Jean Patou Joy: fragrance review

The archetypal example of a smooth, beautiful jasmine that could be worn sufficiently well without evoking particularly dark tendencies yet without being pointless is Joy by Jean Patou. It remains something of an icon in the status of luxe perfumery, partly due to its initial advertising campaign in the economically hard year of 1930, coined by Elsa Maxwell (“the costliest perfume in the world”), and partly due to its unparalleled standards of raw materials. According to perfumers' lore, the designer Jean Patou, side by side by doyenne of café society Maxwell, went to Alméras to find a new formula for a luxury perfume to be launched. But nothing really grabbed them and, exasperated, the legendary perfumer showed them something he thought unmarkeable anyway: a costly fusion of the noblest floral materials. They both became entranced at this and Joy joined the ranks of Patou scents in 1926 for the loyal customers, while made available widely four years later, at the throes of the Great Depression.

Patou went to great lengths to assure us that 1 ounce of Joy demands 10600 jasmine blooms and 28 dozen roses to be produced. This would be not as impressive, hadn’t those flowers been the venerable jasminum grandiflorum of Grasse in the south of France and the two crown glories of rose varieties: Damascene rose (Rosa Damascena) from Bulgaria and Rose de Mai (Rosa centifolia), the latter again from Grasse. The in-house nose for Patou since 1997 Jean Michel Duriez has monitored the fields and crops to ascertain that the end result rendered out of those two rose varieties meets the quality control criteria demanded by the house of Patou. Now that the Jean Patou house has left P&G hands (a company which didn't particularly care for luxury, it seems, judging by the lack of promotion they did for it), while Duriez stays behind, it's anyone's guess what happens; it remains to be seen whether Joy will be revamped, twisted or forgotten.

Whether the quality has gone downhill in recent batches, as with most commercial perfumes of today, in comparison to the vintage is a matter of dire attention and discussion on several fora. Some people have expressed a concern that the richness of the floral ingredients has been a tad jeopardized, however for what is worth Luca Turin insists that the quality of the end perfume remains unchanged and his info and sample batch comes staight from Patou headquarters. Since I do not have different batches to compare and contrast, because my bottles come from the mid-90s, I cannot speak with authority on the matter. The testing I have contacted in stores in different concentrations and places did not leave me with serious doubt as to the up keeping of the formula, however I repeat that I could not possibly ascertain this beyond any doubt since I do not have comparable material at hand from different eras; on top of that, ascertaining when a particular bottle was actually produced is so very hard, since perfumers -unlike wine producers- do not label the production year on the bottle (which would make our life so much easier, had it been the case!).

At any rate, Joy unfolds majestic proportions of floral grandeur with a nobility and restraint of hand that points to a very skilled perfumer indeed: Henri Alméras. Keeping the noble nature of the two focal points of the suite intact and singing in a melody of thirds, he garlanded them with the merest touch of honeysuckle, ylang ylang and tuberose, anchored by a very light sandalwood base which manages to smell opulent yet beautifully balanced. A grand dame  in a youthful setting, Joy smells translucent and at the same time durable and substantial.

It is my impression that there is a difference of emphasis on the two different concentrations of eau de toilette and eau de parfum. The former is characterized by a more pronounced jasmine intonation, like a solo aria in the midst of a lively Mozart opera, while the latter is a bit more powdery with accents of rosiness that permeate the whole with a softness that resembles a Schumman lullaby. In fact the Eau de Parfum is repackaged Eau de Joy which was a different perfume than Joy in parfum, as per Luca Turin. Given my proclivities for jasmine over rose, I opt for the eau de toilette, however both concentrations are sure to please the lovers of fine perfumes. The parfum is assuredly more animalic in the civet direction (a wonderful characteristic and thus the one which I always prefer over other concentrations) and stays close to the body with an elegance that speaks highly of its aristocratic pedigree. The vintage specimens that display the best quality are the ones in the black snuff bottles (prior to 1990), while the rectangular ones with the gold edges are newer.

Jean Patou Delices: fragrance review & history

Much like Joy (1935), "the costliest perfume in the world" was launched just when the Great Depression was hitting Jean Patou's wealthiest American clients the hardest, the delicious Délices, also by Jean Patou, was issued in 1940, smack when World War II had shown its ugly face. Perhaps to divert attention from the difficult days ahead? Or in an (alas vain) attempt to exorcise the demons of war which were only too fresh in the memory of its contemporaries? In 1940 few were willing to believe the monstrosities would last for long and Jean Patou had died 5 years before, leaving the house to his sister and her husband Raymond Barbas. Some decades later, few are willing to believe that mementos of that era have resonance today; yet they do. To this day this Patou fragrance remains one of those Great Unknowns of Perfumeland, being one of the more elusive fragrances in the Patou portfolio, but also in the collective perfume vaults. In vain would one search for notes or family classification, as they are not listed anywhere, and I was prompted to tackle it by the timely question of one of my readers and friends in scent, , Melissa, so I am tentatively trying to give you my own view of its delicious, decadent character.

