You might think my failure to keep up with celebrity news and gossip would be a handicap when it came to reviewing celebrity perfumes, but it's really an asset: it's much easier to consider a perfume objectively when you know little or nothing about the person fronting it. And since most celebrities have little or nothing to do with developing the perfumes released under their names, it seems silly to worry about who they are and what they do anyway, other than insofar as their shenanigans might affect perfume sales.
Elizabeth Taylor is another matter. She's an icon, for heaven's sakes — even I know who Elizabeth Taylor is. Plus she's 78 years old, and not in the best of health. I readily admit that if her latest perfume, Violet Eyes, turned out to be hilariously vile, I'd have a pretty hard time saying so.1
Luckily, it isn't hilariously vile. It isn't going to go down in the history books, but it's fine. The opening is sharp citrus, slightly green and woody, with pale peach skin. It isn't overly fruity, and it isn't overly sweet. The heart is a soft blended floral — apparently jasmine, rose and peony — and the base is a creamy, just-slightly-powdery pale musky woods with a touch of vanilla sugar. It's feminine, romantic, clean, and very middle-of-the-road safe. It is about the last thing you'd picture the Elizabeth Taylor pictured in the Violet Eyes fragrance ad wearing, but that is neither here nor there: it ought to make it a perfect Mother's Day present for the right Elizabeth Taylor fan.
The quick poll: name your favorite Elizabeth Taylor movie, and give Miss Taylor's character the perfect fragrance.
Elizabeth Taylor Violet Eyes was developed by perfumer Carlos Benaïm. It's available in 50 ml Eau de Parfum, $52.
1. "Hilariously vile" was Tania Sanchez of Perfumes: The Guide on Paris Hilton Heiress.
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
I just LOVE the script…but also love the backstory of Taylor and Burton…
Taylor as Martha might be wearing Fracas…or maybe something like Carnal Flower because only her husband’s students would be wearing Fracas….and she’d want to be better, more refined…and yet she’d spray it on like all get out to totally annoy her hubby!
I was thinking of that movie, too. Somehow I can picture Martha wearing Bandit.
That would work too.
Absolutely, Elise.
I imagine Martha would be wearing Tigress from that period. The only line I can quote off the top of my head from that movie is Taylor to George Segal, “Hey, stud!”
Tigress would be perfect for Martha!
I’m sure this perfume isn’t really “Elizabeth Taylor” but then the face in the ad isn’t either. What happened to her heart-shaped face and wide-set eyes? See this:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3088/3098880225_2606ca0106_o.jpg
For some reason, this depresses me more than whatever is in the bottle. I mean, if Elizabeth Taylor’s natural looks aren’t good enough, what is?
Wow, that’s a great shot!
Indeed. I knew there was something distinctively off about the way she looked in it. It’s like they’ve Photoshopped her face to be thinner to appeal to the contemporary model aesthetic. Liz is arguably one of the most lovely actresses Hollywood’s ever had, why take away from her real beauty for this?
It’s interesting, isn’t it? The effect it had is that it took away her softness, which you’d think would be contrary to their intent. Whatever. I wish we lived in a world were beauty wasn’t so rigidly defined, but I can dream that it will change… sigh…
Excellent point, suddenly! If she’s really got to be retouched, we’re all in trouble.
Yes, the photo is almost not her, if you didn’t see it in the ad with her name attached…hard to imagine a more timelessly beautiful face, both in the flesh in her old movies and in the wondrous publicity shots, so why shop it so strangely?
Stunning!
Her lips look odd in the ad, too. Not sure if that’s due to broadening and lengthening the lower part of her face or if they just felt the mouth had to be different. It’s a beautiful face, but it seems kind of creepy when you compare with the original Liz. Shudder!!
I actually don’t think that is Ms. Taylor. Lovely as the model is there is a mole at her throat and I have yet to see that on any Elizabeth Taylor shot. Like good ol’ Marilyn Monroe and the adorable Betti Page, temptresses of all sorts find there way among again and again in the copy cats of today. The model is lovely but I doubt she’d ever pass for the true Ms. Taylor. A good layer of make-up, the right lighting and exceptional photographer and I could be Greta Garbo!
