Pheromone by Marilyn Miglin (1978)

At once bracingly green, indolically floral, and by turns delicate and animalic in its dry down, Pheromone by Marilyn Miglin is one mother of a gorgeous floral. More specifically, I'd put it in the green-floral-animalic chypre category. Yes, it has that much going on, but harmoniously and majestically.

As Pheromone opens, a mouth-watering galbanum-peach-neroli-artemisia combo (I’m absolutely guessing here) slices through the air with sharp, herbaceous angles softened by luscious fruit and floral notes. It's a bit Aliage-like in its tartness.

A mossy, castoreum-rich animalic base vaguely reminiscent of Aramis and Miss Balmain rises up to meet those already complex top notes, butching up the perfume’s femininity like a leather jacket over a sheer floral dress.

As Pheromone dries down, its heartbreakingly beautiful symphony of greens, florals, fruits and animal notes turns down the volume, not falling apart into its composite pieces, but settling themselves into a mossy-warm bed. (An occasional disquieting note wafts in that I can only describe as savory, meaty, even garbagey. It happens so fast, and disappears just as quickly that I almost forgot to mention it here. It must be an indolic facet of one of the floral notes or perhaps and angle from the castoreum. It’s funky, though, and it’s definitely there. Naturally, I love it.) Hours into applying Pheromone, I can smell a veil of complex florals over my skin, sweetened and warmed by its animal notes and earthy spice.

I wonder if Pheromone is not as talked about as I think it deserves to be because of its woefully misleading name. (Shouldn't a perfume called Pheromone be muskier?) Either that, or because it’s in that strange category that I love, that I think will probably never come back into fashion: the green floral-animalic chypre. (I talk a lot here about these 70s masterpieces that I’ve gotten to know quite well.) They’re not really "feminine" perfumes (Joy is a feminine perfume), nor could you call them masculine. No, the floral-animalic chypre perfumes are the Lipstick Lesbians of the feminine perfume categories, enjoying the conventions and trappings of femininity while not quite sticking to the program.

Pheromone is still being produced today, and this is the description on Marilyn Miglin's website: "A blend of 179 rare essences including flower, roots, wild grasses, exotic barks, seeds, rare wine resins and essential oils from France, Italy, Belgium, Madagascar, Portugal and Egypt." Hmm. I’m not sure if the new stuff is the same as the vintage sample I have, graciously given to me by the awesome Leslie Ann (aka my dealer) from the Miniature Perfume Shoppe.

I think Pheromone might still get more attention today if Marilyn Miglin had had a better creative team. The incredibly beautiful juice is there, but the name is so cheesy and obviously dated, from the "Your place or mine?" gold-chain lovin' '70s. The above ad doesn't even trade on the pheromone angle, but rather it uses the Joy by Jean Patou gimmick: "It's the world's most precious perfume." Pheromone, as the ad boasts, was $300 an ounce in 1978. Yowza.

According to a Basenotes commenter who remembers its marketing (I couldn’t find it anywhere), MM had a parallel Egyptology marketing angle as well:

From what I've read Marilyn Miglin traveled to Egypt and with the help of Egyptologists, she learned the names of seven sacred oils (lotus, spikenard, palm, myrrh, juniper, olibanum, fo-ti-tieng) that they translated from heiroglyphics [sic], and then she used them as the base for Pheromone.

Choose your marketing shtick, Marilyn! Which is it: Does Pheromone actually have any pheromones, is it the most precious perfume, or is it a reproduction of an Egyptian perfume whose formula was based on hieroglyphics your team of Egyptologists deciphered?

I think she should have stuck with the Egyptology angle. This perfume smells like something an ancient Egyptian queen would have worn. Amazing.

(Pheromone is a love-it-or-hate it scent. If you want to read both rhapsodic and jeering reviews of the perfume, go to Makeup Alley and amuse yourself for a bit. (Reviews also on Fragrantica.) One of my favorite disses of the perfume is that it stunk to one wearer's husband so much that he ignored the cleavage spilling out of her dress. Hahaha — seduction fail. If you want the vintage, make sure you get the perfume bottle — mini or otherwise — that looks like the one in the ad. The gold-capped ones are recent, and I can't vouch for how they smell.)

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Scentless chemicals secreted by animals, insects and plants, pheromones aid in same-species communication. Ant pheromones, for example, are particularly fascinating.

Some pheromones help ants alert their colony to danger, others to direct their colony to food or to attract mates. There are even pheromones scientists call "paradoxical pheromones" that send enemy colonies false information about where their colony is located. (Pretty smooth, Mr. or Mrs. Ant.)

Yet in spite of the hype surrounding the idea that human sexual pheromones help attract sexual partners (say, via sweat glands or when a woman is ovulating) the jury is still out on whether they even exist in humans. Or, to quote Wikipedia, where, like a freshman in college, I'm getting most of my information, "Few well-controlled scientific studies have ever been published suggesting the possibility of pheromones in humans."

