"You really want to look at that?" the clerk at Goodwill asked. She shouted toward the clerk at the cash register. "She wants to look at this old perfume." She turned to me again. "I don't know. It looks pretty dark. I bet it's gone bad."
True, the bottle wasn't promising: an 8-ounce faceted glass canister with a cap the color of purple Jordan almonds. I figured it for yet another bottle of Avon Skinny Dip but thought I'd have a look just in case. Besides, I'd already seen an ounce bottle of Estée Lauder Aliage in the case I knew I wanted.
The label on the bottom of the bottle identified it as Intimate Eau de Cologne by Revlon. I'd never heard of it but dabbed some on my arm anyway. One whiff and Goodwill's fluorescent lights and slight fust fell away, replaced by visions of rustling organza skirts and white gloves. Intimate was unmistakably a classic 1950s floral animalic chypre with a tingly, soapy top. I couldn't say "I'll take it" fast enough.
Revlon released Intimate in 1955, during the glory years of the floral, animalic chypre. In 1955, Eisenhower was President. Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus. Nabokov's Lolita was published, James Dean had his fatal car wreck, and The Lady and the Tramp was the year's top grossing movie. The FDA approved the Salk polio vaccine, and the definitive count of human chromosomes was determined. The year straddled racism, ingrained gender roles, and memories of the Great Depression along with an optimistic view of the future and an unshakable faith in science. Wouldn't we all be driving rockets soon? Floral animalic chypres, like girdles and straight razors, couldn't be long for this world.
Sprayed on skin, Intimate starts off with clean aldehydes tinged with a rich, fruity flower like jonquils. Quickly, rose and jasmine spiked with coriander and thickened with white flowers (tuberose? gardenia?) appear. All the while, a bed of purse-leather sweetened with sandalwood lies under the floral heart. Oak moss and the tiniest hint of civet sap the preciousness from the fragrance and establish it firmly as made for a full grown woman. It lasts three or four hours on skin and has minimal sillage — probably because my bottle is Eau de Cologne.
Intimate is more friendly than some other fragrances of its type. Christian Dior Miss Dior's sage-animal combo has scared off legions, and Lanvin My Sin, Caron Narcisse Noir, and Millot Crêpe de Chine are acquired tastes for most people these days. Intimate's flowers are lush and radiant within its mossy, animalic frame. Intimate hints at sex and elegance but lets you know its wearer is a lot more accessible than Marlene Dietrich.
I would think Intimate would have been a blockbuster among women who came of age just after World War Two and didn't have the money to sink into Miss Dior. Maybe its style fell from fashion to be replaced by crisp green chypres, but Intimate lingered at least until the 1970s, when I suspect my bottle was made. For those of us who enjoy dipping into the romance of other eras, Intimate is a delicious time warp.
Revlon Intimate is discontinued.
Ah, I love these stories of found treasures. 🙂
I love searching for them. I probably never would have even tried Intimate if I hadn’t stumbled over it by chance!
*sigh* Beautiful story.
Do you have any Goodwill tips you can share? I check the local one here every few weeks and have never found anything worth buying.
Do they have perfume at all? Some Goodwills don’t carry it. If they do carry perfume, all I can say is to keep looking. Also, I did a post once about thrifting for perfume:https://nstperfume.com/2010/06/14/perfumista-tip-how-to-find-perfume-at-thrift-stores/
I teared up a little. “Floral animalic chypre” — why can’t every woman around me be wearing that? And doesn’t it take your breath away a little (in a good way) when you realize how intensely animalic some of those bases are, even in demure, powdery perfumes like My Sin?
I think the average gal and guy on the street must have had a much better appreciation for difficult fragrances in those days. Nowadays, anything more difficult than a dab of essential oil or a soliflore is hard for many people to understand. That a bus driver’s wife could pick up a bottle of Intimate and love it is pretty great!
Do you think some of the appreciation in the past of the animalic perfumes was because people weren’t quite as obsessed with being squeaky clean? What we consider animalic or dirty in perfume today, might have been much more normal 50 years ago. Even today, human smells are much more appreciated in Europe than in the U.S.
Yes, maybe that’s it.
Maybe that’s it–it sure makes sense.
Well, and people literally weren’t as “clean” either; daily showers probably weren’t the norm, and women probably only had their hair washed during a weekly trip to the beauty parlor. Maybe these animalic chypres melded with that human smell a bit better than all these squeaky-clean scents. I also like that theory about how scents had to be different in order to hold up in the ubiquitous haze of cigarette smoke that reigned virtually everywhere. Whew!
