Barbara Herman - Scent and Subversion: Decoding a Century of Provocative Perfume

I magine if a first edition of your favorite book slowly disintegrated each time you read it. You might be able to buy another copy at a yard sale or online, but sooner or later, there wouldnt be a single copy left. And lets say, because of a quirk in paper and ink, there was no way to copy its words. What imaginary worlds that reflect back and teach us about our own would be lost forever?

Sadly, this is the fate of many major and minor classic perfumes of the twentieth century, perfumes that have revealed through their liquid language how women and men lived, what they aspired to, and what was forbidden to them. Because perfumes go out of style, change formulas, or get discontinued, most of these mini novels written in liquid will simply disappear.

The threats to perfume come from multiple directions. Sometimes, brands decide to discontinue a fragrance because it doesnt do well initially. This was the fate of two recent masterpieces: Jacques Cavalliers Le Feu dIssey for Issey Miyake (1998) and Isabelle Doyens Eau du Fier for Annick Goutal (2000). Reformulations of classic fragrances happen all the time, and because of industry secrecy, consumers simply discover on their own that the new bottle of their favorite perfume smells different. Sometimes the reformulations are by necessity. For example, birch tar was banned by IFRA (The International Fragrance Association), so Guerlain had to eliminate it from their formula for Shalimar. Perfumes are often reformulated to cut costs, using less expensive ingredients than in the original. In other cases, some perfumes are tweaked to conform to prevailing styles.

Whatever the case, Givaudan perfumer Jean Guichard recently made a confession that the perfume industry has never owned up to before: Perfumes do in fact get reformulated. He confirmed what every perfume lover who has ever picked up a new bottle of an old favorite and failed to recognize it already knows. Consumers know their perfume better than any expert, Guichard said. We say nothing to consumers, but they notice when their fragrance has been changed.

By January 2010, IFRA had instituted a ban on a long list of perfume ingredients crucial to iconic perfumes such as Chanel No. 5, Joy, and Mitsouko. This prompted Paris-based perfume historian Octavian Coifan to declare that twentieth-century perfumery will become history. The situation is looking even more dire now. At the time of this writing, in 2013, the EU is proposing severer restrictions on even more natural ingredients used in perfumery, to which perfumer Frdric Malle of ditions de Parfums de Frdric Malle has responded, If this law goes ahead I am finished, as my perfumes are all filled with these ingredients. He speaks for most perfume lovers, for whom perfume is more than an accessoryit is personal memory, cultural history, and art.

Perfume is inherently fragile and evanescent, but these regulations that were affecting the very DNA of perfume made seeking out vintage perfume even more urgent for me: Time was running out to discover their disappearing styles and stories. I wanted to smell as many vintage perfumes as I could before they were gone forever. Thanks to eBay, estate sales, Ye Olde Junque Shoppes, online purveyors, and decanted samples from readers of my blog, Yesterdays Perfume, many of these originals became mine. As I was collecting vintage, I was still seeking out contemporary perfume, but I felt there was time to learn about the new.

My obsession started off smalla decant of vintage perfume here, a bid on a full bottle of perfume on eBay there. But the flame soon grew into a conflagration, if not a full-scale, five-alarm fire, stoked by perfume books, blogs and forums, and conversations with other perfume lovers. Ironically, I would come to learn a great deal from most of my scent interlocutors through the pale light of my computer screen, my love for something so visceral facilitated through the virtual. Soon enough, my romance with what Octavian Coifan calls the Eighth Art was in full bloom.

It was a few years ago when I was the editor of a womens pop-culture website that I started writing about perfume on my blog, Yesterdays Perfume. The office manager would bring me packages of perfume Id ordered online, and during breaks from blogging about celebrity hookups or the latest birth-control method, Id rip them open at my desk. Trying to be discreet in the middle of an open office, Id pop open a tiny one-milliliter vial of the decanted perfume du jour and dab it on my wrist with its plastic wand. Then, in a ritual that has become as common as having a meal or reading a book, Id lift my wrist to my nose, close my eyes, and sniff, like a deranged junkie getting her fix.

In that work environment, it would have been appropriate for me to wear perfume in a style that has been popular since the 1990s: the office scent. Usually with citrus notes or oceanic accords that stay close to the skinnotes that project little more than cleanan office scents raison dtre is to avoid being offensive. It plays well with others. By definition, it is institutional and conformist. CK One, Calvin Kleins 1994 unisex hit, is the perfect example of an office scent. CK One, writes one commenter on Basenotes.net, prolongs that feeling of being washed and clean. Another fan says, This is the ONE true fragrance that could just be worn by practically anyone on earth, including newborn babies.