Pierre Cardin Cardin for Women (1975): fragrance lore & musings

 Some perfumes seem to exist in limbo. No one has really known them intimately, yet their reputation lives on. Oddly enough, as my colleague Sergey highlighted in his review of the chypre Cardin de Pierre Cardin,"If you go to the Pierre Cardin official website, you will not find this fragrance on it. There, officially, the feminine perfume history of the brand begins in 1981, with Choc de Cardin. As if there was no Cardin de Pierre Cardin (1975) perfume at all. Meanwhile, vintage advertisements and vintage bottles say the opposite." 

 

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My view is similar to his, in that it presents a very interesting, yet disturbing phenomenon: Companies re-inventing their past, but contrary to -say- Creed, by omission. As if they want to focus only on the present, or at the very least on what they consider sell-able still. As fragrant history attests,"at least two more Pierre Cardin fragrances were released for women – the floral chypre Suite 16 Pierre Cardin and the green Singulier Pierre Cardin. A couple perfumes more, Amadis and Geste For Men, were also launched around the same time, as Mr. Pierre Cardin opened his Eve and Adam boutiques in Paris, sharing their bottle design with Suite 16." 

Cardin for women was the first fragrance from the house of Pierre Cardin, launched in 1976 according to Fragrantica. It opens with notes of citrus, aldehydes, bergamot, clove and cumin. The heart is a bouquet of flowers such as roses, ylang-ylang and jasmine and woody notes of oak and cedar. The base consists of amber, civet, musk, labdanum, moss, sandalwood and vetiver. Available as EDT, EDP and perfume.

So is Pierre Cardin's Cardin for Women anywhere to be found? I would love to know. 

Pierre Cardin: Choc de Cardin, Paradoxe, and Rose Cardin fragrance reviews

  Regarding Pierre Cardin fragrances, his first officially documented release has been Pierre Cardin pour Monsieur in 1972 and Cardin for women (Cardin de Pierre Cardin) in 1976. However the official Pierre Cardin website does not mention them and begins the story from Choc de Cardin. Now that the great designer has passed, they will be the subject of speculation and furtive bidding wars on auction sites. Celebrated for his avant-garde style and Space Age designs which, alongside those of Courreges and Paco Rabanne, Cardin catapulted the fashions of the 1960s, and partly made that decade what it is.

Choc de Cardin in 1981 was indeed for many their first distinct memory of a Cardin-signed scent. The evolution of a citrus cologne given a shadowy chypre mantle in the way of Diorella and Le Parfum de Thérèse, Choc is neither shocking, nor chocolate-evoking; it's as French as it possibly gets, and in many ways "a forgotten masterpiece" worth hunting down. Seriously, if only warm weather fragrances were that nuanced and that balanced nowadays.

 Rose Cardin from 1990 also has many fans. Indeed the latter is among the few rose-centric fragrances which has something to draw me in, maybe because it does what niche fragrances today do at tenfold the price. Created by the same perfumer who gave us Choc de Cardin, Françoise Caron, it's noted for its sureness of execution more than its innovation. The rose is fanned on coriander, which puts a fresh and rather soapy spin on the blossom's nectar, and on patchouli, which makes it seem like it's endlessly unfurling, but softly, not angularly, with a smidgen of incense and musk.

In the meantime, in 1983 Paradoxe by Cardin was launched. This was a sandwich of two main ideas by Raymond Chaillan, who also created Givenchy III: the fresh, sour and bitterish top note of galbanum and green gardenia, and the animalic-leather growl coming up from the base in between lovely florals, all womanly and plush. It's enough to make a (chypre loving) girl dream.

As my colleague Miguel put it, "Paradoxe is an assertive chypre and it's almost an academic example of that style. From the top we get a freshness that is aldehydic, green and citrusy. The galbanum note is very evident and grounds a certain fizziness from the aldehydes and bergamot.[...] This is not a powdery scent at all. It is crisp, transparent and angular. This angular aspect is worked mostly through the hardness of the somewhat ashy base notes."

These are fragrances that collective memory passed them by, but they need to be rediscovered.