The paradox that strikes me most is that these sassy perfumes seem almost at odds with the well-scrubbed, hyper-polite stereotype of the Eisenhower era.
That’s a good point. My mother’s generation got the weekly wash & set. In the 60’s hair-washing moved to twice weekly and sleeping on rollers — big ones, if you had curly hair. In the 70’s only a slob didn’t wash the hair every single day.
Intimate, in perfume, was my signature scent in high school (senior year). I threw it out ten years ago, as I didn’t know dark didn’t mean “spoiled” then. Now I have a vintage bottle of EDT I got from fleabay and it still smells wonderful.
Joe, it’s exactly that clean, optimistic attitude/animalic, complex smell divide that intrigues me, too.
Olfacta, congratulations on finding it! It’s so nice when something is as good as you remembered.
Angela, You are the queen of vintage treasure bargain hunting!
I became acquainted with Intimate as a dusting powder in one of those plastic basket mold canister with the synthetic “puff” attached around the dispenser opening. That was in the ’70s when my mother received it as an office Christmas gift and gave it to me to use. I still have that dispenser and refill it with other scented dusting powders. The top screws right off, and the puff is still fluffy!
Lucky that you found Aliage as well. Did you spend more than $10 on the 2? Tacky question, but inquiring minds do like to know….
I spend way, way too much time nosing around in thrift shops when I should be reading the classics or–horrors!–vacuuming. The Intimate cost $2.99 and the Aliage cost (wait while I go check) also $2.99
I’ve found that vacuuming can always wait, as can dusting. 🙂
Sadly, at my house it often does!
I’d say you’re a woman who has her priorities straight!
Thanks for the back up!
More back up: yes, you made absolutely the correct choice! Thrifting over cleaning anyday! Those treasures will disappear as surely as the dust and dog hair on the rugs will reappear.
What is it about animal hair? I swear over the course of a year my pets shed more than their body weight. I think NASA should study them.
no kidding….Roxie is a yellow lab mix and there’s no explaining why she’s not completely bald for the amount of coarse ivory dog hairs that come off the rugs every week! Trust me: there’s an unending supply of dog hair to vacuum….so go treasure hunting!
Everything I own has cat hair on it. I had one cat who shed so much I swore I could have made another whole cat out of the hair he shed in a week.
As a full-time working mom of a toddler, with extremely limited access to antique and thrift stores, time takes a back seat when I get the rare chance to wander into one of these places on my own. Besides, the CEO does most of the vacuuming….
You lucky woman!
**jealous** 😉
My Sin reminds me of my mother and your story just described her generation to a T. If I smell one more flipping fruity frou-frou I’ll…
I’ve had my fill of that genre, too. I don’t know how the people around me feel about it, but I do love a full-bodied, moss-laden, leathery scent from time to time.
That reminds me – I have GOT to get out that vial of My Sin that Donna/Flora sent me and try it. I knew I couldn’t do it in the summer, but it’s in the 70s now, so I should manage not to suffocate, right?
It’s so beautiful. I have my mom’s bottle. It doesn’t smell as good on me as it did on her, but it’s pretty great stuff.
My Sin has so much personality that it seems once you associate it with someone it would be hard to link it with someone else, too.
Sure, give it a try and let us know what you think!
Can’t do it today… wearing Iris Poudre, yummy girly floofy powder-puff of really spendy deliciousness…
But will report back on My Sin.
Iris Poudre really is girliness in a bottle!
You should definitely get it out! I have been wearing mine at night since I discovered it this summer – what a lush, womanly treasure.
I am very curious to hear what your reaction is, please post back.
A friend of mine in high school wore this! I loved it on her. I found a bottle at Big Lots about five or six years ago, but it really had turned– it had that sort of weird, wet carpet smell to it. Which is a pity, because it really had been lovely. (I also found a bottle of– of all things– Jean Nate at Big Lots that had turned, so I don’t know what it is that they do to perfume there. How do you get a year-old bottle of Jean Nate to turn? That almost takes an effort.)
Wet carpet!
I think a lot of those things at BL have been exposed to temperature extremes. When I was about 12, in the 80s, I remember coming across a boxed set of, I think, Coty Chypre, Les Muses, and Muguet de Bois (or was it La Rose Jacqueminot?) at Big Lots that I begged my mother to buy me, but she refused. Now I wish that I’d promised her my entire piggy bank and just bought them myself…
This is terrible, but at 12 I probably would have just stolen them!
