This year marks the 30th anniversary of one of the most successful men’s fragrances of the 70’s — Geoffrey Beene’s violet-tinged Grey Flannel. Released two years after my birth, Grey Flannel is an aroma that has been part of my development, always present throughout my life as a holiday gift from relatives, sitting on friend’s dressers, or displayed as testers on drugstore perfume counters. It is only now that I am also in my 30s that I have begun to appreciate what an unusual scent Grey Flannel is.
With a simple composition of violet, lemon, orange, oakmoss, sage, and sandalwood (and perhaps also cinnamon, geranium, cedar and patchouli), Grey Flannel could easily be mistaken as a Diptyque creation. Though the fragrance is not entirely a floral, the unusual violet note is the undisputed star of the olfactory pyramid…