It’s clearly a photograph of her taken when she was much younger. I can remember her looking like that.
I’ve been kind of mulling this over all day, and while obviously the ad image is manipulated a bit, as print ads always are, I don’t see anything egregious about this. Maybe it’s just me not seeing it. I think personalities can be chameleons and often so much depends on camera lens, hairstyle, lighting, and so forth. If anything, her eyes may have been brought a tiny bit closer together, but if you compare the image that SI posted above with the ad and the one below, to me, it’s still clearly the same person:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_H_h1mxbR0DU/SsKJMVJVeAI/AAAAAAAAC8U/ilGEP9i7ytI/s400/eyes88.jpg
Haven’t liked any thing put out under her name yet, but when this hits the stores I know I’ll give it a sniff.
As much as I really liked her in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, I’m gonna go with a movie I saw for the first time last year: Lassie Come Home. I’m not a sappy-pet-movie person, but that movie had me on the edge of my seat and crying! LOL!
She was the most beautiful little girl. Her character was well-to-do and rode horses in her lovely tweed riding habit. Children don’t really wear perfume, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she smelled faintly of Yardley’s English Lavender. (something I had as a girl)
Oh, I have not seen that in years…I should make my son watch it with me!
My daughter’s reaction was “oh my gosh, what ELSE can go wrong for this dog?!?!” which I thought was so funny!
It’s a toss-up for me between “A Place in the Sun” and “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”. She was so smoldering and beautiful in both films–and I’ve always loved her gutsy personality. She doesn’t look remotely the same now, but at one time no one could surpass her. As for her perfume, mostly what I can imagine is something that is no longer made, however, for now I can picture her spritzing on Carnal Flower, Le Parfum de Therese, or even Black Orchid. She is a classic and one of a kind.
I had no idea she was in that! Now I need to find it.
I have to say, part of the reason I always loved her is that she loves animals. I remember a quote from her when she was young and someone asked her what type of man she wanted to grow up to marry, and she said, “Someone who can keep me in horses.” Too bad that didn’t work out for her–not just the horses, but the marriages.
Agree on Lassie Come Home! Yardley’s English Lavender would suit her there, of course, but does anyone know a scent called Devonshire Violet or Devon Violet? All I remember of it is a charming little bottle that my grandmother gave to me as a playtoy when it was empty. I might have been five or six at the time; the bottle, for all I know, may have kicking around her house for decades.
I think I’ve heard of that – it may still be available, try:
http://www.devonviolets.com
and good luck. If it’s good, please let me know!
Nope, that link doesn’t work. Try this one:
http://www.pixieland.co.uk/devon_violets.asp
That was it, Mals, thanks. The three-sided “dimple” bottle with the flowers painted on each side: attractively old-fashioned.
I remember, as a teenager, my fascination with her first (?) fragrance: the juice was purple-hued, and I found the idea pretty cool!
Maybe my favorite movie of hers is a cat on a hot tin roof….
Is she wearing Shalimar or Jicky?
Probably Jicky, in extrait….
Maggie definitely strikes me as a Jicky kind of a character, as well.
That’s probably my favorite too, although also love Place in the Sun. Great perfume picks!
Oh, that movie makes me so sad! Who was the other actress in that? I felt so terrible for her. My favorite thing in that movie, though, is whenever Montgomery Cliff (it was him, right?) would have crazy thoughts you’d hear the call of the cuckoo bird. 🙂 Loved it. I sometimes feel like there should be a cuckoo soundtrack around me.
I feel like Liz’s character in A Place in the Sun would have worn Chanel, possibly No. 19.
It was a young Shelley Winters!
It’s interesting to note that Shelley very nearly did not get that role. The directors thought she was way too sexy to play a frumpy girl. She gained weight and auditioned additional times in drab clothing before they finally bought her as a plain-Jane.
Interesting…she ended up doing frumpy perfectly!
