Two Sides of Dear: Demystifying Patou's Joy Perfume Promotion

Common perfume lore wants it that Jean Patou's iconic perfume Joy has been presented to the American public with the tagline "the costliest perfume in the world". This was supposed to be a slogan coined by Elsa Maxwell, the famous columnist and gossip, who thought it a great boost in 1930 when Joy was introduced to the American market at the era of the Great Depression, as the American clientele of Jean Patou shrank. It was supposed to be an undaunted affirmation of its luxury status, instantly making it more desirable over others to those who could afford to buy it. (Perfume positioning and the tactics to market it haven't radically changed over the decades, have they?)

vintage Joy perfume ad found via ebay

But "I am very moved by one detail", as the poet Cavafy would say. The perfume was composed and launched in the chic Parisian atelier of Patou in 1926, for his loyal customers. The French advertisements beautifully promote it at a later date with a French tagline "Le parfum le plus cher (du monde)". On first glance this isn't incongruous with the American tagline, it looks like an exact "translation". [Incidentally it was also promoted with the taglines "le parfum roi" -aka freely translated as the king of perfumes- and "le joyau des parfums", i.e. a parfum bijou, a jewel of a perfume.]

The wonderful thing about it is that in French the word cher has a double entendre. It would best be translated not by "costly" to denote this, but by "dear". Dear as in costly, yes, but also as in beloved, as precious. Therefore the French tagline for Joy better reflects both its exalted status in the ballpark of top quality raw materials used, but also its popularity and preciousness as an objet d'art in the hearts of those who love it and wear it regularly. It also reflects better its real price in modern market terms, as it has been surpassed as "the costliest perfume of the world", even within the Patou canon (their "1000" extrait is officially admitted as costing more to produce than the respective Joy)

A linguistic detail in the chaos of perfume writing, but an important one, I feel.

Perfume Quote: Just like men...

via theredlist.fr

Jean Patou, fashion innovator, creator of Joy ~one of the revered classics~ and the brand behind the mysterious 1000 fragrance, once said, “Just like men, perfume is never perfect right away; you have to let it seduce you.”

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.