vintage perfume | The Scented Hound

May 29, 2014
by The Scented Hound 9 Comments

Vintage Magie Noire by Lancome

WHAT I SMELL: Magie Noire opens with this delicious rich creamy and warm blackcurrent that enraptures your nostrils with a deep and opulent bouquet. It’s just so incredibly dreamy and powerfully beautiful that it takes your breath away. That majestic opening calms ever so slightly to reveal some spice and then the jasmine and rose settle in giving the fragrance this floral headiness that seems to fill the air around my head every time I take a breath. All of what I mentioned thus far is wrapped up in this smooth and creamy honey like cognac and its texture feels rather boozy without smelling boozy. After around 20 minutes Magie Noire becomes more mysterious in nature as it becomes darker and slightly animalic which is rather surprising, but which makes me love it even more. Usually fragrances seem to thin out as time goes on, but Magie Noire keeps up the opulence. After around an hour, Magie Noire once again settles down into the beautiful chypre like floral that radiates like a force field off of your skin. For being a fragrance this was introduced in the late 1970s, I have a hard time wrapping my head around how this could be associated with the bad fashion comprised of synthetic polyester as this is just too beautiful for such a horrid time.

Notes as cited from Yesterday’s Perfume:

Top notes: Cassis, bergamot, hyacinth, raspberry, green note

Heart notes: Honey, jasmine, lily of the valley, tuberose, narcissus, orris, rose oriental

Base notes: Patchouli, castoreum, civet, vetiver, musk, oakmoss, benzoin

WHAT IT SMELLS LIKE TO ME: A book of secrets. It’s magical, spellbinding and completely takes your breath away.

THREE ADJECTIVES THAT DESCRIBE MAGIE NOIRE: opulent, magical, breathtaking

WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING ABOUT MAGIE NOIRE: Muse in Wooden Shoes, Yesterday’s Perfume, Scent of the Day

BOTTOM LINE: There’s a tragic side to this story. I picked up small used bottle of the parfum extrait at an estate sale. It only cost me $5 because only 1/2 of the 7.5 ml bottle was remaining. As I was organizing my perfumes the other day I noted that the cap was missing off of the bottle (it didn’t fit right in the first place) so the perfume has been sitting for a couple of months without a cap on. Unfortunately only a little bit remains and it is pretty thick and concentrated at this point. So please bear in mind that my experience with this review may be just slightly different due to concentration, evaporation levels…but make no mistake, it was heaven when I first got the bottle as well. The vintage parfum is selling for ridiculous prices on eBay, but I will continue to search out a new bottle (of vintage parfum)….this is my quest!!!

Also note that I can’t speak to the current version of Magie Noire, but as you can see below, they appear to be rather different. According to the Lancome website, the notes for the current EdT are:

Top Notes: Bulgarian Rose, Blackcurrant Bud
Heart Notes: Jasmine, Ylang-Ylang
Base Notes: Amber, Sandalwood, Patchouli

Bone Rating: 5 out of 5 possible bones
Scent: Chypre Floral
Classification: Feminine…but who cares, I love it!
Expense: Review based on parfum extrait. Vintage bottles can be found on eBay.

March 15, 2014
by The Scented Hound 26 Comments

Yes Virginia, there ARE plenty of vintage perfume lovers out there!

Once again, I found an estate sale up in Maryland where there was going to be some upscale perfumes for sale. As the sale was to start on Saturday morning at 8am and they were taking numbers for first in the door starting at 7am, I made sure that I was up early to head 30 miles away to stand out in the dark to get one of the first numbers. To my surprise, my hubby wanted to come with me (getting up at 5:30am…I think my crazed madness for this all provides some amusement to him) and we were standing at the door at 6:45. You think that I would have been number 1, but instead my number was 9. The people in front of me seemed to be pretty innocuous and I was hoping that they were. My hubby for the past week was asking why we needed to be there early because who want to buy old perfume? He probably was right, no one but me.

So 8am sharp the door opens and who wants to buy perfume? Everyone wants to buy perfume. There was a mad dash by 4 people in front of me and they were hogging the space getting first grabs (OK, they were first so they got first dibs, but from my vantage point…well, you know). In any case, I ended up getting some sweet items, but what I really wanted was the unopened vintage Magie Noire’s, which there were 2 parfum extraits. I had to settle for the 7.5ml used version with the missing top. But for $5, who cares.

So what else did I get? A 7.5ml bottle of vintage Molinard de Molinard parfum extrait in a Lalique bottle that was still in its cellophane. It is a beautiful gem of a bottle and I love the juice, all smokey and leathery in the beginning, only to turn into a light fruity breeze in the end. I am more of a Habinita fan, but I love this little jewel.

I also got a 7.5ml bottle of vintage Lagerfeld, KL parfum extrait. Again, still in the cellophane. Deep rich and rather manly, I have the feeling that I’ll be wearing this alot.

And then there’s the 30ml bottle and 7.5ml bottle of Guerlain Samsara parfum extrait. I only had a tiny bottle of vintage Samsara EdP as part of my collection, so this was a real treat. And to be honest, I don’t need the 7.5ml bottle, so if anyone in the US is interested, I may be willing to part with it. Just drop me a line. Funny, I was able to check the codes to see what year they are from and both are from 1989. However, the large box has no bar code and the small box does, so it’s right in that period where bar codes started coming into existence.

Overall, I’m glad I got up early to get to the sale. But since I now know that there are other vintage perfume hunters out there, I’ll make sure that I get there at 6:30 next time rather than 6:45!

And I need your help on naming some perfumes. The following photos are for a sale coming up right around the corner in a couple of weeks. I believe the yellow box is L’Air du Temps but can anyone identify what else is on the table?

February 6, 2014
by The Scented Hound 29 Comments

Vintage Review: Cabochard by Gres

How can a pretty little girl wearing a bow be so menacing??

WHAT I SMELL: Cabochard opens quite skanky, biting and strong, with a strange mix of floral and leather that creates this harsh, yet weirdly pretty in your face fragrance. The base is rather tarry, like the bottom of a dirty ashtray. And it’s like the florals are pushing out of the tar, like they are reaching out using the tar as a base like a potted plant. The tar is not thick, but instead is sharp and unrelenting. After a while add to the tar, a coating of dust, like you were just riding a motorcycle down a dirty unpaved road and the dust was filing your nostrils. I know I hardly make this sound enticing, but there is something very primal about this fragrance that hits my perfume sweet spot!

Top: aldehydes, bergamot, mandarin, galbanum, spice

Heart: jasmine, rosa damscena, geranium, ylang-ylang, iris

Base: patchouli, leather, vetiver, castoreum, oakmoss, tobacco, musk, labdanum, sandalwood

WHAT IT SMELLS LIKE TO ME: Kitten With a Whip…sexy with a dangerous side.

THREE ADJECTIVES THAT DESCRIBE CABOCHARD: indiscreet, racy, unrepentant

WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING ABOUT CABOCHARD: Yesterday’s Perfumes, Perfume Shrine, Bois de Jasmin

BOTTOM LINE: Wow, this little gem took me by surprise. I wore this at the gym the other day and combined with a raised body temperature and a little sweat I found myself falling in love with myself. I only have a little bottle of this, but I want more! Cabochard is as masculine of a fragrance that is meant for a woman that there is, which means that this is supremely unisex and I plan to wear it a lot.

Bone Rating: 5 out of 5 possible bones
Scent: Leather
Nose: Bernard Chant
Classification: a very masculine feminine fragrance
Expense: Review based on Parfum Extrait. Various prices and vintage concentrations can be found on eBay and through other sources.