I haven’t seen most of her films, but I really loved Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. http://www.imdb.com/media/rm157980672/tt0051459
Jicky is a great choice. I’m also thinking Weil Secret of Venus Zibeline. 🙂
Oh, no one on earth is more beautiful than Liz at her best. One of my favorites is A Place in the Sun, with Montgomery Clift. (great book, too.) Liz’s character is a wide eyed, innocent rich girl – I think she’d wear something like the very earliest version of L’Air de Temps. Now I have to look up the movie on Netflix 🙂
Good — glad to see that movie get a vote!
Rosarita-I second your movie (and scent) choice. My other movie would be National Velvet-and the scent choice for that would be Brandy.
Dear hubby thought I was kidding when I mentioned that Miss Liz Taylor was one of the most beautiful actresses of all time. Then he saw this movie (and National Velvet). His only comment was “wow”……
Hmm, I’m not sure what my favorite movie of hers is, but I’ll go with “Butterfield 8” and say her character would be wearing My Sin.
I wouldn’t mind trying this — sometimes I’m in the mood for clean, romantic, and middle-of-the-road!
Might work for you then! It reminded me (in feel, not smell) of Tommy Hilfiger Dreaming.
My Sin is great for that character. Love the film.
Yes, it is terrific. I really need to rent it again. Laurence Harvey is always a plus for me too — I always found him very attractive!
How perfect. My Sin fits…..
Ditto on the Butterfield 8/My Sin, Jill!
How about National Velvet? I imagine her character to be wearing something Penhaligon-y but probably ending up smelling like Parfum d’Empire’s Fougere Bengale…
National Velvet (Such a lovely book, BTW!) gets my vote too. Velvet wouldn’t bother with scent, but would wind up smelling like SMN Peau d’Espagne or Bois Blond, or something.
Hard to believe, but I never saw that one!
National Velvet is mine, too, but I can’t imagine her wearing anything more complex than a bit of soap and rosewater.
Violet Eyes doesn’t sound so bad, but it does sound tame. You’d think that they could release something with a “kick” to appeal to an older market (I’m only assuming that the target is over 40, if not over 50 or 55… would you say??).
Speaking of “a kick”…
My fave (though Virginia Woolf is a *very* close runner up) would have to be “Butterfield 8.” The movie is quite shocking, I think, especially for 1960 — even though it’s a very stereotypical “bad-girl-gets-punished-by-the-heavens-in-the-end” story.
The character, Gloria Wandrous, would wear something LOUD like Bandit, or Tabu, or Fracas… or a 1959 launch: Cabochard.
It’s very tame, tame enough that it could appeal to a pretty wide range of ages…any but the very young (not fruity or sweet enough). Have not seen B8 in years, should really watch it again. Great movie.
Hands down it was National Velvet. And for a fragrance the sweet barnyard smell of Vie de Chateau.
Great scent!
Violet Eyes reminded me of Luscious Pink.
I love Elizabeth Taylor so much. I don’t know if I could pick just one favorite film of hers!
I’d say her character in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Would probably be wearing something loud, abrasive and sharp like herself. Maybe Angel, I looove Angel, or Poison, I haaaate poison!
Her Character in BUtterfield 8….I’d say White Diamonds, but I see her dabbing it on with a dabber. She’d probably dislike the scent but just love the name.
Her character in Giant…..hahahah, I’m really thinking about this! Her character in Giant would probably wear…..Chanel Coco Mademoiselle in the edt form. Something soft and sweet and nurturing.
This would be a great game to play! I like this :). Guess the character’s scent
Giant is another movie I haven’t seen in years and should watch again.
Cleopatra, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Giant…..
But I think my favorite would have to be The Taming of the Shrew, who would wear, I don’t know, what’s shrewish? Mitsouko? Bal a Versailles?
Def. Mitsy. 😉 Which I say only because Mitsy hates me, and therefore I think of her as shrewish.
LOL!
