The scent, created by the legendary French parfumier Bernard Chant, was tangy, feral, and almost too naughty to wear to work, but this mildly transgressive quality was a big part of the appeal. The seventies were an unbridled and messy time, when loucheness was a life style born of postwar nihilism and economic decline. If the city was crumbling around you, why not smell like death and sex, entropy and excess? The new formula does not smell like these things. It cannot clear elevators or persist through a night of heavy dancing. It evaporates quickly and smells a little like soap. Still, I bought a bottle recently, because I knew that a new Netflix miniseries about Halston (called, simply, “Halston,”) was coming, and I wanted to turn my viewing experience into a kind of Smell-O-Vision. As it turns out, the synthetic, exasperating reformulation was a perfect match for watching the series.
— Read more in The Freeing Fashion Behind the Halston Saga at The New Yorker.
