Jean Patou 1000: Review and Bottle Giveaway

There are people who find this 1972 fragrance from the house of Jean Patou to be a bit much, a near miss which falls just short of an embarrassment of riches. It has rose and violet and oakmoss and lily-of-the-valley and jasmine and patchouli and amber and sandalwood and vetiver and civet--and more--and I suppose this could be viewed as overabundance, though I'm not sure in what context.

Judged against a more contemporary exercise in minimalism, it's going to come up looking overdressed. Compared to the roaring jasmine fantasia of Joy, it seems rather close to the vest. Compared to much of what was produced in the seventies, it's downright conservative. I've always preferred it to Joy, and it remains one of my favorite Patou fragrances. There's a golden warmth to it which sits it alongside Teo Cabanel's Alahine, another favorite of mine, however different they are in many ways. 1000 strikes an interesting, rewarding balance between violet and rose, with jasmine calling an easy truce between the two. Joy has a warmth to it, too, but it seems cold next to 1000, and much more single-minded. 1000 is beatifically rich, both creamy and translucent. It feels serious but isn't grim. It's mossy and faintly animalic yet as clean and bright as Chanel No. 5.

For many, Chanel No. 5 has signified class and costliness for decades, but in my household, Joy was the known name. My mother wore Joy when we were kids. She didn't actually wear it--not often--it was too costly. Mostly she admired it. Joy wasn't an everyday perfume, but a signature scent you didn't wear so much that the ink would run dry. My mother got a bottle as a present on her honeymoon and cherished it throughout my early childhood, until my sister, noticing how low it was getting, did her the favor of topping it off with water.

I still remember that feeling of loss; the way my mother reacted. I'm sure my sister remembers even more vividly than I do. We still refer to the incident in slightly coded terms. It was like, losing Joy, we'd lost our one chance to be as important as other people we might never meet; we'd lost our one available glimpse into what it felt to live like they did. Joy was probably the first perfume I ever smelled, or was conscious of smelling. It was understood to be something my mother didn't come by easily. People like us, basically, did not intersect with something like that too often.

When something so precious came into your life it held an exalted position there, presiding over routine experience like visiting royalty. It reminded you who you were and weren't while giving you some indication of what you might aspire to be. The color of Joy still seems more golden than any other perfume to me. Set out on my mother's dresser, it appeared to glow. The loss of it was like the death of a fantasy. When Patou and Chanel talked about preserving the exclusivity of their fragrances, they didn't mean that only rich women should buy them, but that a dream should be kept alive, a certain kind of significance observed and upheld.

I bring all this up because 1000 has always carried the residual weight of my memories about Joy. I haven't had that reaction with any other Patou fragrance, much as I love many of them. The bottle and packaging for 1000 and Joy are similar if not identical at this point. I believe they always were, and that in launching 1000 Patou hoped to capitalize on the established prestige of Joy. The ad I've attached would seem to indicate this, posing the two side by side, as if synonymous. But asserting them as equals would seem to risk making the sum total less than its parts, so in a way it was a risky move, and a little confused. But confusion seemed to be the desired effect, a hope that the admirer of Joy would extend her affections to 1000.

A 1972 ad for Joy asserted: "There is only one Joy." In that ad, no other bottle stands nearby, stealing its thunder, though 1000 came out that very year. How do you market another exclusive perfume when you already produce the most exclusive fragrance known to man? An early ad for 1000 calls the fragrance a limited edition perfume: "Because 1000 de Jean Patou is so rare and available to so few, each flacon is registered. A hand-numbered card accompanies this totally unique perfume..." 1000 was just as exclusive, then, in a slightly different way. I'm sure I saw these ads as a child, and merged the fragrances in my mind as virtually the same thing. At the very least, I viewed them as important parts of the same special universe.

I do find some similarity in the fragrances themselves, and of course the color of 1000 is that same rich golden embodiment of luxury. When others think of Patou, Joy is surely foremost in their minds. I'm not sure 1000 is. I know a lot more now about Patou and the Patou fragrances than I did as a child, enough to know that 1000 arrived pretty late in the game, under Jean Kerleo as opposed to Henri Almeras, the perfumer responsible for the house's esteemed fragrances of the twenties, thirties, and forties. Still, for me, 1000 remains more iconic, speaking a language I remember distinctly from childhood.

I have a 75 ml bottle of 1000 in eau de parfum concentration to give away to one of our readers. This is a more recent formulation of 1000 and holds up impressively against vintage. The main difference is felt in the absence of natural musks. To be eligible, please tell me what perfume you remember embodying luxury and almost mystical properties when you were a child and why. I'll draw a name on Thursday.

1000 ... Mille

I’ve been keeping a secret. I never wanted to confess my love for Jean Patou 1000 to the public. It’s been in my top 10 list for the past 7-8 years. Anjelica Huston, as much as I admire her, has pissed me off. She has expressed her love for 1000 (also known as Mille to the French) and now the whole world seems to know about it. I started, stopped, hesitated and in the end never written about JP 1000 because I wanted it to be Mine. I’ve been selfish. Teo Cabanel Alahine is my public Holy Grail. Jean Patou 1000 is my secret Holy Grail. And now my secret is out.

As far as I’m concerned, the house of Jean Patou is the best there is. If so many masterpieces from Jean Patou hadn’t been discontinued I would proclaim JP the king of perfume houses – easily better than Guerlain, Chanel, Caron and the like. Jean Patou Joy needs no introduction, it’s a household name, up there with Chanel No. 5. I happen to prefer Joy to Chanel No. 5 by a mile. But with all the discontinuations (no more Vacances, no Chaldee, L’Heure Attendeu, Adieu Sagasse, Colony, Que Sais-Je) it becomes difficult to appreciate Jean Patou for what it was, what it could have been, should be. It’s terribly sad.

