Joy by Patou still worth it?

Hi all,
I am an old guy who first came into contact with Joy by Patou at the Fragonard labs in Grasse in 1974. I immediately bought a flagon (really - an aluminum flagon) for my wife as my homecoming gift to her. Through the years I have kept her stocked up. It goes a long way and lasts. She has lots of other fragrances, too. Now the time (her birthday) has come to restock her supply of Joy and I wanted to buy an ounce this week. BUT, I read here that it has been reformulated and does not have the rose and jasmine and civet base it used to (I saw the petals being pressed into cakes of refined fats the first time) and smells of lemon. So, if it doesn't smell the same, is it still the top of the list fragrance it was? I don't want to drag her down to a store and make her decide because the surprise will be gone and I would be horrified if it were an inferior gift. My own recollection of it is poor because my sense of smell has deteriorated, so I can't judge by sniffing myself.

In addition, there seems to be a rash of knockoffs of famous perfumes. How can I tell if it is real, even if it is still at least a high quality fragrance.

I need help to keep my wife happy.

Thanks for the advice,

...Reid

I did find a 15 ml (~1 oz.) Joy Parfum Vintage Sealed on EBay, and it "looks" correct. Cost is $400 which is OK by me. From a "Top Rated Seller". So, my follow-on question is: Do I trust EBay sellers at all? No Vintage Joy at any reputable brick and mortar merchant, and Web based merchants give me the same willies as EBay. Only modern reformulated Joy from B&M merchants I could find are this silly Baccarat fluted bottle for over $1K which is right out. I do not care about that bottle, I want the rectangular one. There are offers for that peculiar red round bottle, but that puts me off, too. Is that round bottle authentic? I really need real Joy on or before May 8 (I know, I am late because of crazy search). Further advice?

...Reid

Sorry, 15 ml is .5 oz.

Yes, I found that $350 vintage Joy item. But there is funny stuff going on. The $350 buys 1 oz, the $400 buys .5 oz I seller is 100%/2k the other 99.5%/ 6k transactions. The $50 doesn't mean anything to me; the discrepancy between fill amounts makes me nervous. If this is just a usual event in EBay land, tell me please, and I'll shut up. MY wife had 15 ml, and that lasted years, so the amount is OK; it's the amount/price ratio that screws with my mind, and I don't have much experience with EBay. I don't want to prolong my bothering you, but I am obsessive when it comes to mysteries that involve my wife's happiness. I need, for my own sanity and the fast approach of my wife's birthday, to make a decision before COB today. I will go with one or the other blindly, if I have to, or even buy both. My wife means the World to me and money in this range means nothing. I am not rich (one of the 1%) by any means, but I have spent that much on one dinner for 2 in CT where I live.

Basically, I just want to make a rational decision. So, how do I get rational about these EBay items. What would rational you do?

...Reid

@mimgardenia: Thanks, but if you knew my wife, you would understand. As a shrink friend told me: "She has got it all!" Gorgeous inside and out and looks 30 years younger than she is. Gym rat, weighs 115 all muscle, shapely beautiful, kind, totally honest, talented, multilingual (even polynesian languges), brilliant mind, personable. And has put up with me for all these decades. I could go on forever. She deserves the best, simply the best.

...Reid

OK. I did what all of you suggested. So, I can go on with the rest of my life until May 8. I went with my gut, as suggested, and bought the $400 vintage 15 ml Joy parfum on EBay. I liked the documentation on the box cover pic, which showed "Made in France", the thread wrap around the stopper was intact (so sealed), the color was a deep amber, but I understand, through lots of experience, that this a white balance issue with the camera and lighting (the background color shows this), and doesn't mean aging transformation necessarily. I do want it to be dark yellow. And in 2k transactions the vendor got 100%. No returns, but I can live with that. I have lost lots more than that in disappointing purchases (I do bonsai as a hobby, and I am really good at it - one of my trees is in this year's Nationals. The prices of prebonsai make you choke and the tree is often unhealthy or the wrong cultivar). I really didn't want the reformulated version, regardless of it being "a good of its kind"; I want the aroma we both have known for a good portion of our lives. So, for good or ill, it is done.

I commend all of you for quick and expert knowledge. Especially since I am a total noob.This doesn't happen on very many places on the web or internet at large. I would not even have known about all the strange issues surrounding what for me is an esoteric topic, if it weren't for all of you. Who, but an expert, would have thought about reformulation and vintage fragrances? I just bought what was the best in Grasse and kept at it through the years. So a grateful thank you.

If anybody cares, I could add to this thread when we get the perfume and bring this to a total close. Should I? Or are you tired of me?

...Reid

Oh NO! DOUBLE Post. I apologize. I don't know how to delete this one.

OK. I did what all of you suggested. So, I can go on with the rest of my life until May 8. I went with my gut, as suggested, and bought the $400 vintage 15 ml Joy parfum on EBay. I liked the documentation on the box cover pic, which showed "Made in France", the thread wrap around the stopper was intact (so sealed), the color was a deep amber, but I understand, through lots of experience, that this a white balance issue with the camera and lighting (the background color shows this), and doesn't mean aging transformation necessarily. I do want it to be dark yellow. The last bottle was 15 ml and lasted years. And in 2k transactions the vendor got 100%. No returns, but I can live with that. I have lost lots more than that in disappointing purchases (I do bonsai as a hobby, and I am really good at it - one of my trees is in this year's Nationals. The prices of prebonsai make you choke and the tree is often unhealthy or the wrong cultivar). I really didn't want the reformulated version, regardless of it being "a good of its kind"; I want the aroma we both have known for a good portion of our lives. So, for good or ill, it is done.

