Rochas Femme (original) by Rochas, 1944

I splurged on a vintage bottle of edt. From the bottle it smells like the most heavenly balsamic fruity amber nectar. On spritizing, there's a tonne of cinnamon which rapidly morphs into an amalgam of aldehydes and sweaty crotch! The crotch (cumin?) remains, but is joined by what really does smell like plum. Not a deep, plum jam as I'd imagined, but a fresh, juicy plum, on a sandalwood platter. I'm surprised that the juiciness has survived, but also relieved. It's starting to smell like a fresher version on Feminite du Bois, now... Very interesting, and very glad I took a punt on this one! :-)

I'm uncertain just HOW vintage my little vintage bottle is ... no earlier than the 70's, for sure. I find this nice, but rather unexciting compared to other chypre loves. I don't get much green -- but lots of nice soft peach and peach skin, fruity in the classic rather than headache-inducing contemporary manner. A fairly gentle orange peel, intermittent soap. The fruit is long lasting & mostly pleasant, but sometimes blends with a sweet floral note in a way that reminds me of Tang drink crystals. (NOT overbearingly loudly or obviously, but that is the note.) Amber and musk dominate the underlayers for me, so it's quite smooth and round, rather subtle. It's warm and feminine, and distinctly calls to mind the generalized notion I had, during my 70s childhood, of 'what perfume smells like.' Perhaps that is why I find it just faintly generic -- or perhaps my body chemistry doesn't really do it justice. But I prefer something a bit more challenging in a chypre.

When I was 18 or 19 in the mid 70s, the most exotic person I ever met wore this perfume, and everything in her little tropical apartment, from her satin sheets to her Persian rugs to her 40s vintage house dresses, smelled of it. She was Parisian, wore fire-red nails and long scarves, brewed espresso in a crusty old bialetti, and was completely independent in mind, body, and sensibility. She had a big hound dog called Plume that she took with her everywhere. I just bought a sample of the vintage Femme and it all comes back. A gorgeous, timeless, impossibly sexy fragrance that I'll wear now with a nod to my old friend -- if only I could ever be such a blithe spirit.

Absolutely beautiful vintage juice ,this is. The color firstly is richly dark yellow -orange. Deep peach and oakmoss - much like Mitsouko used to be. Wonderfully blended - to enhance that mossy chypre peach . Makes me think of Mitsouko and her drama. These two are sisters.

When I first experienced Annick Goutal's fragrances at I. Magnin (RIP) in the late 80s, one of my favorites was her Parfum de Femme (also RIP, I believe). Osmanthus is the star of that fragrance, and perhaps Goutal was paying tribute to the original Femme, which doesn't have osmanthus as an actual note, though smells like it, nonetheless. I was fortunate to find a vintage bottle of Femme, and it's mellow and warm and boozy, just drop dead gorgeous. While I wouldn't confuse it with vintage Mitsouko overall, on me, the dry down is very similar. True love.

This review is for the original and reformulated versions of Femme.

The orginal version of Femme is a green/leather chypre that has a lot in common with the original Miss Dior and has the reputation of of being a little on the skanky side. To my nose they are very similar, although I think Femme came first.

The reformulated version is slightly fruity with a big cummin note that lasts from start to finish. While some people seem to be put off by the cummin note, I feel that it adds that slight note of b.o. that takes it out of the cutsy, fruty floral range of most of the perfumes that are currently available in Sephora and the department stores.

The origanal Femme and the reformulated version smelll nothing alike. I don't even know how they can be called by the same name. I decided to layer them and what emerged was a whole new filthy animal that I liked much better than I liked the two separately. I'm still giving both a thumbs up separatly, though.

THE most beautiful feminine ever created, by master perfumer Edmond Roudnitska.This scent is a generational thread on my mom's side. They may have been poor but they all wore this version of Femme. On my skin, the orris note is spectacular and the drydown of benzoin and leather is heavenly.this perfume is so precious, to me, my eyes well with tears when I wear it. G-d Bless Mr. Roudnitska

Just LOVE Ayala's review of this classic beauty - recently sampled as "vintage", which is not bad but does not live up to the memory of the Femme I adored in the (gasp) fifties. I was blessed that even as a younger woman (mid twenties) she behaved so wondrously for me. The voluptuous base of musk and amber with it's discreet hint of suede simmered under the most rapturous cloud of heady flowers and rich fruits offset with just a hint of citrus.

I'm not gonna mess with the current version.

I don't know how to thumb this one because my only recent experience is with this "vintage" sample..... guess I'll go with "neutral".

Unusual, sophisticated, and enigmatic. There are days when nothing but Rochas Femme will do. Having smelled both the vintage and the new, I must say that I like the vintage formula better. Rochas Femme is a challenging but well-balanced old-school chypre. The old formulation avoids unnecessary sweetness.
Even in its new formulation, it is one of the last of its type still available in this venerable, old genre. The new formula has more of a syrupy, fruity, amber plus an up-front cumin, which throws the composition a little off-balance, yet it beats any one of the members of the army of chemical-smelling clones perfumes that make up the bulk of today's commercial market.

I like a lot of vintage juice, but not Rochas Femme. It's too cuminy for my taste, with sharp, soapy notes (aldehydes?) and bitterly powdery notes (oakmoss?) Overall it's quite muddy, but that doesn't mean subdued, it's muddy with piercing topnotes, and it also smells quite flat and plasticky, which might be due to the age. I like the drydown better, it's dry and warm and woody with a pleasant bitterness. Not worth the wait though.