Awww… sweet lil ole Mitsy?? Surely not! 😉
Mitsy hates me too. I love it in the bottle, but it quickly becomes acrid and bitter on my skin. Sad…but then, there seem to be plenty of other fish out there that DO like me, at least a little!
I’ve discovered, not just with Mitsy but with other chypres as well, that my skin turns oak moss sweet! Lucky me!!
Tie between “National Velvet” and “A Place in the Sun”, although I think of the latter as just a great movie, and not primarily as a great Elizabeth Taylor movie. But “National Velvet” is all about Liz. Also great: “Giant” and her small role in “Jane Eyre” (though she is somewhat overshadowed by a slim and super-sexy young Orson Welles as Rochester intoning “Jane” in that thrilling voice while the mist swirled on the moor and his Great Dane padded around).
National Velvet: no fragrance because nothing could smell better to Velvet Brown then the Pie.
Jane Eyre: the smell of despair
A Place in the Sun: agree with the L’Air du Temps. Perfect!
Giant: Chanel No. 5 parfum with the glass stopper, given to her on each wedding aniversary by hubby Rock Hudson.
True, APITS is really Montgomery Clift’s movie. But she is soooo gorgeous in it!
I’ll say it again: Violet Eyes was perfectly pleasant. Very nice, in fact – but I was just stunned that there was no violet in there. If you’re going for “perfectly pleasant and nice-smelling, with retro beauty reference” how does violet *not* fit the brief?
I’m still shaking my head.
Maybe I’m overooking that most people don’t readily identify violet. I don’t mean to sound snarky. I was just disappointed – it’s La Liz! It doesn’t smell like gold lame! The ad is deliciously romantic-looking. But no violets. Sniff. Sigh.
That’s what I was thinking while reading the list of notes — no violet in Violet Eyes?!
I wonder if they just thought it sounded too old fashioned…a Liz Taylor scent with violet?
You are so right, mals! The real Violet Eyes would be Balenciaga Le Dix.
I have been exposed to shockingly few Elizabeth Taylor movies, but I have seen “Suddenly, Last Summer”, with Taylor as an emotionally fragile young woman who’s forced herself to repress a dreadful memory and Katherine Hepburn as the monstrous aunt who’ll go to hideous lengths to keep her niece from remembering*.
Someone that delicate is going to be wearing a few drops of Diorissimo or Bellodgia or L’Interdit or Le Dix, something pretty and understated and maybe a little repressed.
* Spoiler to a fifty-year-old movie: Hepburn wants Taylor lobotomized before she can reveal that Hepburn’s son Sebastian used Taylor as bait to lure boys into his clutches, and that the previous summer, the boys turned on him, tore him to pieces, and apparently cannibalized him. Yikes.
I think much hay was made over that movie in “The Celluloid Closet”… what a movie concept. I didn’t know the scene was supposed to involve cannibalization… I just thought they “did a Maenad” on him.
Woops… just checked my references: didn’t realize Maeneds purportedly cannibalized what they tore to pieces as well.
Interesting…another I haven’t seen in years, and I had apparently repressed the outcome as well — simply do not remember the plot that well.
SLS is def. my favorite Liz Taylor movie (and my favorite Tennessee Williams play to boot) but I go the opposite way in perfuming Miss Cathy… ‘memba when she acted all sweetness and light to Montgomery Clift to get a cigarette, but when the nun running the asylum tried to take it away from her, and Liz shoved the thing, ember down, into the nun’s hand? I think she needs something with a nasty streak, for some reasons the original Dioressence springs to mind…
It is probably very silly of me but I deliberately chose scents that would have been current when SLS was made, and Dioressence didn’t exist then (as it was launched in 1969).
But you’re right–she wasn’t just a delicate thing. Maybe she would have been wearing a really-not-kidding chypre like Vent Vert or Miss Dior or Jolie Madame, particularly when she’s making her big horrified speech at the end of the movie.
