Retro-Scents

Perfumes are sort of like fashions, they tend to come and go. There are a few classics (I'm thinking Chanel No. 5, L'Air du Temps, Y, even Jean Nate) that just seem to always be available. But a lot of great perfumes just sort of fade away.

In the 1960s, a very big perfume was My Sin. The ads always mentioned the manufacturer: it was, My Sin by Lanvin. Around that time, my mother liked Tweed, a perfume that I'm not sure is still around. Coty was selling L'Emeraude.

I recently saw an Avon catalog and saw that Avon only has a couple of "old-time" fragrances in its roster. Timeless has been around for decades; I guess that was named right.

So why is it that Chanel No. 5 has been around forever and other fragrances just don't last that long in the marketplace? Was there something that makes Chanel No. 5 more classic and other scents more trendy?

It seems to me that people are far more loyal to their fragrances than they are to, say, the type of shoes they want to wear to work or the purse they carry. But over time, we shifted away from the old Marilyn Monroe kind of perfume (there's a great quote by her talking about wearing nothing but Chanel No. 5 and a smile) and are headed toward lighter, more diffuse, and more generally acceptable fragrances.

The retros were heavier and less likely to use florals. Today, florals and botanicals are big and fragrances are lighter, even in the way they're delivered. Most people today prefer to squirt on some alcohol-based floral spritz than use real perfume.

It's almost like political correctness has hit the world of perfume. We just don't want to offend, so we'll keep our fragrance light, polite, and just right.

The retros are awesome, though, even if some of them are just not what we would actually want to wear. They were more compelling, more powerful, and they probably made people with allergies sneeze.

The other day I walked into a room where a person with one of those major retro perfumes had been. She was gone, but I could still smell the perfume in the room. It made me smile, because it reminded me of all those big old perfumes people used to wear.