Perfumer Edmond Roudnitska, author of the classic Diorella and Diorissimo, once said: “You can study the history of the 20th century by perfume. And, which no textbook will give you, even to understand something about her. " Indeed, perfumery is very sensitive to newspaper stories. Here are some examples. Along with the most important discoveries of the Belle Époque in physics, there was a rise in the chemical industry, to which the fragrance industry was one of the first to respond - a transition from purely natural compositions to what we today call "modern" perfumery, successfully combining natural with synthetic. The surge of Egyptomania in the 1920s - after archaeologists found the pristine tomb of Tutankhamun - sparked public interest in exotic oriental-style fragrances. The hippies brought the patchouli perfume to lifecareerists of the 1980s - a fashion for strong poisons in the spirit of Poison, Opium and Obsession, which assumed a personal account. But the nineties were a time of happiness for perfumery - in the literal sense of the word: exactly twenty years ago it came out Clinique Happy.
Happy, Clinique © press service
In the USA "Lucky" quickly became a bestseller, because it smelled of wild optimism - to match the cheerful and cheerful sense of life of the young nation. In general, when you start to remember the names of the fragrances of that time, the picture is rosy: Le Monde Est Beau ("The World is Beautiful") Kenzo in a naive bottle with a rose, Weekend, Burberry - a summer Saturday, fresh and well-ventilated, White Jeans, Versace - white jeans that cannot be stained, because the world is still so new and fresh. The perfumery of the 1990s was in a high state of mind and gave birth to good-natured and slightly ridiculous giants - the majority, unfortunately, had already died out, having failed to adapt to the new environment. Only a few remained - for example, a large and bold Kenzo Jungle of Dominic Ropion, a real monument of the mid-1990s: then elephants and other large animals still had a chance to land on the shelf in a chain store, passing through the eye of a needle of focus groups and marketing research.
Jungle, Kenzo © press service
Elephant, like Happy, smelled fun - a quality that modern unsmiling perfumery lacks. Today, Infernal Roses and Black Orchids live on the shelves, and in the 1990s, Elizabeth Arden 's Sunflowers bloomed, yellow boxes with wacky white flowers that look more like daisies. Drew Barrymore wore them in her hair for several years in a row, who called them "a kind of sunshine", and something like Sunflowers became for the English deprived of light - in the UK, the fragrance sold almost as well as Chanel No. five. Here's another example: Victoria's Secret is nowproduces "adult" fragrances with serious intentions - Dark Angel, Bombshell, Basic Instinct, etc., and in the 1990s the main hit of the brand was listed as "Ice Pear", a body spray with the smell of fruit punch from the refrigerator.
Dark Angel, Victoria's Secret © press service
There was also a vicious competitor - Sparkling Pear of the inexpensive Bath & Body Works brand. American teenagers prayed for them: "Pears" replaced the deodorant after training, if there was not enough time for a shower, they wiped their glasses and "freshened up" the smoky car. Today, perfume consumers are asked every day deep and a little sad questions: why is there such a strange batch code at the bottom of perfumes bought in a group on Facebook? real oud in my perfume for 20 thousand rubles. or synthetic? what does Angelina Jolie have to do with it? And in the 1990s, the only perfume dilemma was choosing the right Charlie. All the girls popular at school wore sultry Charlie Red, and I had the hateful Charlie White on my shelf: “Such a cute smell, just like you,” my mother said and handed me water with a thin watermelon scent.
Charlie Red, Revlon © press service
Justice was restored a couple of years later, when I myself - almost with the first money I earned - bought myself Lankom's Trésor, "a vulgar, good-natured little thing with bleached hair, dressed in a pink mohair sweater." This is a quote from a book by perfume critic Luca Turin, who nevertheless gave the Treasure four stars out of five. “When a perfumer manages to appeal to both the analytical and the 'reptilian' functions of the brain, the one responsible for our basic instincts and basic emotions, it is a great success,” he wrote at the end of the review. Is fun a basic emotion? If so, then modern perfumery - in the presence of an infinite number of ready-made bases produced by Firmenich, Givaudanand other companies - just such a "base" is sorely lacking.>