Te He! I could only remember “Giant” for Liz Taylor movies and eventually “National Velvet”. My parents went to see “National Velvet” on their first date. I liked that comment that the character played by Liz would have worn Coco Mademoiselle – I’ve been on a real CMlle kick for months now. I spray on something in the a.m., and before I go to the food court (my office is near a shopping mall), I spray on some CMlle before finding some food. I also like that description: “soft and sweet and nurturing”. I find it to be a real comfort scent and I’ve needed some comforting, what with my husband suddenly dropping dead (dead in a matter of minutes) and then my mom died (she was 86 years old and it was her time).
Oh, how about “Taming of the Shrew” with Richard Burton?
Do you all want a laugh? I sprayed on some Mitsouko recently and asked my sister’s opinion. She stated that it smelled like baby powder! I laughed and said “Well, I spent a lot of money on this fragrance, and if I had wanted to smell like baby powder, I could have saved a bundle and just bought some baby powder!” There’s no use crying in the perfume world. I thought Roberta’s comment was hilarious.
Oh heavens, you’ve had a tough time of it lately (I lost my dad last month, but as you said, it was his time). Neroli, as a fragrance note, is very uplifitng and consoling, and I’ve been very drawn to it lately. Perhaps some aroma therapy is in order!
Baby powder!!
Coco Mlle reminds me of when my kids were little. That is the first fancy perfume they picked for me themselves. I haven’t smelled it in years but that was a comfortable and nurturing time in my life. I’m glad it makes you feel that way.
Oh, how about “Cleopatra”. I never saw the movie, but I remember the great scandal when Liz and Richard were supposedly having an affair during the filming. It was all that the press could talk about. I guess not much has changed.
It’s probably a sign of my great age, but it makes me happy to hear it’s not hilariously vile. Also, it sounds plausible for an older woman, which is nice.
Also (hides face) I have asked a couple women over the years what nice thing they were wearing and been told ET Passion, although it smells dreadful on me.
Oh, I would hate it if they released absolute crap under her name. As it is, she deserves better but I’m assuming she needs some $ so just as well that it’s safe instead of marvelous, right?
Butterfield 8 and White Shoulders. White Shoulders always smells like a whore in church on Sunday to me and that fits her Academy Award winning performance perfectly in this film.
My grandmother owns that. Ahem.
So did my mother…
White Shoulders was one of the first perfumes I ever owned 🙂
Me too, Robin! Not the very first, but very early on. We must have diverged soon after that. 😉
Well, I have to go with Maggie-the-Cat (the source of my screen name) don’t I? She’s seductive, southern, strong, clever, desparate….I’m thinking Chanel…Eau de Cologne? Bel Respiro? Rue Cambon? I know these are after her time, but they still seem so very right. Then again, Jicky works….
I’ll go with Jicky…anybody could wear the Eau de Cologne!
By which I meant — not everybody can get away with Jicky.
Oh, and has nobody mentioned The Sandpiper yet? Good heavens! Who could forget the tagline: “She gave men a taste of life that made them hunger for more!” (For you young folks, La Taylor seduces an Episcolalian priest – Richard Burton, of course). That might call for more of the My Sin she wore in Butterfield 8.
And there is 1973’s Ash Wednesday, in which Liz gets secret plastic surgery in an attempt to save her failing marriage, emerges with the 41-year-old face she has in real life, and is lusted after by an enraptured young buck old enough to be . . .
Hmm. Schiaparelli’s Shocking?
I never saw The Sandpiper — in fact, don’t think I’ve heard of it! Will add it to my overloaded Netflix queue.
Someone up above was calling my belove Bal A Versailles a shrewish scent? Try saying that 5 times, really fast. 🙂 I loved ET (no, not THAT et) in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. She is or used to be breathtakingly beautiful, esp in National Velvet, well in everything I guess. Why no violets in her perfume?
Don’t know why no violets, although as I said above, guessing they would have thought it too old fashioned.
I definitely think she is violets and remember reading that she loved violets. When Diamonds came out, wasn’t there a violet version? I sort of remember the ad featuring her eyes (and making them really look violet), but it was long ago when I was young so perhaps my memory is selective in this case.