But the silver lining is that 1000 still exists and it’s still excellent. Sure, I have the vintage and it is slightly better but I don’t think the current 1000 is ruined by any means.

I find 1000 to be so beautiful it’s distracting. When I wear it I lose myself in thought when I sniff my wrists. It’s utterly, sublimely gorgeous and stunning. The House of Patou describes 1000 as “the essence of extravagance,” letting the consumer know the considerable cost of the ingredients that are used to create this luxurious fragrance. I find 1000 to be that perfect sort of luxury, the sort that that doesn’t shout or wear it’s pricey label on it’s sleeve, it’s simply effortless beauty and elegance. Similar to Alahine, my other HG, 1000 is potent yet subtle, stunning yet discreet.

I don’t think categorizations particularly matter with 1000; if you favor classically styled fragrances then it’s something you must try. 1000 is somewhere between a rich floral and a floral chypre. There are so many florals and notes at play yet it all comes together as if they were meant to exist this way, perfect harmony. I suppose the most prominent floral note for me is rose. And the base seems like woody suede. The smoothest suede ever. Nothing else smells specific to me, I wouldn’t know there was osmanthus, violet, patchouli or angelica in 1000. 1000 is simply itself, it exists as an entity, a being, a whole which is so much more than the sum of it’s parts, I don’t find it necessary or worthwhile to tease apart it’s notes.

Purplebird7 from basenotes describes 1000 so perfectly I had to quote her:

"This perfume will draw you in. Most florals expand outward, diffusing sweetness. Hence, they risk becoming piercingly sweet and cloying. Mille seems to concentrate the scent of a thousand flowers in one, small space. That one place where it is applied acts like a gravitational force, a black hole, a dark star of fragrance."

Jean Patou 1000 launched in 1972. It doesn’t smell like the 70’s to me. It definitely smells classic, but it’s easier for me to wear than many other classics I own, it seems to transcend time.

Hot and Cold with Grey Flannel, Beautiful

This weekend, I've been watching my friend's dogs downtown.  This is only about a ten minute drive from where I live, and I'm here all the time anyway, but being in someone else's space can feel like a vacation, if only from the static landscape of your everyday routine.  A different space offers new perspectives, making almost everything seem entirely new.  It's as if you stand back from your life and view it from a small distance a little more objectively.

I thought about this weird shift of perspective and how profoundly a subtle change can influence the mind because almost every perfume I own has smelled different to me over the last several weeks.  The air went decisively cold here, and they all seem to behave differently, like creatures shedding their fur or skin, entering into some transitional appearance or behavior for the time being which renders them practically unrecognizable from their former selves.

The biggest difference is longevity.  I used to think the difference between a short- and long-lived perfume was simply a matter of time.  You enjoyed the latter at length.  The former you kept spraying or accepted defeat.  Now I realize that the longer perfume stays on the skin, the more deeply your mind engages with it.  Even the most linear perfume, over an extended period of time, is given depth and shading by one's perceptions: the mental and emotional associations you make with it, the ability to juxtapose one environment with another as you carry it through the scene changes of your day.  Even things as apparently minute as other people's largely imperceptible reactions and adjustments to a fragrance create an ever evolving context.  Increased longevity extends the drama of a fragrance in any number of ways, in any number of directions.

You do notice the stages more lucidly, where they exist.  Some scents, like the Fresh line or Jo Malone, have none to speak of.  Others tumble down into their base notes like leaves falling from the trees, creating a series of changing shapes on the way.  I was shocked by Grey Flannel this morning.  I sprayed it on the back of my hand and wondered where I'd been all this time.  I've always smelled the violet, but suddenly everything around it had shifted, and seemed heightened.  I smelled galbanum as if it had elbowed its way in out of nowhere.  And rose: how to explain having missed the obvious for so long?  The rose in Grey Flannel presides over the entire affair in a steady, calming tone of voice.  As the scent progresses and my senses adjust to the shock of the new where I least expected it, I notice the citrus accords.  The geranium!  Grey Flannel isn't just severe, as many who've grown up with it assert, but tangy and textured, qualities for which it rarely gets credit.  The most surprising discovery for me is the presence of iris, situating Grey Flannel closer to Dior Homme than I would ever have thought to put it.  I see now that in many ways these two masculines are different generations of a similar philosophy.

This curious ratio between alleged stridency and an underbelly of subtle permutation is something Grey Flannel shares with Beautiful, by Estee Lauder.  True, Beautiful is a big boned eighties floral.  But it has more complexity than well over half the mass market fragrances presently sold at the mall, and the stridency smuggles in softer, more nuanced shapes the way shoulder pads concealed femininity behind a parody of the masculine silhouette.  What produces that tobacco accord Tania Sanchez talks about in Perfume: The Guide?  Is it a combination of cedar and vanilla?  Why is it that a scent which is famous for being overly feminine leans increasingly toward the conventionally masculine as it plays out on the skin?  In the warmer months, this drama zips along with the economy of a sitcom.  Laugh tracks and audience applause lead you in pre-orchestrated directions without giving you the time to make sense of the leaps.  In the winter, Beautiful slows down, giving you the room to wander around in it.

These are just two of the scents I'm getting re-acquainted with.  Even the ones I thought I knew seem foreign, like 1000, which seems less floral to me, more chypre, dark and moody where before it seemed bright and slightly empty-headed, too pretty for its own good, or yours.  How is it that a scent which seemed so cool in the summer now feels so warm in the winter?  Are fragrances mood rings, driven by body temperature?  The season makes velvet of fragrances, it seems to me, and I'm so busy reconsidering everything it's as if I bought an entirely new collection.