Posted by Angela
on
27 June 2011
The drizzly spring afternoon at an antiques mall where I found a bottle of Jean Patou 1000 Eau de Toilette also yielded a 1920s evening coat. The coat is gold lamé, dull and frayed at the cuffs and collar, and is covered with gold and green sequins sewn in the shapes of flowers with twisting stems. Green silk velvet lines the coat’s interior, even down the insides of the sleeves. Sewn in the collar is a label in a Gatsby-esque font that reads “Miss Wilson, 657 Boylston st., Boston.” The coat feels glamorous, mysterious, and decayed. That’s exactly how I feel about Jean Patou 1000.
House nose Jean Kerléo created 1000 (sometimes called “Mille,” the French word for “thousand”). According to the Jean Patou website, the formula took ten years and 1,000 tries to perfect. Kerléo had only worked for Patou for four years when 1000 was released in 1972, so you can take the story with a grain of salt or figure maybe Kerléo picked up on another perfumer’s work when he arrived. For 1000’s launch, Patou delivered by Rolls Royce 1,000 bottles of the fragrance in jewel-encrusted boxes to the “most elegant women in Paris.”
The Patou website calls 1000 a floral chypre…
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Posted by Robin
on
28 April 2010
It smells like midnight in the Bois de Boulogne — sexy and mysterious. I think it creates a mood. It’s alluring. It says, I’m interested in life, in olfactory senses as well as visual ones.
— Actress Anjelica Huston talks about Jean Patou 1000, in Timeless 1,001 Nights at the New York Times. Many thanks to SuddenlyInexplicably for the link!
Posted by Robin
on
13 October 2009
In case you’ve got a few extra dollars set aside:
An exclusive luxury fragrance for exceptional women—only 50 limited-edition inscribed Baccarat Pure Parfum bottles are created each year for Jean Patou Joy…
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Posted by Angela
on
15 June 2009
Dear Michelle,
It’s all right if I call you Michelle, right? I feel like I know you well enough. After all, I’m not the only person I know who has fallen asleep and dreamt of hanging out with you and Obama. In one of my friend’s dreams, you were barbecuing and wearing a Duke University jersey. In my dream we were at St. Sulpice in Paris and a priest was explaining how we were really cousins. (Don’t worry, it was only a dream. I’m just glad there weren’t giant ducks or submarines or something like that.) But I’m not writing to talk to you about dreams. I want to discuss something more important: perfume.
I understand that you recently bought a bottle of Boadicea the Victorious Noble Eau de Parfum. I’ve been lucky enough to smell Noble, and it’s a wonderful rose scent with a sophisticated patchouli and amber dry down. I wouldn’t mind having a bottle of it myself. But since you’re First Lady, I see broader horizons for you than the perfume output of a British hairdresser. You undoubtedly have big things on your mind, what with being a razor-sharp attorney, mom, and target of public attention. So, to save you time and to bring you maximum olfactory pleasure, I’ve chosen a few perfumes for you to put in the cabinet next to Noble…
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Posted by Erin
on
12 June 2009
There is a story in our family about my first grade parent-teacher interview. The excellent, jolly woman who taught my class reported I was doing well, but confessed to my mother that she experienced considerable anxiety when introducing what she called “controversial topics”. Mom, a teacher herself, did not ask which first grade topics these could possibly be, and she did not encourage the woman to elaborate. She was already familiar with what my brothers later named “the squinty face”. She knew well my favorite phrase: “Now, wait a minute…” (No doubt this was preferable to a tic I developed later: “You mean to tell me…?!”) Most importantly, both my parents had learned to avoid being drawn into discussions on, say, the vagaries of English spelling, the habits and duties of Santa Claus, or the basic road safety rules a young lady of six might be expected to follow. For years, I described myself as a contrarian. Now Christopher Hitchens has tried to make it hip to be a young contrarian, and I’ve decided to start taking popular, rather non-committal stances on current issues. It’s hard to get rid of the squinting, though.
Old habits die hard, then, and in the interests of both truth and disagreeing with people, I have found myself defending Perfumes: The Guide on points of accuracy and style in various online forums. Still, this sentence from Luca Turin’s review of Caldey Island Lavender gives me pause: “Lavender is summer wind made smell, and the best lavender compositions are, in my opinion, the ones from which other elements are absent, and only endlessly blue daylight air remains.” Well, despite having never sampled the Caldey Island Lavender, I must disagree. (I have found that to properly enter into the spirit of arguing, you must be prepared to dispense right away with proper research.) Leaving aside the blue air — surely wind can’t be blue? And air is merely stationary wind? — I fail to see how Guerlain Jicky would fit into his best lavenders category. And any best lavenders category that excludes Jicky cuts no mustard with me. Let us discuss a list of other surpassingly wonderful complex lavenders, just to be difficult…
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