Protests over too strong perfume
Harriet Hubbard Ayer (in her book of beauty tips dated 1902)
Harriet Hubbard Ayer (in her book of beauty tips dated 1902)
“Overcome
in a cable-car!!”
“Some
of us in these days of artificial musk and suffocating rose who have been
stifled in the theatre and overcome in cable-cars and restaurants by the
heaviness, have fervently wished the use of such nauseating odours might be
restricted to the boudoirs and drawing rooms whose queens elect to vulgarise
their surroundings...”
Miss
Ayer goes on to warn against the
“dangers of musk, rose, saffron and almond to those of a sensitive
disposition, being hypnotic, and should be forbidden to delicate girls and
women” as “hysteria is frequently caused.”
The
President of Manufacturing Perfumes Association USA (1905)
“The
day when delicacy of odour and richness were demanded appears to have gone, and
the cry is for something strong, rank, and lasting. Once an odour lasting
24-hours on a handkerchief was deemed satisfactory. Now, unless the odour will
last a week, it is thought weak and ephemeral!”
Charlemagne
(c. 774)
Charlemagne
is alleged to have been the first to allow women to join the men at table, “as
long as they do not wear heavy perfume and do not put everyone else off their
food.”
(Note:
some 1200 years before Giorgio)
Source:
William Kaufman’s “Perfume” – Pages 110-111
Sally Blake
a note, date unknown.
