Jean Patou Cocktail

photoYears ago, I bought on eBay a bunch of teensy little bottles of various Jean Patou scents. In my review at PST I wrote “this chypre apertif opens with a sparkle of citrus and lavender, every bit as crisp and refreshing as a martini made with one of those trendy bespoke vodkas. Honeysuckle, hyacinth and clove come in as the scent becomes more of a chypre and less of a cocktail. The drydown is very dry indeed; the flowers are never overpowering.”

One of the good things about carefully storing my stuff (It never sees light or heat) is that the scents really keep practically forever (take that Le Labo..) One of the bad things is that some things end up loving in a box in the back of the closet and I forget about them until I stumble happily across them.

I smell a lot of perfumes. I like a lot of them. But sometimes I wonder why someone, somewhere couldn’t actually just go back and recreate classics like Cocktail. Is the regulations? Just don’t care? I had read that someone had bought Patou and they were reissuing some of the older scents (if not perfectly recreated I am told.) So why not Cocktail? Colony? Normandie?

I know they’d sell..

(sorry, forgot the picture and don’t know why it’s rotated.  Darned internets!)

My bottle was purchased on eBay. Photo: My iPhone.

  • einsof says:

    hmmmm. sounds to me like it’s time to get on down to the IAO, take a few classes and start producing TOMoiletries. TOMaromas? Tom’s Timeless Classics?

    otherwise i think you’ll be waiting a long long time. 🙁

  • Mary K says:

    I have one of those little bottles of Cocktail! I must get it out and put a few dabs on. It’s been a while,

  • ElizabethC says:

    I have a box of the Patou minis and absolutely love them. Now I have to take apart my carefully stacked perfume shelf and put on Colony!

  • Ellen says:

    I also wish that fragrances which stand the test of time would be brought back, but I feel it must be because the large majority of the perfume industry doesn’t feel that they will make enough money to make it worthwhile. Perhaps the restrictions on older materials makes reformulation too difficult or creates a really poor imitation of the original. Frankly, I think the restrictions are ridiculous.

  • Mals86 says:

    I beg for Vacances.

  • Portia says:

    Wow Tom,
    Looks very inviting. Is the honeysuckle urinous or does it play nice?
    Portia xx