Isn’t it strange how two perfumes can have the same list of notes and yet sometimes smell so different? Lots of perfumes start with bergamot, neroli, or lemon, then segue to rose, jasmine, and iris with maybe some lily or tuberose thrown in. Then the perfume drys down to some combination of sandalwood, vetiver, amber and maybe tonka or vanilla. Racier scents might have civet, patchouli, musk, or oakmoss in the base. Of course I’m being overly general here, but so many scents have the same ingredients and yet smell so different. Madame Rochas is a case in point.
Helène Rochas — the real Madame Rochas — took over the House of Rochas when she became a widow at only 28 years old. It was 1955. Helène was the woman for whom Marcel Rochas commissioned Edmond Roudnitska to create Femme as a wedding present. By 1960, Helène was ready to add a new perfume to the Rochas brand, one that was easier to wear than Femme. She looked to Chanel No. 5 and Arpège for inspiration, and she hired Guy Robert to create it…
My first memory of perfume comes from when I was about four years old. My grandmother had a set of miniature perfume bottles, probably ordered from the Sears catalogue, and when they emptied she filled them with water and gave them to me to play with. My grandparents lived in a snow belt in the Cascade Mountains in northern California near the Pit River Indian reservation. I sat in her cool bedroom and copied my grandmother’s motions by dabbing the faintly scented water behind my ears while my grandmother went to the back porch to ring the triangle, calling my uncles in for dinner.