Back in the ’80s, in my college days, when I was really starting to fall down the perfume rabbit hole, I ran across this fragrance, Folies Bergere, and fell in love.
Loved the fan-shaped stopper and the bottle’s rounded rectangle, and loved the fragrance itself. There was something about it (to my neophyte nose it had what I thought of as a slightly spicy green apple accord lurking in there) that I just adored. I bought a small spray of it at Maas Brothers dept. store in Florida (I think) and got the lovely little mini parfum. And as often happens over the years, it disappeared from the rare store counter that I’d seen it, and I forgot about it. A bit later, I did run across a scent called Decadence, which was similar, but not quite the same.
Anyhoo, rummaging around in my perfume bottle collection recently, I came across that Folies bottle. The juice has turned that shade of brown that we all know and dread, but when I gently released the stopper and took a whiff, I got a faint reminder of its former glory. Alas, I didn’t have the heart to even dab on a bit.
I played perfume detective and poked around on the Internet, trying to find out as much about it as I could, but there’s not much out there, except this: According to Perfume Intelligence, the Encyclopedia of Perfume, there seem to have been several scents with this name: one from 1943, from Parfums Bourjois, marked as discontinued, and another from 1952, called a green edp, also discontinued (date unknown). Yet another listing is dated 1985, called a re-orchestration of the original (but which original, I wonder?) with modern ingredients, re-packaged and re-launched, which I think mine might be.
I see it from time to time on eBay, but my fear that it has turned has always kept me from pulling the trigger on a bottle.
Are any of you familiar with or know anything about this scent? Are there any fragrances out there that you loved that have virtually disappeared?
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