Perfumes of a Century

Southland Times, Issue 21220, 22 October 1930, Page 13

Perfumes of a Century

Still lingering upon the dressing-tables of a modern world, and floating from wisps of chiffon handkerchiefs, is the delicate perfume which Queen Alexandra discovered when she came as a bride to live in London. The young Princess’s flowerlike beauty was on the tip of her adopted nation’s tongue, and her tastes in dress, jewellery, or any other feminine matters were of much importance to the beautiful women of that day. The Princess, shopping in Bond Street, fell in love with a natural, typically English scent named White Rose, and this Mend she used throughout her life. Such royal favour of what was a simple floral perfume set its seal of distinction upon it, and during the peaceful, happy xlays of King Edward’s reign the reigning queens of society and fashion chose White Rose because they liked their Queen’s choice, and because they were proud to copy the First Lady of the Land.

For more than half a-century White Rose has held its own, even through those years when- mystic eastern aromatics—extracts of leathers, spices and tropical woods ■ —pleased the olfactory fancy of a new generation of women.

And now it is Queen Alexandra’s scent that is in the vanguard of a procession of floral perfumes drifting into the mode with this' revived feeling for flowing diaphanous materials and the more traditional spirit of femininity. For the perfumer had long since trained his trade binoculars on advancing models and made ready for the swirl of flimsy skirts and Hoppy hats with their quaint jackets and glass jewellery. To mingle with them he blended pure floral essences; uninvolved scents like lilac, rose, lily-of-the-Vulley, violet, carnation, and even a version of the heliotrope which hovered around the corseted swooning Victorians. Queen Alexandra’s perfume was a triumph of distillation and blending made by the eighteenth-century English firm, which has introduced carillon music to conservative Bond Street.

Throughout history floral perfumes have been-the choice of both Royal ladies and their Courts; as far back as the wealthy and royal of the Old Testament. It is

the scent that comes back to favour, after intervals of popular novelties. Columbine, a fragrance very like that of the flower after morning dew, is chosen by one or two of the younger Royalties at the present time. ( i In the hackneyed "good old ’eighties" women used perfume' sparingly, toilet water regularly, and paid, in most instances, just half the price they do now. The Queen’s half-guinea bottle of White Rose costs a guinea, and eau de Cologne is four times the price it was in the spacious days of the bustle and the carriage and pair. I am told by a very much concerned perfumer .that the greater portion of the increase goes to H.M. Treasury in the form of alcohol duty. The warm fragrances of Spain were fancied by the up-to-date debutantes of Queen Victoria’s drawing-rooms; rondeletia and stephanotis were two smart vogues, and jockey club was positively a fever f Its craze lasted until the beginning of this century.

From old account books and shopping lists . I gather that those well-disciplined young persons contented themselves with pure otto of rose cold cream and milk of cucumber for their complexions, with a touch of bandolina for the hair.

Rouge, lipstick and face powder were used only by the daring or the vulgar, fastidiously and very sparingly by the best people. But the men! There were Spanish leather essences, for scenting the gloves, renowned perfumed bear’s grease for their plastered style of hair-dressing—no wonder Victorian women introduced antimacassars on their chair-backs—and a medley of cosmetiques (spelt with a q) for the trimming of their moustachios. Men’s needs have been reduced to a few necessities, but women use” ten times the amount of perfume they did fifty years ago, and the variety of articles for their dressing-tables has tincreased nearly twenty fold. A chemist estimated that there are some 7,000 essences for his choice in blending a perfume, but approximately only 2,000 of them are good. Those confusing, delicious perfumes with Oriental or French descriptive names, often have as many as 50 different essences in them; one oil may be so strong that only a pinhead drop is required to make or mar a large phial.

Women’s prejudice in favour of French perfume is historic, yet since all the basic products are French there is not an appreciable difference between a good blend of English or French. Grasse and surroundings districts are the principal soils of the world for oil-bearing flowers. The ingredients which go into our scent are unpleasant in print, and will astound frivolous users. Ambergris, without which the chemist would be almost helpless, comes from the whale. It is very costly. Thibet musk deer and the musk rat provide musk essence, while the beaver and civet cat are also responsible for some important secrets in the perfumer's laboratory. The basis of eau-de-Cologne is oil of orange, and modern chypre is more ancient than the Crusaders. Those holy warriors introduced it to England, having discovered the herb in Cyprus, and so, it Js presumed, comes the corruption "chypre” from the pleasant sounding biblical city of the East.