Back to the Futur: A Review of Vintage Futur by Robert Piguet (1967)

 There is something poignant about a discontinued, vintage perfume called Futur. It makes me think of the first time I saw what remained of the 1964 World's Fair in Corona Park in Queens, New York. There, on a desolate stretch of asphalt with weeds poking through the buckled ground, was the burnt-out, rusted remains of the 12-story-high Unisphere model of the earth, representing stylistically one of that World's Fair themes: the nascent space age. 

But like all vintage perfumes I've had the pleasure to discover, as soon as I take a whiff of Futur, it doesn't matter when the perfume was composed. It doesn't smell like the past with its unfulfilled promise. Unlike that melancholy and lonely Unisphere which represents an irretrievable past and its long-gone promises, Futur (and other vintage perfumes) contains a continual present in its notes.  I discover what it wanted to say anew, like a message in a bottle.

Released under Robert Piguet's name 14 years after the couturier's death, Futur had a brief lifespan: it was discontinued just seven years later in 1974. The scent's sillage, like the perfume's brief life,  has a shooting star (or racing rocket?) quality. As I put it on my skin, its piquant, joyous burst of citrus and flowers turns into something lush and animalic. This gorgeous thing reminds me of Piguet's Baghari, and the near-ripe fruit plus incense I smell reminds me of Jean-Claude Ellena's green-mango inspired Un Jardin Sur le Nil. (Baghari's notes I smell in Futur: bergamot, orange blossom, ylang-ylang, vetiver, and some kind of benzoin-y vanillic base.)

Of the original Futur (as opposed to the recently reissued Futur which I need to check out), Octavian at 1000Fragrances says, "As I know it, it had around 60 ingredients with very bitter thyme-basil like notes, a smoky vetiver, and a strong Isobutyl Quinoline/galbanum." (The ISBQ made famous in Piguet's Bandit.) In addition, he goes on, "Tamarix was said to be the central note of the perfume maybe to express the space conquest (the theme)."

As always, perfume blogger The Scented Salamander has historical and cultural information that deepens one's interest in perfume; in Futur's case, information that make the perfume's metaphorics with respect to time even more intriguing. Its primary  notes (I believe she's referring to the vintage?) of galbanum, hyacinth, narcissus and daffodil "are very '60s, but the volume of the scent," she says, "its leathery animalic base are more from the '50s. It smells, to put it more synthetically, like the '60s-as-the-long-1950s or the conservative side of the decade." (Nevermind, as she points out, the au courant Mia Farrow hairdo on the model in the ad. Who is looking backward and downward, I might add.) 

I agree it is a strangely patched-together perfume, in terms of mood and temperment, with the liftoff of bitter green and florals descending back to earth (and back in time to the '50s!) with the lushness reminiscent of Baghari. (I love Octavian's poetic description of the fragmented quality of the perfume, which he visualizes as a shiny Brancusi sculpture. Futur, he says, is "a mirror where the spring scents are reflected in abstract shape.")

Bitter, fresh, floral, smoky, incense-y and then buttery animalic — the new Futur has a lot to live up to. 

(Vintage ad courtesy: The Scented Salamander.)

Comments

[Liz Mack]

I have been trying to find a scent called 'Graffiti,' which I think I bought in Canada in the early 70's--it was French; not the Escada (now-discontinued) scent. Any info?

[Perfumaniac]

Hi Liz, vintage Graffiti by Capucci is all over eBay. You should have no trouble finding it!

[Ramón Jurado]

I really really love this perfume, I don't really know why. It's been a journey that's for sure, at first I adored it, then I hated it and now I finally adore it again. I guess I didn't know where it stood when it comes to creativity and quality. So I tried to find other green perfumes to compare it too, of course there are none, the genre is dead, all the others are woody florals, not greens, there is only Vent Vert and Vent Vert smells like Baygon tbh, and in its current formulation is no match to Futur AT ALL. Futur is probably the only last green fragrance on the market today and that makes it incredibly important, plus to me it is GREEN in scent form. Not green as in vegetable like Vent Vert which is disgusting tbh, but green as in the color green in scent form. It's like a green fairy, I absolutely love it. And I loved what you said about perfumes being a constant present because they are.