Gasp! At 12, my shorts weren’t really big enough to have hidden the box… it was maybe 5″ x 9″, too big to shove up my tee shirt.
I was probably still wearing Garanimals or something like that then, too. My mother’s taste in clothes prevailed until I went to college.
Garanimals and Chypre! Now that’s a combination.
LOL it’s like you all are discussing technique….no, no, don’t shove it down your geranimals…in the backpack instead!
You’re kidding me, right?
I didn’t own a backpack until I went to COLLEGE. Back in the day, only college kids had backpacks… my daughter can’t believe that I used to carry my books back and forth to high school just loose in my arms.
I, on the other hand, can’t believe that instead of using her locker, she carries her enormous backpack around all day. AND her saxophone case. AND her little string bag full of stuff for cross-country practice. I mean, I know she has to share her locker and the locker banks are crowded, but still… she’s nuts.
I carried a very large purse. I think that’s why I don’t buy big handbags any more– bad memories. 🙁
The perfumes we almost loved but certainly lost….
Too bad about it turning!
I thought Jean Nate was the Twinkie of the perfume world. Impossible to turn.
Crazy, isn’t it? When I sniffed it I asked my friend that I was shopping with how Jean Nate could possibly have gone bad. She snorted and said, “Because it’s at Big Lots?”
Big Lots: the turner of the natural world. I’ll have to remember not to wander past its threshold. My skin has had enough of a beating.
Oh, I found an awesome find at Big Lots a few months back.. A multitude of Bal a Versailles 30ml/1oz bottles of EDC for $2…I bought 10 bottles, and there were at least 20 left behind. I shared them with online friends and family..So I wouldn’t completely rule it out.
My paternal grandmother wore Intimate. She was in her early 40s when I was born, and well into her 50s she was beautiful and glamorous in my eyes. She was a schoolteacher turned high school librarian in Seminole, OK, and died too young, at age 64, in 1977. I’ve been wanting to sniff Intimate again, as though to catch a whiff of her, although my loving memories of her are undimmed.
She sounds like a remarkable woman–a real role model! Intimate is still out there, going for pennies sometimes. I hope you get the chance to smell it sometime, just for the wonderful memories.
Wonderful story, Angela. But I can’t believe you’d never heard of Intimate – it was a staple at the Gardenside Pharmacy (along with the Lanvins! and Faberge’s), which I frequented in my youth/teens. So many of those old scents, repackaged today, would pass as niche and haute perfumery!
If I had heard of it, I had completely forgotten. But I’m glad to know of it now!
Wonderful! And for a further feast of vintage finds, see what’s been happening over at Yesterday’s Perfumes:
http://yesterdaysperfume.typepad.com/yesterdays_perfume/
I’d been reading those too – more wonderful reviews there, as well.
Sigh. I need more skin to test stuff on while I’m wearing things I already own…
Ooh, I like that site! Thanks for sharing!
It is wonderful.
Tigress is one of my favorites. Got me a big bottle…
I love it, too, and thank you. 😉
Angela, I love your time traveling. I forgot all about Intimate! It must have stuck around into the 70s because I remember owning it in junior high. I can’t remember what it smelled like at all, although your description helps. Muguet de Bois–I had that too, and something by Yardley. I always enjoy your posts. Thanks.
You were sure an advanced junior high girl! Intimate, to me, smells so womanly.
Wouldn’t it be great to smell those old perfumes again, the ones we used to wear? I’m still curious about Babe.
Babe! I forgot all about it! I hope you find a bottle one day and report on it. I can hardly remember what it smelled like except that it wasn’t flowery and it didn’t smell like Intimate.
I really can’t remember, either, although I want to say it was an aldehydic floral amber scent, but I could be totally wrong. But for sure if I ever find any I’ll definitely report on it!
There was a teeny tiny almost-empty bottle of Babe on the ‘bay the other day. I’ll check and see if it’s still there. It was listed for .99. It would be fun just to be able to smell it again!
Babe for the price of a king-size Snickers bar! A deal!
I’m still waiting for you to sniff out a bottle of Babe from one of your outings. I picked up a little bottle of Jovan’s Mink and Pearls not too long ago and although I think it may have turned a bit, there were still some of the familiar notes that I loved from my early teen years.
Mink and pearls! I vaguely remember that one, too. What a name.
It was definitely around in the 70s. I used to crack up my junior high school friends doing an imitation of the commercial. But I remember it as a pretty terrific “grown up”perfume.