Délices strikes me as spicy, with a light and fresh bouquet of lavender and aldehydic notes for pizzaz, murked by an amber bottom that reminds me of classic orientals and chypres of the 30s, by Patou or otherwise. There is also a kinship with 1000, a later floral chypre woody (1972) by Jean Patou which looks like it has been inspired by its ancestor because of its chypré tonalities and rosy nuances which hide in the heart of both perfumes. Although its time of composing would tie it to perfumer Henri Giboulet, resident at Patou since 1940 and most famous for the soft floral Gin Fizz for Lubin (1955), the style and architecture of Delices personally reminds me of Henri Alméras's opus (both for Poiret and Patou).

Délices was re-issued by Jean Kerleo (in hose perfumer from 1968 till 1997) in the collective opus Ma Collection (Parfums d'epoque, 1925-1964) for Jean Patou in 1984, a lineup of poetic names such as Adieu Sagesse (Goodbuy Wisdom), Que sais-je? (What do I know?), or L'Heure Attendue (The Long Awaited for Hour) among others. However Delices was not included in the box-set of minis issued as a commemorative gift package for that relaunch, making it really hard to track down a bottle of the scent. In general if you find big bottles from that time-frame, consider yourself very lucky indeed as they were reinterpretations that followed the original formulae as closely as possible and were constructed with the utmost care by the in-house perfumer, before Procter & Gamble bought the house of Patou, putting the illustrious archives into oblivion.

Some of those forgotten, vintage Jean Patou scents include (in alphabetical order):
Ambition( 1953), Angostura (1922), Anything Goes (1955), Aparte (1928), Baby Bar (1931), Bar A Parfums (1929), Cocktail Dry (1930), Cocktail Bittersweet(1930), Cocktail Sweet (1930)Companion (1950), the first duo presentation For Her....For Him...(1931), Heureaux Amants ie.happy lovers (1930), Holidays (1934), Invitations (1932), L'Amour Est Roi , ie. Love is king (1930), Lasso a leathery chypre (1955), the innovative unisex Le Sien (1928), Lift (1930), Love Appeal (1930), Makila (1961), May-Be (1925), Ole (1954), Patou's Own (1930), Snob(1950), Toilet Brandy (1935), Tout Va ie. everything goes (1955), and Vin de Toilette (1935).
Let's hope that these treasure of yore find an historically sensitive management that will ressurect them, even if only briefly and for a limited distribution.

Related reading on Perfume Shrine: Jean Patou Ma Collection ~all the scents reviewed

Pic via overstockperfume.com
Ref. Ken Leach, Perfume Presentation 100 Years of Artistry

Too many launches? Some perfume history...

We have been saying it among ourselves -and hearing it discussed in perfume circles- constantly recently: there are just too many launches. Enough!

So it came as a mild surprise upon reading Le Parfum by Jean Claude Ellena in French (on which more commentary later on) that it might have always been so, actually...
In the span of Les Années Folles (the 20s) and a little later, the surgence of couturiers/fashion designers gave rise to the marketability of perfume as a means to consolidate the image of the designer, the unique positioning of each house. And thus it might have inadvertedly inaugurated the modern commerce of fragrance as a commodity to indulge as a final step in creating a "look".

Paul Poiret was on the vanguard: a true "dandy" of the Belle Époque who realised that it was vital to imbue everything produced under the umbrella of his name with his unique spirit and image. His line Les Parfums de Rosine is celebrated for the quality, although he commited the romantic error of not signing with his own commercially established name but with his daughter's; which might have cost it in the marketability stakes.
Poiret was the first designer to hire a professional perfumer-chemist, Maurice Shaller. Between him and Henri Alméras, la maison Poiret produced 50 original perfumes between 1910 and 1925. It bears repeating: 50 different perfumes in 15 years. The number is impressive, to say the least! Surely not that different than what most major houses do these days: one launch for autumn-winter and another in the summer (often a flanker of the previous one) and perhaps a male counterpart to satisfy that portion of the market as well.

The Callot sisters, couturiers themselves, also imitated the move and decided to create a fragrance line of numerous offerings that would be circulated exclusively for their esteemed clients. The evocative names range from Mariage d'Amour (=marriage out of love) to La fille de roi (=the king's daughter) to Bel Oiseau Bleu (=beautiful blue bird) and we are led to believe they were catering to the ever expanding desires of the bourgeoisie who were frequenting their boutique.

During 1925-1950 French couturier Lucien Lelong was ever prolific, producing 40 fragrances in a short span of years, before retiring in 1952. The first ones bore the cryptic symbols-more-than-names A,B,C,J, and N.
The number of launches though is impressive: almost 1 new fragrance every 7-8 months! Think about it.
The Guerlain catalogue is also rich in numerous launches, often in the same year. Case in point the multiple fragrances created within 1828, 1834, 1873, 1890, 1895 and 1922, to name but a few ~although they do have the difference that they were commissioned by patrons. But still, this shows that fragrance houses were prolific even back then.

In light of the above it is perhaps not entirely correct to accuse houses of producing too many products. What is more accurate is to realise that there are simply astoundingly more perfume companies, designers, niche perfumers, celebrities and various entities today, all tangled up in the dubious world of perfumery. Perhaps they have cottoned up to the fact that perfume is "the most indispensible superficiality", to quote Colette, and therefore have been producing fragrance as a quick means to make a point, consolidate a brand or simply to make a quick buck. But they have had illustrious paradigms to the practice: who can blame them, really?



Pic by TonyM/flickr