergamot, lemon, green note, peach, tarragon

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

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