Oh! I forgot her fragrance—how about Bal A Versailles? Her sultry look on the packaging is begging for something alluring, provocative and mysterious, unlike the scent itself.
LOVE la Liz! A Place in the Sun, Suddenly Last Summer, Butterfield 8, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Cleopatra… how to choose just one? OK, for the purposes of the poll I’ll go with Cleopatra, which is over-the-top cheesy, but Liz redeems both the cheese and Richard Burton’s crappy acting with her sheer fabulousness. I’m guessing she’d wear either Poison or pure patchouli oil, extra strength.
My father saw her when she was 17 — he was having lunch in a restaurant, and in walked Liz. Conversation, movement, and hearts stopped; Dad says she was the most breathtakingly beautiful person he has ever seen.
oh my, your dad was in the right place, right time. It must have been thrilling! I remember when my ‘oldest’ sister met Robert Wagner at a local theatre and had her pic taken with him. She kept in on her dresser for years-he was so dashing! They are movie stars for a reason, no?
Cleopatra is great fun, agree!
I saw her when I was young in Ronald Reagan Airport in D.C. (then it was called National Airport). It was after one of her near-death trachteonomies and she was in a wheel chair with her neck supported. However, she still looked beautiful
I’ll second (er, third, fourth?) your vote for “Cleopatra”. I know I should say “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” or “Taming of the Shrew” but the one I *own* on DVD and often pull out to watch on a lazy Sunday is this one. I just love the excess – even with Dick Burton drunkenly slurring through his lines, Rex Harrison chewing up scenerey and Liz’s multiple costume changes in one scene. (Maybe I love it *because* of the excess?) In fact, if it had been taken more seriously it would have ticked me off because of how historically inaccurate it is. (Read a more recent biography of Cleopatra and you’ll find her life was far more scandalous than any fictional depiction out there.)
I know the ancient Egyptians used a lot of resins like myrrh and labdanum in their fragrances, but somehow I think I remember the real Cleopatra’s fragrance was very floral with lily and/or orange blossom? I don’t remember where I heard this but it’s stuck with me ever since. So, Jardin sur la Nil seems very appropriate for that reason…but then for “Liz as Cleopatra” I would have to say Emeraude (vintage). Don’t ask me why, though, lol!
I am so sorry I missed this and I am so late but I have to add my two cents because I love Elizabeth Taylor! She is truly one of the last iconic Hollywood glamour goddesses in my mind. I loved Cleopatra too! It was an “event” in my house; not just a movie for me and my mom. It required food drink, mood lighting and floor cushions to watch it! I loved a lot of her movies, Suddenly Last Summer and a Place in the Sun of course and thought she was great in Cat in a Hot Tin Roof. No matter what character she was playing I can’t help but think of Guerlain’s Nahema as being the perfect scent for Dame Elizabeth. It’s as big and beautiful as she was and still is.
Off topic just a little….
I remember as a preteen when I still saw the world in absolutes, asking my mother “Who is the most beautiful woman in the world?”. My mother thought a moment and said “Elizabeth Taylor”. I ran off to find a picture of this paragon. Looking at the picture, I couldn’t help but realize I was the exact opposite in looks to Ms. Taylor. Where she was sultry, dark, and voluptuous, I was skinny, pale and flat as a pancake. It was an epiphany for me. I decided that since I was clearly never going to approach being beautiful, I’d better do my best to become interesting.
To this day, I am much more about character than about appearance. Liz, you’ve been a big influence on my life, whether you know it or not.
Liz was beyond stunning in National Velvet. Unquestionably the most beautiful young woman I’ve ever seen. I see her wearing Penhaligon’s Ellenisia. It’s sweet and floral, but somehow still reminds me of wild grasses. And it has violet leaf! 🙂
Nice pick!
(and I don’t look like ET either)
I loved Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. She and Paul Newman were great! I see Maggie wearing Crepe de Chine. Just think, no air conditioning at that time in the humid south, just miserable.
What would Paul Newman be wearing?
Can’t picture him in scent, don’t know why.
