Designer Perfumers
 |
| Gabrielle 'Coco' Chanel - 1962 |
When
it came to the scents to go with the clothes, it has to be said that Paul
Poiret, the most legendary designer of them all, actually led the way. He
dispensed with the corset, and introduced a fluid line. It was Poiret too [with
his “Parfums de Rosine” brand], who first introduced perfume to a couture
house, causing an almighty storm that took years to subside.
“What
does a dress designer know about perfume?!” Thundered the purists. “Would one
expect a perfumer to design dresses?”
And
yet? Who better? Who would know women better than one who dresses them? No more
or less than designing the correct scarf to go with an outfit, the correct
scent is as important an accessory as the right shoes or bag.
Others
quickly followed suit...
Over
half a century has passed since Jean Patou and Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel ruled
the fashionable world in Paris; dictated style, vied for clients and fired
salvoes at each other from their scented salons.
So
alike, so different. Brother and sister under the skin, dedicated and
passionate rivals with so much in common. The elegant Patou, “that Hercules!”
as Elsa Maxwell called him; indefatigable ladies’ man, habitué of the
race-tracks and gaming tables, son of a prosperous tanner from Normandy; and
Coco Chanel, illegitimate child of peasant stock from Saumur.
 |
| Jean Patou - at work... |
Both
peaked at about the same time, both specialised in “the nothing look”; Chanel
with her vests and cardigans, and Patou with his sportswear. Chanel’s “little
vest” had actually been inspired by a buttoned fine wool undergarment
“borrowed” from a lover. The lover, being English, bought his vests from an
exclusive haberdasher in Bond Street, and these vests were made in Nottingham,
woven from silk and wool that crunched to nothing in the hand, and clung to the
body. Very sexy. Very suggestive.
Chanel
took one of these vests, dyed it, added a collar, put it with a pleated skirt,
and launched the look that screams “understated class” to this day.
While
Coco perfected her vests, Patou concentrated on sport and dressing the modern
sportswoman, the greatest coup at the time being his contract to dress Suzanne
Lenglen – the French tennis goddess of the day. Spectacularly ugly, even her
most fervent admirers could never claim her to be a beauty, but Patou made her
look good.
This
was the age of “le sport”, that frenetic time between the wars, when clothes
that could “move” were needed for leisured people who never kept still.
If
they weren’t golfing, sailing, bathing, motoring or playing tennis, they were
doing the “Black Bottom”, “Shimmy”, “Bunny-Hug” or the “Charleston”.
Clothes
were needed that could keep pace with all this activity, and both Chanel and
Patou vied constantly with each other to provide them.
Whilst
Patou publicly sneered at dress designers who designed for the theatre (as
Chanel did), Chanel swiped back with her emphatic statement that “no man can
design clothes for women: clothes must be logical. No man is logical, so how
can they design women’s clothes?”
However,
in the area of “les riens”, as both described accessories – including perfume –
Chanel pipped Patou, not just to the post, but to the Winner’s Enclosure.
Thanks
to her friend Misia Sert (known so well, she was known only as “Misia”) who
gave her the idea, and to Ernest Beaux who mixed the potions she chose to bear
her name, she brought out No5,
Gardenia, Bois des Iles, Cuir de Russie,
and No22 in rapid
succession.
Patou,
having launched several fragrances without particularly notable impact, eventually
hit the jackpot with JOY, five years
after the birth of Chanel’s No5,
in 1926.
 |
| Patou's famous "Joy" - formerly "the costliest perfume in the world" |
Prior
to this, however, he had hit upon the extraordinarily wonderful and novel idea
of setting up a bar in his salons, where bored men waiting for their wives and
mistresses to complete a fitting, could have a drink and choose a scent from
the selection displayed at the bar.
Presented
in classic Art Deco crystal bottles with pineapple shaped stoppers (designed by
Louis Suë), one could choose from Amour-Amour
(for blondes), Que Sais-je? (for
brunettes), and Adieu Sagesse! (for
redheads).[i]
Le Sien followed, the first “unisex” perfume;
fresh, outdoors, and sporty. JOY then
followed in 1928, along with the Cocktail
selection. This revolutionary range consisted of 3 basic scents: Cocktail Dry, Cocktail Sweet, and Cocktail
Bittersweet – for the 4th, you had the opportunity to create the 4th
yourself by mixing your own.
By
1971, No5 had
grossed $15million, and despite its prohibitive price tag, Patou’s JOY wasn’t far behind. By then, however,
Charlie had been born in the pungent
wake of Youth Dew, and it seemed that
charming world of elegance, subtlety and sophistication, perched on a bar stool
in a Paris salon choosing scents while “Madame” got her outfit just right, might
well be gone for good.
Indeed,
for a time, it seemed that France was content to stand aside with traditional
insouciance and watch as the perfume industry across the Atlantic swamped the
globe with brassy pongs and sledgehammer marketing. By the mid-80’s, the world
was suffocating in a fog of overpowering potions more suited to the Casbah or
harem, because, put simply, this was where the money was coming from and the
market the industry was most eager to please.
Finally,
Patou, as if waking from a long sleep, eased out of their indolence and decided
to do something about it.
