Jean Couturier’s Coriandre was my first true signature fragrance. I started wearing it in junior high school (middle school, to many of you) and I stuck to it for rather a long time, although at some point I started wearing Chanel Cristalle on the side, and later still I switched over to Christian Dior’s Diorissimo. Nobody else I knew wore Coriandre, which made it the perfect signature scent, and to my then-very-young self, it seemed almost extraordinarily sophisticated.

Coriandre launched in 1973, just a year before Cristalle. Susan Irvine’s Perfume Guide lists the notes as coriander, angelica, orange blossom, aldehydes, rose, geranium, jasmine, orris, lily, ylang ylang, patchouli, oakmoss, vetiver, sandalwood, civet and musk; and Irvine describes it as a fragrance “For a red-headed Raymond Chandler heroine. Or an anchorite”. I am neither of those things now, and was arguably less so back in junior high, but I simply adored Coriandre…

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