What a great poll! I actually had to think about it for way too long. I’m just such a huge Liz fan! (My name is Elizabeth, I can’t help it.) Anyway, Cleopatra, IMHO, would wear Armani Prive Boise d’Encens. Technically, it’s a masculine. It’s gorgeous. It’s expensive. It’s mysterious and powerful. And it makes one hell of an entrance.
Perfect match 🙂
I’m going to show my age and say I haven’t actually seen an Elizabeth Taylor movie. And I’ve always wanted to. My hands are weighed with shame as I add some to my Netflix cue.
Oh, but it’s not just age…all her best movies were made before I was born. I just love movies!
Maybe, but I’m not sure I’d ever heard anything about her, save what I read in one of those “Who Killed Marilyn Monroe” books. I just feel so removed from that time. 😛
Yeah, I feel silly. I’ve been watching all these classic 50’s foreign movies and completely skipping over the home front. Soon to be remedied.
Here’s one that’s not well-known but worth looking for: Reflections in a Golden Eye, 1967, directed by John Huston and co-starring Marlon Brando. It’s set at a southern military base and Taylor is having an affair with next-door neighbor Brian Keith while husband Brando a very closeted homosexual lusts after a young soldier. Keith’s wife Julie Christie is a neurotic woman who stays indoors all the time and Taylor has the unforgettable line (with thick Southern accent) telling someone about her (Christie), “Why she cut off her nipples with a pair of garden shears, just imagine!” The role is like Maggie the Cat only more sultry and less verbal. It needs a very southern steamy skanky perfume…. something weighty with magnolia would be good. I’ll propose Amoureuse, which I love…. but I can’t carry it off the way she would have!
Based on the novel by Carson McCullers.
Great book, never saw the movie…in fact don’t think I knew it was ever made into a movie. Will have to look for it!
Ivanhoe. Rebecca the Jewess (what a sexy word, I always thought), Isaac of York’s daughter; a healer who falls in unrequited love with Ivanhoe, finances his place in the joust and saves his life. She is lusted after by Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert. The scene where she sneaks into Ivanhoe’s room disguised as a boy or the final combat to keep her from being burned as a witch. Good pic here:
http://captaincritic.blogspot.com/2009/04/reeling-backward-ivanhoe.html
She should wear black Phoenix Alchemy Lab’s Morgause or Parfum de Nicolai Odalisque.
Great suggestion! I love that movie also. Bois-Guilbert is so loathsome but at the same time so tragic.
Gosh, forgot that movie! I should watch it again.
Here’s something no one’s mentioned. The Girl Who Had Everything. Not one of the famous ones, but is wedged in there between A Place in the Sun and Elephant Walk. Set in Kentucky, how could she be wearing anything but Bluegrass?
I have never seen that one!
Butterfield 8
Gloria would be wearing Fracas
That works!
“Giant.” Big aledhyde opening burst, then, orange flower, chamomile, aloe and suggestion of sunflower, middle of saffron and sandlewood, ending in musk.
Oh, and you designed a scent — perfect!
The photo in ad is by Douglas Kirkland about 1960 , At the time Liz had an emergency tracheotomy so original photo shows scar in her neck. At the time Liz was in the middle of a scandal for marrying Eddie Fisher and had not done Cleopatra yet. Liz granted an interview to LOOK magazine and Kirkland shot the photos. He says those photos started his career. The photo is also the cover of THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN IN THE WORLD book.Yes photo in ad looks a bit different but it is LIZ My favorite film LAST TIME I SAW PARIS just because Liz looks incredible. Her character Helen Ellswirth would probably wear GARDENIA sweet , haunting easily recognizable like Liz
Thanks!
Yes, The Last Time I saw Paris….or….Suddenly Last Summer. She might be wearing Hartnell’s In Love in the 1st and maybe Heaven Sent in the latter.
Just sprayed on the tester @ CVS. I’m getting a bit more than a dollop of Ambroxan here.
Gorgeous and magical perfume ! the purple bottle is amazing ! love love love ! forever Elizabeth Taylor !