In
time for Christmas 1983, they relaunched the glorious Normandie, smelling of roses and carnations, moss, jasmine, and
expensive leather suitcases – the sort of suitcases that needed porters to
carry them onto luxury liners, long, long ago, in that period of gaiety between
the two World Wars. This was the sort of scent that took an evening to develop
from the first cocktail to that final goodnight under the trans-Atlantic stars.
And if the evening lasted longer... so did the scent.
At
the same time, Chanel, as if waking from the same long sleep, brought back Cuir de Russie (favoured of Bianca
Jagger), Bois des Isles, Gardenia (although a very disappointing
new formula), and No22.
 |
| Bianca's favourite: "Cuir de Russie" (Russian Leather) |
Almost
in response, having originally thought only to reissue three of their most
famous past glories (Chaldée, Vacances, and Cocktail) Patou damned the torpedoes entirely in a spectacular splash
at the tail end of 1984, bringing out no less than 12 of their early designer
scents in glorious Suë designed bottles, giving everyone the chance to compare
present day offerings with those available in the past.
 |
| The magnificent and mouth-watering Patou Collection of Classic Scents. For one brief shining moment in the mid 1980s, you could actually buy all of these...alas, no more. |
Such
comparison could well have proved odious, which might well be just what the
ever elegant house of Patou had in mind. For whereas now, confusion abounds and
to distinguish one “new” creation from another is practically impossible as
they hurtle off production lines in chemical factories quicker than coconuts at
a fair-ground shy, to bombard a punch-drunk public with yet more combinations
of tuberose, gardenia and jasmine, developed by chemists in pharmaceutical
companies and hawked around to be sold with minor adjustments of the same
formula to the various perfume houses, Patou’s were all individual, each one
blazingly different to the other.
Amour-Amour, Que
Sais-je? and Adieu Sagesse
represent the three stages of a love affair. Warm, hesitant, spicy Chaldée, the Ambre Solaire of its day,
brings back memories of holidays in the South of France, and warm, relaxed lazy
laughter.
Moment Suprême is the sophistication of the sort of
woman who could afford to be dressed by Jean Patou, and who possessed the supreme
self-assurance to place her faith in “simple” lavender.
Normandie evokes the leisured life enjoyed by
passengers on one of the most luxurious and legendary ocean liners of all time.
With a hint of the sort of leather that went to make very expensive luggage
before some tram-lined bore decided that “leather” based scents were too
masculine and only men should wear them, in a spectacular marketing move, every
lady who travelled First Class on the Normandie’s maiden voyage, found a bottle
of Normandie at her place at dinner.
 |
| Patou's "Normandie" - created for the luxury liner of the same name |
The
hint of cinnamon in Divine Folie and the
dry buzz given by Cocktail recall
“Les Années Folles”, the mad-cap years between the wars, known as “The Long
Party”.
Colony brought a touch of citrus from
distant islands across the sea, Vacances, the light but heady scent of lilacs
drifting from a summer garden (and created to commemorate France’s first Public
Holiday – Patou was not so distanced by the rich that he forgot the poor
entirely).
L’Heure Attendue, a sigh of relief and a cry for joy
to greet the end of the war, 6 years austerity and enemy occupation. “Awaited
hour” – warm, rich, luxurious; to show both France and Jean Patou were finally back
in business.
Câline, a gesture to the young, probably the
only truly and consciously “youthful” fragrance Patou ever made – to reflect
the spirit of the “swinging 60’s”.
12
fragrances, all totally different, each with an individual statement to make. For
one brief moment in the mid-80’s, we did not have to imagine what such
legendary long-gone scents were like, we could try them for ourselves.
Typically,
Parfums Jean Patou did not play safe with a “dummy run” of just one or two to
test the temperature of the market, they risked the lot in one throw of the
dice on the table.[ii] Rather
like their founder often did on the tables at Monte... One can almost see M.
Patou’s smile of approval.
Sadly
however, this time the gamble did not pay off, for Dior’s Poison was waiting in the wings. The test-tube fragrance – fathered
by a laboratory robot, placed in the surrogate womb of consumer research –
thrusting forth like the Alien to pervade continent after continent.
It
seems we were not ready for a return to elegance. We had in fact, even farther
to fall. It seems the public no longer
exists, subtle enough, varied enough, sophisticated enough, or civilised enough
to appreciate such gestures. We have become too bland, too safe, too
homogenised and too colourless to recognise a life-line when we see one thrown
into the insipid sea in which we have been drowning for so long. In which case,
we probably deserve to drown.
But
to the inveterate and impossibly glamorous gambler Jean Patou, just for the few
customers who fell on these reissued scents and bought as many as they could
afford, this brief, glorious, sadly limited run would undoubtedly have been
considered more than worth the risk.
“Ah
well...” He would no doubt smile as he did when tearing up a betting slip at
the track: “there goes another dress...!”
Sally Blake
Date unknown
[i] A contemporary advertisement has the scents definitely
aimed at these groups as stated, although it is often thought that Amour-Amour was intended for brunettes
and Que Sais-je? for blondes.
[ii] [As my mother
predicted, bottles from this limited mid-80’s run are now collectors’ items. I
treasure my bottle of Vacances,
bought at Fortnum and Mason, which came with a fabulous 1930’s inspired silk
handkerchief. EWB]
