About Lady Curzon's Perfume.

Otago Witness, Issue 2511, 30 April 1902, Page 62

About Lady Curzon's Perfume.

To the Vicereine of India we are indebted for the latest new society ciaze. It is just a w hin, but fashionable ladies have taken it up, and are doing to-day what a fewyears ago was consideied very bad form. They are perfuming their handkerchiefs and much of their wearing apparel. The notion started in a very simple manner. An East Indian rajah presented Lady Curzon with a few drops of the most rare and expensive perfume it is possible to obtain, and the Vicereine, it is said, forwarded half of it to some friends over here. This new odour has set society perfumeciazy. It is so beautiful, so delicious, fo puzzhngly delightful in its fragrance, so new, and so absolutely unattainable, that every fashionable lady is most anxious to obtain it. To illustrate the rarity of this perfume, and the tremendous expen«e attaching to it, the rajah, in presenting it to Lady Curzon, told her that it would require many, many acres of roses to procure even a few drops. In her honour, it is said, he christened it "Vicereine." The rose gardens of India and Bulgaria furnish the ivorld with a great portion of attar of roses, and in the South of France there are thousands of acres of land given over entirely to the cultivation of roses to be used solely as perfume-producers. Here are a few of the ingredients which

fumes : Jasmin, tuberose, musk, civet, oil of .bergamot, oil of orris, ambergris, and ionone. When it is known that ambergris costs £6 an ounce, and that ionone cannot be bought for less than £200 per pound, it will then be easily seen why the 'best perfumes are sold at "so high a figure. Since Lady Curzon started the craze, all sorts of scents have become fashionable.