That’s hilarious! I wish I could see your live action imitation.
I also have a bottle of Intimate cologne, but mine was from eBay and cost a whopping $11.00. I am thinking that it is from the 70’s as well, in part because it is labeled as “cologne”. There seems to have been a trend toward cologne strength formulations of fragrances in the 70’s, in keeping with the general trend toward lighter scents. I had heard of Intimate, but never smelled it before buying my bottle. I am so glad I got it–it is really something. I do not get much of the aldehydes, but right off the bat there is a wallop of full-fledged, gutsy, animalic chypre that is miles away from any of today’s mainstream offerings. I have only tested it sparingly, as the summer here was so brutally hot, but now that it is cooler, I will have to give it a real tryout.
Angela, I have to say, I am soooo envious of you thrift shopping karma. The few thrift shops where I live don’t seem to even carry perfume. I few months ago, I was in Austin for several days and decided to check out their thrift shops. The Salvation Army stores did not carry perfume at all. The Goodwill stores did, but—the were not selling them outright; they had their more desirable items, including perfume, for sale in a sort of silent auction arrangement. Phooey! If I want to bid in a silent auction, I log on to eBay!
I must live in the right town for thrifting. I can’t believe Goodwill would do auctions for perfume! That’s ridiculous.
Yes, isn’t that irritating? FYI – the Antique Mall behind Skateland on 183 in Austin has a couple of booths that carry vintage perfumes.
Hey, Skateland sounds like a good time, too!
Skateland and vintage perfumes? It’s virtual time travel!
Oh, yes – but I’ve traveled so much time my knees are too gimpy for Skateland 🙂 The Antique Mall is always fun, though like Angela, I’ve had sales people ask, “You want to smell THAT?”
Scouting for a bottle now based on your wonderful review, thanks! The fabulous description reeled me in while my brain whispered “you need to try this, go look – stop folding laundry”.
My brain whispers “stop folding laundry” quite a bit, too! I hope you find a good bottle for not much $$.
This was still around in the early 90’s. I remember wearing it in high school. I bought it at our lone drugstore, along with Poison.
O.K., then it was around for longer than I thought. That should make old bottles easier to find, as long as the formula didn’t suffer too much.
*Sigh!* Angela, you have it exactly right when you say that Intimate was made for a full grown woman. There is absolutely nothing adolescent or girly about it–and that seems to have been the case for most classic perfumes. Even the florals, usually considered the most “youthful” category of feminine fragrances, were not aimed at the teenage market. Today it seems as if the mainstream houses are not interested in selling to anyone older than 25.
It does seem like the releases aimed at older women are certainly the minority!
Why cant the thrift stores around me ever have gems like the one you found? I walk in and look around but all I ever find is used books which I never can put down because I can’t resist a deal.
Keep looking! You never know what you’ll find.
I know what you mean about the books, though. I end up with piles of them, too.
I am horrified to realise that I must have been a precocious child. I was 12 in the 60s, and I wore Intimate to school! What must my mother have been thinking? I seem to remember that Revlon had a sort of “partner” to Intimate called Aquamarine – blue like the name and much fresher and lighter. Needless to say, I preferred Intimate.
Like Jillie and Suzy Q, I too wore Intimate as a decidedly not-Marlene-Dietrich-like adolescent. I snagged it from my mom’s dresser, and loved what I now realize was that combination of florals, moss, and as Angela puts it so well, “purse leather and sandalwood”. All I knew then was that wearing it made me feel dangerous and alluring: a tall order for a 14-year-old! And it must have worked, because I had an 18-year-old boyfriend. Now I REALLY want to smell it again!
I wonder where that 18-year old boyfriend is now? Doing time for consorting with minors? Hey, maybe if I wear Intimate I’ll get an 18-year old boyfriend, too!
I think you have hit the nail right on the head there!
Sorry, the above should have been in answer to Angela below. One day I’ll get the hang of technology (or maybe just think before I do).
Jillie, 50 Roses above lamented how so many new releases are geared toward the under-25 set, and now I wonder if most older fragrances were made with full grown women in mind? I’d never thought of that before.
I bet they were. When I was a kid “back then” some things were for “grown ups” and you were supposed to wait to use them. That’s what made it such a thrill to sneak into your mom’s bedroom and try on her high heels, Evening in Paris, and Fire and Ice lipstick 🙂
A deadly combo of spot-on womanhood!
There was also Intimate Musk, or Intimate Skin– can’t remember what it was called. My friend started wearing that one when Intimate was discontinued. It was also very nice, although certainly lighter.
