The Death of Jean Patou 1000 - Page 2

Originally Posted by le mouchoir de monsieur

[/I]. Here we have one of the last examples of perfume as Art, not product. 1000 died so young because, as Cristobal Balenciaga memorably said upon announcing the shuttering of his house in 1968, "The World is No Longer Fit."

Originally Posted by le mouchoir de monsieur

Jean Kerleo worked full time on the orchestration of 1000 for almost ten years. When the final comp was approved, it came to light that there was not enough natural Osmanthus being produced in China to guarantee fluency in fabrication, as 1000's primary innovation was the framing of this flower: This is why, from 1972 up until the mid 80's, each flacon of 1000 was hand registered and numbered. Patou was forced to purchase hectares of land in China, and to build a facility to distill the essence of this flower keeping up with the standard of quality that was its hallmark. The Osmanthus flower blooms and withers in one hour, once per year. The distillation process had to be conducted during this specific time slot, and, most importantly, enough "First Matter" had to be obtained. Creating 1000 was a daunting assignment. Patou had JOY, "The Perfume of the XXe Century" to contend with: 1000 had to live up to that singular legacy. Thus, a "parfum de fourrure" was created, as previously, there were none on the Patou menu. ("parfum de fourrure" = a perfume designed to scent fur. The house of Weil made a specialty of these, being a furrier) No expense was spared to create this landmark fragrance. As it panned out, not much money was ever made by Patou on sales of 1000. To the very end, (1999) only a certain quantity could be produced yearly, simply because the essences involved were so diverse, and so rare, and there were so many, that much toil and funds were required to obtain them. Here we have an example of what would never happen today: An house producing a fragrance that, from the get go, would not conceivably by profitable. Here we have one of the last examples of perfume as Art, not product. 1000 died so young because, as Cristobal Balenciaga memorably said upon announcing the shuttering of his house in 1968, "The World is No Longer Fit."

Originally Posted by purplebird7

The problem, as I understand it, is that jasmine grandiflorum absolute has been restricted to less than 1% of the total fragrance and jasmine sambac to 4% maximum by the IFRA. In a jasmine-heavy fragrance like Joy, for all practical purposes, that would prohibit making all concentrations stronger than Eau de Toilette or possibly even Eau de Cologne in order to comply. So, of course, the company had to replace real jasmine absolute with synthetics. It is all they can do under the circumstances.

I ask myself, after centuries of women wearing natural jasmine perfume, is it really that allergenic? Or has it only become allergenic after we developed hexane extraction for absolutes instead of using steam-distilled essential oils? Not knowing the history of production methods, I cannot guess.