I commend all of you for quick and expert knowledge. Especially since I am a total noob.This doesn't happen on very many places on the web or internet at large. I would not even have known about all the strange issues surrounding what for me is an esoteric topic, if it weren't for all of you. Who, but an expert, would have thought about reformulation and vintage fragrances? I just bought what was the best in Grasse and kept at it through the years. So a grateful thank you.

If anybody cares, I could add to this thread when we get the perfume and bring this to a total close. Should I? Or are you tired of me?

...Reid

Interim Update: First, there is a peculiar duplication of this thread, with same title, started by somebody else with 2 posts. I don't get it. Anyway, I got taken by the whole enterprise and, additionally, bought a sealed black bottle with a red cap that holds 7.5 ml, for $145. Better deal per ml, I told myself, and it would be a backup, and the thing was cute. Self delusion knows no bounds. Because of this "experience" I got myself into, it opened up new things about my wife that I never had taken the pains to know. She has about 20-30 different fragrances - I discovered this by just looking closer at corners of our house. Then, because she made a perfume mistake yesterday, I drew her into a conversation about them without tipping my hand about Joy. She told me she choses a scent depending on how she wants to appear to the World that day: business-like and capable, energetic and freewheeling, alluringly feminine and on and on. The fragrances she likes best are French and German. She went to school in Paris when 16 and 17 and lived in Aix for 6 months. In college, she spent a year at Universitaet Freiburg. So, her fave perfumes are from there and then (late 60's, early 70's). She loves Chanel No. 5 (She does look a lot like Catherine Deneuve, who advertised it then, I am told), and her associations are not with what mothers and grandmothers wore, but what the fashionistas emerging from post WWII poverty wore. She also likes spicy Asian perfumes, when appropriate, but she tends towards the classy European. She likes it that Joy is intime; can only be smelled within a short radius, so someone must be close to her to be attracted further, and she thinks it reminds her of our garden (which we designed to fill our whole back yard on John Brook's principles: English and Japanese) and she is a rosarian. She said much more, but to go on: I got the 15ml bottle and box today; 2 days after buying it, from CA (coutureperfume). Fantastically speedy action. It was in the mail an hour after I hit Paypal. It looks right and proper. The only difference from my wife's old bottle is that hers had the provenance molded into the bottle bottom and this has a plastic sticker there saying the same thing. I didn't peel it off or open the bottle, of course, but that is the only discrepancy. Comments? I just guess it is a more modern production (No. 1104)

More to tell as this progresses.

...Reid

Sarah's birthday started wonderfully and stayed that way. After a “Good Morning, Happy Birthday” kiss and a cup of Sumatra coffee, I gave her, as is now a tradition, 3 outrageously funny birthday cards. Emphasis on “outrageous”. After the laughter, I brought out the 15 ml bottle of vintage Joy, in its presentation box – no wrapping. Why spoil a work of art? Gasp! More kisses and hugs. Then the hard part: getting the bottle unsealed. That strange membrane really means sealed! Sarah finally managed it and got the golden cord unlooped without cutting it. Sniff. Yes! The same smell of sainted memory. A dab behind each ear and it was my turn to sniff and get in a nuzzle (or two). Then, I took the small black and red bottle, in its presentation box, out from behind me, and her eyebrows went waaay up. Now some tears of Joy (pun intended , but true). Cute, but classy, little bottle in its cutout, and, underneath it, a little slip of paper with No. de Controle: 6472. Really real. I explained the vintage issue to her, to her disbelief, got more kisses and hugs and nearly was defeated by that sealing membrane again. But righteousness prevailed. It's fragrance was exactly the same as the large bottle's. Then, time to help a friend, John Thomas, and singer and guitarist Lauren Sheehan, move 9 vintage, WWII era Gibson guitars (about $200k worth) to a state of the art, multimillion dollar recording studio here in New Haven. (Since most of the men were at war, these, the best sounding guitars Gibson ever made, were made by women). There we started the first of 4 days of recording each guitar, played by Lauren – and all will have vocals, while Sarah video'd the whole process. (The resulting CD and book and video will be published very soon.). Later, after fine food and fine wine at home, we topped it all off with gluttony: a large sundae of locally made espresso bean ice cream with hot fudge chocolate sauce and real madagascar vanilla bean whipped cream. The Joy went with it all. (And lasted well into this morning).

Thanks again for your help. It made a few people very happy indeed.

Just a quick clarification about the guitar thing. This is not a money making operation. We are all amateurs who play guitars, and love the music and guitar history. Nobody makes bucks on this sort of thing, and the guitars were loaned by people across the country who owned them and think as we do. The studio time is being subsidized by the owner and John is being published by a Michigan University press and got a little money from Kickstarter (the video is something that Sarah and I thought up and Sarah created) http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...ording-project

It is funded and over so don't worry about it.

I just mentioned it because that is what we did on Sarah's birthday. If you want to hear Sarah's kind of music (it is Hawaiian from the Victorian era: http://www.johnthomasguitar.com/soun...po%20Nohea.mp3 ), She composed the music with lyrics by Queen Liliu'okalani.

This has nothing to do with perfumes, and maybe I should not have mentioned it at all.

Back to your regularly scheduled program.

...Reid

That is Sarah all the way. I recorded it 2 or 3 years ago. The queen was born in 1838 and died in 1917; she was a prolific composer. This style of music is called Slack Key (or Ki Ho`alu in Hawaiian), because it is played in "alternate" tunings with the strings tuned down. Slack Key formed the entire sound track of the movie "The Descendants". The song is nominally a lullabye for the Queen's favorite adopted son, but Hawaiian poetry is famous for hidden meanings. Ka Ipo Nohea was his name, but also means Dear Darling One.

...Reid