This did not stop perfumers in the 70s from seeing the concept of human sex pheromones as a marketing bonanza, dreaming the dream that they could bottle a substance that makes men and/or women hot for each other. And perhaps they had good reason — science be damned.

In a recent Jezebel post daintily titled Pheromones Are Bullshit, the writer cited a study that debunked the idea that human pheromones help to lure in the opposite sex. Yet almost every comment offered pro sex pheromone anecdotes. Here's Cait98's claim:

I only believe in pheromones because, the week before my period, I totally get hit on more. And not because I look good, I'm bloated and I break out, but... there's something. I think people can smell it. Other girlfriends have reported the same phenomenon. Also, the phenomenon disappears when on birth control.

So whether or not you want to believe Avery Gilbert, an olfactory scientist who thinks the idea that human pheromones acts as sexual attractants is bunk, or Cait98...I have no horses in this race — ovulating or otherwise.

 

Comments

[david lincoln brooks]

Excellent review, and I happen to love PHEROMONE.

[Elisa]

Does that even make sense? Why would men, evolution-wise, be attracted to women on their periods? Aren't we most fertile two weeks before? Maybe guys just don't want to admit how much they like a little good old-fashioned STINK.

[Perfumaniac]

Thanks, David! I love it too!

[Perfumaniac]

Hi Elisa,

I'm not sure the Jezebel commenter meant that men were more likely to hit on her DURING her period, but during the time she was ovulating, which for her is a week before her period. But yeah, I agree with you. We ALL like stink, we just don't always have the cultural permission...

[50_Roses]

I'm glad to see a review of this perfume, as I don't think it gets near the attention it deserves. I don't know what the current formulation smells like; I bought my bottle in (I think) 1985. I definitely had it when my husband and I started dating that year, and it was one of the few perfumes he seemed to be able to smell. No. 5 and Arpege, my beloved life-long favorites, were lost on him. At the time, green scents were not really my thing, but I wore it a good deal just because he could smell it. I have gained a much better appreciation of this type of scent now, but unfortunately, my bottle is quite empty. I can still get a whiff of it form the sprayer, but nothing more can be sprayed.

I would love to pick up another vintage bottle, but my experiences with buying vintage have often been disappointing. About half the time the perfume smells off. It makes me wonder just what people do with their perfume bottles. My own vintage bottles (that I bought new back in the day) still smell as they should, and I generally take no more than reasonable care with them. I mean, I do leave them out on the dresser and such, so they do get light exposure. I don't keep them in the refrigerator, or stored under nitrogen as they do in the Osmotheque, or anything like that. I think some people must keep their perfume bottle on the kitchen windowsill (south-facing window, of course) or some such, to get as spoiled as they do.

I do remember the Egyptology angle, and the claim that the formula was based on a formula translated from hieroglyphics. I bought it in part because of that and in part because I was intrigued by the idea of owning the world's costliest anything, even if it was only the much less costly "Cologne" concentration. As an impecunious college student, there was no way I could by the extrait, although I wish I could have. That "obelisk" perfume bottle is terrific!

[Perfumaniac]

Hi 50_Roses, I'm so glad Pheromone lovers are around. I was surprised at how beautiful it was! I'd avoided it for a while. I wish I could offer the proper notes besides what the Basenotes commenter listed...but I had to guess. If you're running out, I'd give vintage Pheromone a shot. I've seen it floating around for not that much. And yes, the bottle is great.Thanks for your story!

[brigitte]

I had the tiniest bottle of extrait that someone had given me. I wore this one sparingly in the 80s as I did love it so and wanted to save it for as long as possible. Now I know why, spikenard, myrrh, juniper and lotus: essential oils that are right up my alley! I don't think that this one was as appreciated as much as it should have been by the mainstream consumers. It was odd, but definitely a beauty!

[Perfumaniac]

I loved the spikenard oil you sent me, Brigitte. I need to resniff it & then Pheromone and see if it accounts for any of the latter's beauty and strangeness...Why IS Pheromone strange exactly? It is, but I can't put my finger on what makes it so.

[brigitte]

Perhaps it is the usage of such ancient essential oils which were not predominant notes in perfumes of the 70s and 80s. I doubt there were any perfumes of that era that contained spikenard!

[style odyssey]

I remember this perfume but never did smell it. Thanks for your well-written description. Sounds captivating!
I'm really enjoying your blog. :)

[Perfumaniac]

Thanks style odyssey!

[Whiterosepath.wordpress.com]

This was one of my first "adult" perfume purchases. I remember being intrigued with how modern it looked. I can still remember it sitting on my vanity while my Gary Numan record played.

[Perfumaniac]

So, Whiterosepath, are you saying that "Cars" was "your song"? Hehe.

[Whiterosepath.wordpress.com]

Ha. It sure was! I was a total "Numanoid."