Notes on hedonism and weil zibeline

Musette’s post yesterday about hedonism (in a double dose! That’s hedonism) was interesting and kind of coincided with the arrival of my latest foray into “Stuff that Tom has Never Sniffed” from Surrender to Chance: this time Zibeline, a 1928 release from Weil. Zibeline was released in 1928, the year “Our Dancing Daughters” was released to the cinema. Zibeline had notes of aldehydes (then new and pretty hedonistic in themselves), and (from fragrantica) Tarragon, Coriander, Bergamot and Lemon; middle notes are Iris, Jasmine, Ylang-Ylang, Rose, Gardenia and Lily-of-the-Valley; base notes are Civet, Honey, Musk, Sandalwood, Vetiver, Tonka Bean and Amber. Weil was a furrier of some renown, and their original perfumes were meant to scent the fur coats they sold, apparently to mask the natural odor of the pelts. (another reason to wonder why people wore those, but I eat meat, so who am I to judge?)

Smelling the juice I got from StC I am reminded of a scene in the beginning of “Our Dancing Daughters” where our dancing heroine Diana (a young, vivacious flapper recently renamed Joan Crawford in an MGM sponsored contest) Black Bottoms her way into her mother’s Art Deco palace of a dressing room, only to filch her newest perfume, telling her that it’s far too old or her, and positively “vicious.”

Probably the last time fur was acceptable in clothing..

My friend Mimi was 14 when this perfume and this movie came out. She had just moved with her mother and twin sister from Seattle to Los Angeles to the home of her uncle, a local doctor, upon the death of her father. She told me some stories about what it was like at that time and how society was changing from the staid, almost Victorian ideas of the early 20^th century to the hedonism of the flapper: Girls wearing skirts showing knees was a scandal, girls bobbing their hair was a scandal, girls driving cars was a scandal. Pretty much anything girls did after the 19^th amendment passed was a scandal.

Of course, hedonism is in the eyes of the beholder. That which rocked society back in the 1920’s seems charmingly quaint in the 2020’s. We’d like to think we have more pressing issues to think of than skirt lengths, but that’s as much of an oversimplification as the plot of “ODD” where “Dangerous” dancing Diana is deep-down a good girl who prevails at the end because of her virtue while fake-nice-but-really-rotten Anita Page takes a drunken (and convenient) tumble down a staircase to her demise, leaving Johnny Mack Brown free to declare his love for Joan.

Now, I am completely unsure of the vintage of this sample and can pretty much state that it likely isn’t quite what it would have been in 1928. I’d bet that it had a lot more sparkle in the aldehydes back then and that the civet and musk would have made it properly vicious. What I tried on was, however, wonderful: the opening is bright and a little medicinal, with a note that reminds me a bit of cherry heering liquor. It could be age that keeps the base notes at the fore at the expense of the white flowers, who do their best but only peep out of the forest of spices and musky pelts. Were this released right now, as is, that opening would draw in bunches of modern consumers perhaps ready to move up from the fruity-floral fad to play with the big girls and would certainly have me panting at the counter at Bergdorfs, card in my teeth, panting “gimme.” I am not sure that there’s anything I can think of that does this in quite the same way, and since I believe it’s almost forgotten then someone should revive it. Where’s Frederic Malle when you need him?

Anyone tried this one? Did you find it sybaritic? Soporific? Know any modern equivalents? Just want to chat about pre-code movies? Let us know in the comments.

Zibilene if out there on the interwebs, at prices rivaling black-market Ozempic. My sample was from Surrender to Chance. Photos are mine, Pexels, and Wikimedia Commons.