Ivoire (1980)
by Pierre Balmain

I have avoided reviewing this because initially my reaction is very positive. This is a beautiful bright floral blend, one of only a few floral fragrances that I love right away. Then, like so many florals, it becomes soapy (I can live with this). However, it is in the drydown that this bright & pretty fragrance turns ugly & sour. Very sour. I purchased the pure parfum hoping that, in a different concentration, the sour note would vanish and I would be left with that beautiful blend. Nope...still sour. What a shame!

"Clean, green, aldehydic floral" sums up Ivoire pretty well. The opening is pleasantly bright and perfectly poised between sweet citrus and bitter galbanum, and Ivoire maintains this gratifying sense of balance through to its crisp white floral heart. Is it soapy? Yes, but if Ivoire smells like soap, it smells like one heck of an expensive soap.

The composition gradually sweetens as it ages on the skin, while the powdery aldehydes fade away to reveal a limpid, lucent woody floral structure that seems surprisingly modern for such an alleged period piece as Ivoire. At this stage Ivoire is a rather naturalistic cool spring bouquet, dominated by recognizable notes of lily-of-the-valley, hyacinth, and lilac. It’s still a determinedly clean scent, matching in mood, if not style, other sanitary floral feminines like Alliage and White Linen. It is less green in olfactory hue and more overtly floral than Alliage, and entirely lacks White Linen’s abrasive, sour edge. That might leave it smelling more ordinary than either, but its also more wearable and versatile.

Ivoire serves as a textbook example of a scent that offers ample sillage, but only moderate projection. It is not a loud scent, and isn’t easily detected at a great distance, but it does tend to hang in the air and leave a presence (“sillage”) even after the wearer has left the room. It endures quite well on the skin, moving toward a creamy sandalwood and soft amber drydown after perhaps six hours. It’s really too bad that Ivoire carries such dowdy and dated associations. It’s actually a fresh, bright scent that avoids the screechy aquatic and harsh artificial fruit notes that make so many recent “clean” scents for women

I remember liking Ivoire when it was first released. A bottle bought recently was a disappointment. I love green and chypre fragrances (like Bandit and Azuree), but on me, the sharp green blast of Ivoire's topnote is chemical, and it becomes a thin and sour floral with a chemical powder drydown. It resembles Glade air freshener or an insecticide. Probably reformulated with the bottom line in mind, it's been cheapened beyond all reason. No point in wearing this when there are so many better greens out there.

Exactly so, Ayala. Maybe because I wear this as soon a spring is here. It's lovely, gentle and makes me happy. And I love the bottle. I bought it, sent unsmelled, because I have some old ivory.
By the way, people, what's wrong with being 'dated'? Weren't our Grandmother's and aunts young and beautiful? I'm sure under their lace shawls they were still 18.

A voluptuous fresh green, fruity floral lady with a lotta class.

I loved it in the eighties and I love it now. And I applaud the young women of today ...perhaps tired of today's "anorexics" (Turin's word) ? ...who have the self confidence to wear these classics with brio and panache.

Ivoire is one of those fumes that states: "I am a lady - watch out!"

Ivoire is the very sort of scent I like to be smothered in: a full-on green without sharpness or astringency, floral accords with no sickliness or vapidity -- in fact, this is elegantly fullbodied and rich as a fine silk satin. Yes, it is soapy, but it's a sort of moviestar ivory soap scent, or something you'd associate with 1950s Lux or Camay. To me, this is precisely the sort of scent that curmudgeons would describe as 'dated', but in these times of so very many 'try-hard' fragrances, there is something unapologetically beyond fashion about Ivoire. It doesn't [I]need[/I] to try; it's chic and lovely -- and it knows it. It has been some twenty years since I last smelt this pefume, and going back to it now has been a reassuring pleasure. Got an old bottle? Dig it out and have a good, long sniff. Want to buy it new? It's incredibly affordable.