Beginning in the mid-1960s and hurtling through the next decade, green chypres were all the rage. Every perfume house seemed to have one, starting with Yves Saint Laurent Y (1964), then on to Paco Rabanne Calandre (1969), Chanel No. 19 (1971), Estée Lauder Private Collection (1973),Revlon Charlie (1973), Christian Dior Dior-Dior (1976) and Rochas Mystère (1978). I'm sure I'm forgetting some. Balenciaga’s contribution was the short-lived Cialenga.
Perfumer Jacques Jantzen developed Cialenga, and it launched in 1973. Its notes include citrus, black currant, green notes, iris, jasmine, ylang ylang, clove, rose, lily, vetiver, sandalwood, patchouli, oak moss and Virginia cedar.
The 1970s green chypres ranged from herbal to floral and fruity to dry, with some a touch powdery and yet others soapy. Although Cialenga's notes list neither orange blossom nor musk — notes I associate with soap — the fragrance veers dry and soapy. Its overall feeling is crisp and clean (as much as a mossy fragrance can be clean, that is). (Note: my review is from a 1970s bottle of Eau de Toilette, and although it seems to be in decent shape, I’ve no doubt that it has changed while it’s been in the bottle.)
Cialenga opens with a tart aldehydic burst of cool, green bergamot and maybe neroli. When the tingle subsides, soap steps right up. For about ten minutes, the fragrance is all green lather on me, but at last the soap subsides, and a floral heart emerges, still green, but tinged with lily and a little of rose and iris's fruit. Cialenga’s notes include clove, and I do smell a touch of spiciness, but without reading the notes I would have attributed it to carnation.
At last Cialenga totally relaxes into its dry, mossy wood. Now, with its deliciously fusty oakmoss, it begins to smell like a chypre, although it still wears a veil of green and soap, like a freshly showered woman who has stubbed out her cigarette near a vase of flower stems. Cialenga has gentle sillage, and it lasts about five quiet hours on my skin.
Why were green chypres so popular when they were? I’ve heard people connect green chypres with women’s growing independence, but I don’t get it. To me, green chypres can be austere and elegant, even prissy — or intellectual. I know that Charlie’s advertising featured a model in pants who appeared to want to please only herself. But that doesn’t convince me that a green chypre smells of liberation any more than the advertising of a hundred fragrances featuring half-dressed women leads me to believe the perfumes smell of sex.
My guess is that, in their day, green chypres smelled modern. Sleek, even. Today, many are throwback scents to some people, and classics to others (including me), but when they were released they must have felt thrillingly spare. For the elegant set, wearing a green chypre might have been akin to tossing out the girdle and slipping on a Courrèges. What do you think?
Cialenga is lovely, and it’s discontinued. Thanks to other terrific green chypres still in production, I don’t mourn its demise, but it’s worth smelling if you get the chance.
Great review, as always Angela. This is one Balenciaga I have not smelled. To wear one of these scents was seen as being modern like a YSL Le Smoking suit. Not like there mothers in florals.Thanks!
Now, young women call them “old ladiies perfume” lol. Funny how things change. As a child I remember my oldest sister getting Charlie in parfum no less one Christmas.I thought is was the most wonderful I had ever smelled!
Ha – but a lot of young women wouldn’t have half of the priviledges and opportunities they have now if it weren’t for tough old broads who busted heads back in the day!
You tell it, sister!
You are right on AnnS!
Don’t even get me started on people who say “old ladies” when they smell perfume! Argh!
Cialenga is kind of hard to find these days, so I’m not surprised you haven’t necessarily smelled it.
I love your comparison to a YSL Le Smoking! Yes, that’s exactly the modern yet elegant sort of woman I can imagine loving a green chypre.
Angela – I really enjoyed your review of this fragrance – I’d never heard of it. I’m starting to explore, re-explore, etc, this era and style of fragrances. I keep falling deeper in love with oakmoss and vetiver as time is going by, and these fragrances are all over it. I think these fragrances were supposed to be “modern” as women were moving into the workforce and changing their classic roles in the 70s. Perhaps they were as austere as fragrances could get without completely crossing the aisle into men’s frags (certainly any of these would be unisex now!). There is something very “broad shouldered” and tailored about these. They *do* lend confidence – I wear No 19 more and more b/c it stands up straight, right!? Maybe it’s the association they’ve inherited over time. Maybe certain women were looking for something “tough” in their fragrances, and this was the way to go. There is little seduction here to interefere with the “new” manifestos! Who the h*^^ wants to smell like a lollipop or like a flower garden during an elevator pitch?
Yes, that’s a great way to look at this type of fragrance! And I definitely see why they would stand out as modern–and as you put it so well, austere.
There were definitely older fragrances with a butch edge–Tabac Blond comes to mind right away–but that elegance-plus-austerity wasn’t there.
Sadly, there is women who smell like lollipops during elevator pitches! I know a few lol. As far as that statement about old ladies I hear it almost everyday at work in a department store. Even from old ladies! That is when I dig up the Private Collection and blast the air!
Let’s hear it for Private Collection!
Hi Angela, this is somewhat on topic, but also somewhat off topic… hope you don’t mind! I bought a vintage mini of Montana EdT (later Eau de Peau) on your recommendation from the article you posted in December. It doesn’t seem to last too long on me, but that initial burst of fragrance was love at first sniff! The bottle is also cute as can be. It is quite related to Niki de Saint Phalle and Paloma Picasso, as you’d suggested, and both of those are favorites of mine. It definitely belongs in the same pack as other chypres of this vintage, no doubt along with Cialenga (though I’ve not smelled that one). Anyway, thanks for the recommendation! I’m not sure if I qualify as young anymore (33 years old), but I do have a penchant for chypres!
