It’s the Day of The Dead, or All Saint’s Day, or Samhain, or just November 1st…we are celebrating in any case by remembering our dearly departed perfumes.
Do tell us about a favorite discontinued fragrance, or a favorite that has been reformulated past recognition, or a precious perfume that you lost or broke or spilled, or that spoiled before you could use it up…
Welcome to Friday! Our Friday community project this week: wear something discontinued. What did you pick?
As always, do chime in with your scent of the day even if you aren’t participating in the community project.
I’m wearing Fendi Theorema. My bottle is old, but Theorema has a good shelf life — it seems to smell better every year. Theorema is probably what I should have picked for the signature scent challenge…
Imagine this: It’s the late-1980s, and Sirio leads you to your table for lunch at Le Cirque. As you dangle your quilted Chanel 2.55 off your chair and consider whether you’ll have the Dover sole or the carpaccio, a cascade of laughter draws your attention to the table next to you. The frizzy-headed woman with Bordeaux-purple gloss lipstick and an armload of bangles is Opium. Next to her sits Giorgio, a blond real estate agent with frosted pink talons for fingernails. Coco, swathed in fur and velvet and jewel tones despite the July heat outside, looks a little embarrassed by their loud conversation. (Boucheron had to be at a committee meeting for a Met gala and couldn’t make it. Neither could Cinnabar — she’s summering at her house in Bali.)
Then the room’s chatter and clink of silverware stops. A curvaceous, full-lipped woman of a certain age glides toward the empty chair at the table. She’s ignored the trend for shoulder pads and somehow combines Sophia Loren’s earth-mother sensuality with Silvana Mangano’s elegance. Still, her silkiness packs no less potency than the assertive styles of the other women at the table. This is Fendi by Fendi…
A “parure” is a set of jewelry, such as a necklace, earrings, and bracelet, or even a tiara and matching earrings. Guerlain Parure has the “complete” feeling and attention to detail of a fine jewelry parure, but it isn’t as flashy as rubies and diamonds. Instead, Parure comes off as constructed to lend an air of Ritz suite elegance without drawing attention to itself.
Jean-Paul Guerlain created Parure, and its notes include plum, bergamot, greens, fruits, hesperides, lily of the valley, rose, orris, plum, lilac, jasmine, jonquil, narcissus, oakmoss, spices, amber, leather and patchouli. Parure was released in 1975, but you know that Ritz suite I just mentioned? I see it in the early 1960s, with a woman crushing out her cigarette before reaching for wrist-length white gloves and a crisp-edged handbag that snaps shut with a click…
The name of Emilio Pucci’s fragrance Zadig is very close to “zaftig,” and it fits. Zadig is blowsy and lush and sexy, but in a way that isn’t stylish anymore. Kind of like Anita Ekberg. And then there’s Voltaire’s story, “Zadig ou la Destinée,” in which a hermit tells the hero that he must submit to fate. So, by name alone, Zadig evokes passion, fate, history, and good old-fashioned pulchritude. That’s a lot to live up to. In my opinion, Zadig succeeds.
Zadig was released in 1973. I can’t find much that’s “official” about Zadig, but scouring the internet has turned up a list of notes including aldehydes, bergamot, orange, peach, coriander, clove, rose, honey, jasmine, orris, ylang ylang, vetiver, benzoin, patchouli, cinnamon, vanilla, tolu, Tibetan musk and amber. Zadig also spawned a few flankers, Miss Zadig (1977) and Miss Zadig Eau Fraiche, neither of which I’ve sampled…