Yesterday's Perfume

Enter to Win the "American Hustle" Flowers and Garbage, Diorella Perfume Giveaway!

  

Rosalyn: There’s this top coat that you can only get from Switzerland and I don’t know what I’m going to do because I’m running out but I love the smell of it. Irving and I can’t get enough of it. There’s something…the top coat…It’s like perfumey but there’s also something rotten and I know that sounds crazy but I can’t get enough of it. Smell it, it’s true. Historically, the best perfumes in the world, they’re all laced with something nasty. It is true! Irving loves it, he can’t get enough of that stuff…Carmine…sweet and sour, rotten and delicious…

Mayor Carmine Polito: What am I smelling? It smells like flowers!

Rosalyn: Flowers, but with garbage!

Mayor Carmine Polito: You know what that is for me? It’s coriander for me…it’s coriander.

Say "Happy Valentine's Day" With Scented Ink!

There are few things more anachronistic than the handwritten letter.

OK, maybe there's one thing more anachronistic than the handwritten letter: cursive writing. In fact, 41 states don't even teach kids how to write in cursive anymore, which has resulted in some 20-somethings looking at cursive like it's Sanskrit. Cursive, sadly, was pretty much phased out of the classroom in the 1990s.

Since excess is my best friend, I figure we should not only bring back handwritten letters in cursive, but we should also do so in scented ink aka "encre parfumée."

I'm just beginning to experiment with this idea, so my friends around the country better prepare themselves for some smell-o-grams from me.

The Opus Oils glamour-pusses over at Jitterbug Perfume Parlor have a divine Artisan Perfumed Ink for dip pens in the scent of Babylon Noir, which is about as sexy, dark, and decadent as its name sounds. And why wouldn't it be? It has tuberose, leather, civet and smoke accords. (Babylon Noir was Opus Oils' answer to author Sheila Eggenberger's call to scent the characters of her new book, Quantum Demonology.) One dram of Babylon Noir perfumed ink is a mere $12, and 1 oz. is $35.

Vintage Perfume Commercial: Gio by Armani, 1992, Directed by David Lynch

 

A short film by David Lynch that just happens to be a perfume commercial, this 1990s Giò ad has all the hallmarks of a Lynch film: a beautiful and mysterious woman, menacing people in the shadows who teleport in and out of the time/space continuum as we know it, a quick jazz club scene, and a haunting score. Why can't all perfume commercials be this great?

Vintage Perfume Commercial: Fidji by Guy Laroche, 1990

 

Linda Evangelista again, this time for Fidji, a sixties perfume that was still going strong in the 1980s and early 1990s. (It might even still be going strong now, in diluted form, of course.) Instead of buying love slaves at the colonial bazaar as she was in her ad for YSL's Opium, here Evangelista's writhing on the beach with a factice bottle of Fidji.

Vintage Perfume Commercial: Exclamation! 1980s

 

 I love Sophia Grojsman perfumes, but her bodacious and complex scents need big budgets, too. Unfortunately, the statement without words that this perfume makes is, "I will give you a migraine headache." Oh, and that's the model-actress Famke Janssen hopping around with the exclamation point.

Vintage Perfume Commercial: Anais Anais by Cacharel, 1988

 

                                         "Anais Anais, le plus tendre des parfums."

Vintage Perfume Commercial: Elizabeth Taylor's White Diamonds, 1991

 

Elizabeth Taylor was known for her extensive jewel collection, and she was one of the first celebrities to throw her hat into the celebrity perfume ring. Her first perfume, Passion (1987) was a hit, and was soon followed by others. Here, she lends one of her massive diamond earrings to a gambler in this 1991 commercial for White Diamonds perfume.

 

Vintage Perfume Commercial: Opium by Yves Saint Laurent, 1986

 

Here's Linda Evangelista at the height of her supermodel fame in an Indiana Jones-like commercial about a woman who goes to an "exotic" market to choose...a male sex slave? Umm, progress?

Vintage Perfume Commercial: Charlie, 1986

 

This is just painful.

The stylish 70s Charlie commercial featured a zippy heroine, a jaunty tune, and a narrative of liberation. This 80s Charlie commercial pretty much admits it doesn't know who its audience is: business women? older ladies, described condescendingly as "vintage"? a child wearing makeup? Oy. Embarrassing. And it's been said that people were not happy about the little butt-tap this woman gives the man she's talking to. That's the least of this commercial's problems.