An Intimate flanker? I’ll have to keep an eye open for it.
OMG! I am GREEN with envy, Angela! Congrats to you on this find.
Intimate was my first signature scent and I wore it and the bath powder and anything else that came in holiday gift specials from about 1960 -1965.
I recently read somewhere that it was available again and being made by a different company than Revlon and the reviews I read raved that it still smelled like the vintage scent. I found that hard to believe, but it was so incredibly inexpensive that I ordered a spray bottle from Amazon.
Words fail me. Let’s just leave it at UGH. I am heartbroken, but basically knew it was too good to be true. I haven’t smelled the real stuff since 1965, but the memory lingers on. Agent Provocateur vaguely reminds me of it.
It’s good to know the dupe isn’t all it’s cracked up to be before the rest of us give it a try!
Thank you for this timely post. I’m helping my mom clear out 40+ years of packrat clutter from her house. (Packrat isn’t an insult, btw. It’s genetic, and I have that problem, too.) In the last batch of boxes I brought home were old bottles of perfume, which I specifically asked that she watch out for as she packed up. I randomly picked up her bottle of Revlon Intimate from the box this morning, dabbed it on, and looked for a review as soon as I logged on. And I found this. And I see you wrote it only yesterday! How serendipitous!
What a coincidence! What do you think of the fragrance?
I like it quite a bit. I’ll need to dab on a bit more next time to get the full effect. Since it wasn’t familiar to me, I was conservative on the application since I was headed out the door to work. I think I may have overdone it in the past, and I’m trying to avoid subjecting my coworkers to something only I can love! 🙂
I still consider myself a newbie, but the frags I like best so far tend to fall into the chypre category. So it was satisfying to see you classify this one that way. I find I like white florals, too, which I didn’t expect when I started this journey. And I find I like a bit of skank as well. I’ve had fun explaining that concept to my non-perfumista friends.
Isn’t it fun to get to know yourself in a different way through perfume? I love chypres, too.
And I have an off topic question. I have found at least a couple of frags in my Mom’s stash that I cannot find on the web anywhere. Even Basenotes, unless I completely missed it for some reason. Are you familiar with a fragrance known as Scandia II?
I haven’t heard of that one–not that that means anything. Hang onto it, though, and info about it might surface eventually.
T-Rex: Nothing showing in the encyclopedia below; it doesn’t contain a lot of information, but it’s been useful for me looking things up from time to time.
http://www.perfumeintelligence.co.uk/library/index.htm
Thanks for the reference–that’s a good one I always seem to forget about.
The original Intimate is just lovely, isn’t it? I pounced on a 2-oz bottle offered on the ‘bay about 2 weeks ago, because I could tell it was the ’60s version from the look of the bottle. The seller had picked it up at an estate sale and was selling it FOR THE BOTTLE! Gasp! The dark color caused her to think it had gone bad. I was thrilled to rescue the juice from what would have been…shudder….its ignorminious end in the hands of a bottle collector.
This scent has wonderful memories for me. The Lady of the House next door wore it as her signature scent for years. All of we neighborhood girls loved Emily. She was a marketing exec and always tres chic (at least to the minds of the neighborhood gilrs, that is! lol).
What great memories! And it’s so tragic when good perfume is dumped for the sake of a bottle.
Exactly… for heaven’s sake, bottle collectors – pour the juice into an empty clean pickle jar or something, and save it for us!
Just to be nit-picky, Skinny Dip wasn’t made by Avon. It was from Leeming, a division of Pfizer. I actually wore this stuff as a teenager. I can’t find a list of notes for it (it was just a cheapie drugstore fragrance from the folks who brought us Hai Karate), but I remember it as LOUD and SWEET fruity floral. And Sandy Duncan starred in the commercial! “Makes a girl feel pretty, Skinny Dip…”
Hey, thanks for the Skinny Dip clarification. I can’t believe one company put out both Skinny Dip and Hai Karate!
My grandmother, who died at 96 in 1985, wore something called Silk of Intimate – it was probably a body lotion of the scent. She also wore My Sin…
Oh, that’s perfect! I bet she was plenty glamorous.
Thank you for this! For retro, I gravitate more toward the 70’s style green chypres you mentioned, but this made me realize I need something from the 50’s to round out my collection. (But wait, is my collection stuff to actually wear, or am I gathering museum-pieces?!)
Maybe you could try one with a green edge, like Miss Dior. It would be sad not to wear them!