I’m so glad you like Montana, and I’m kind of surprised that it doesn’t last longer on you! Maybe it takes a big spritz to really stick, and that can be difficult from a mini. Anyway, I’m glad you like it!
Cialenga is a whole different type of chypre than the others you’ve mentioned. It’s a lot more spare and “clean.”
As for age, I think anyone who loves classic chypres has an old soul. The rest doesn’t matter!
Ahhh, I see what you mean… interesting distinction. I definitely prefer the animalic slanting chypres to the soapy/clean variety.
Glad to be in the chypre lovers’ club with the rest of you!
Yes, the lucky people around us can smell our membership badge!
I think green chypres, and to a lesser extent all chypres, smell ‘intellectual’ because they don’t smell foodie, and therefore don’t smell domestic. They distance themselves from the domestic. So i imagine thst women wanting to get out of the home therefore tend to be attracted to green chypres. Those women don’t want comfort out of their fragrances, they want confidence. So it’s not a coincidence that such fragrances did well in the 60s and 70s.
Florals might seem domestic that way, too–you know, like the garden and traditionally feminine. Your theory makes good sense to me!
I had a bottle of vintage Cialenga but unfortunately it broke down and I have decanted the juice, I am not crazy about it .
If somebody wants it I can send a sample, if interested please email me at herasuk@hotmail.com.
You’re very generous!
Thank you for the review. I have not tried Cialenga, but it is now high on my list–I love green chypres! Most of them seem completely conventionally unisex to my nose, today. I would add a couple own faves to your list ( I have too many faves in this category–only incenses beat them out): Shisheido Inoui, Givenchy III, Balmain Ivoire, Guerlain Chamade and Chant d’Aromes, Jacomo Silences, and Scherrer by JL Scherrer.
Nice list! It reminds me that Balmain de Balmain qualifies, too. Oh, and Vent Vert, of course–although it’s much older. And now I’m remembering Ma Griffe…
And Cabochard and Weil by Weil and Coty Masumi. Houston I think I have a problem. 🙂
Yes! (Although I do think of Cabochard as primarily a leather. But if we include leather with the green, we can add Bandit, too!)
And speaking of Houston ? There’s another green….
Maybe you mean “Halston”? (I only think of that since, by chance, I picked up a $2 bottle this past weekend. It’s one of the more recent bottles, though. I’d love to smell the original.)
If it weren’t for all the marvelous perfume blogs ( and other social media platforms) that will leave absolute records, how might anyone 50 years from now choose to interpret say, the oud trend?
They might wax poetic about any number of explanations, and cite the sheer number of oud scents release as proof of some cosmic shift, when if fact it was a note many of us didn’t even like and couldn’t escape if we wanted to.
Or, indeed, gourmands…would they deduce that women must have been pining to return to a more traditional role because they chose perfume that smelled foodie?
I am old enough to remember when these fragrances came out, and I will proffer that it is entirely possible many women liked green fragrances merely because they were new and different, and it was pretty much the trend of its time.
I knew many elegant, confident, intelligent, witty women who wore Y, 19 and Chamade…. and none of them ever worked outside the home. Being a homemaker and loving your role as wife and mother doesn’t mean you aren’t intellectual and want to smell like a cupcake.
Sometimes, even if you’re just a dreary ol’ domestically inclined woman whose greatest joy is found in her family and her home , ya just buy perfume because you like the way it smells. 😉
And liking can fall into trends, too!
You know, your mention of oud makes me wonder if there was some new material that came out in the 1960s that lent itself well and relatively inexpensively to green chypres. I suspect that newish synthetic oud has a lot to do with it suddenly being used so much, and then becoming so popular. Could it have been true of green chypres? (Not that I have any idea of what such a material–if there were one–would be!)
Excellent point…. With the exception of Y, I always think of those greens popular in the late 60s and 70s as being heavy on the galbanum and hyacinth, even more so than the oakmoss… were those used much before then?
Galbanum was, I’m almost sure (but certainly no expert). Think of Bandit, Vent Vert, etc. But then, as you said originally, maybe their popularity was simply because they were new and different!
Angela, I’m so glad you’ve reviewed Cialenga, one of my FAVORITE perfumes! It’s what Amal Amaluddin should have been wearing in those Golden Globes red carpet photos, along with the Dior gown, white gloves, diamond earrings, and George Clooney. I also think of Cialenga as one of the vintage perfumes that Amouage Beloved brings to mind.
http://cdn01.cdn.justjared.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/clooney-weddingtux/george-clooney-wore-his-wedding-tuxedo-to-the-golden-globes-08.jpg
Among green chypres, I would also include Lancome Magie Noire, YSL Rive Gauche and Balmain Ivoire. They could all be arrayed in a chypre spectrum from Magie Noire on the deep, dark end to YSL Y and Ivoire on the bright end.
Someone skilled in computer graphics could do a fabulous 3-D image of green chypres, showing where they sit in terms of fruit, animalic notes, soap, floral heft, etc.
Love that photo of Amul. Pure class.
That would be a fascinating graphic! Cialenga might be at the balancing point – the Goldilocks chypre.
“Goldilocks chypre”–clever!