Wildly successful in the 1960’s and 1970’s, vetiver fell out of favor in the commercial perfume trade for decades, to be reentered into the collective memory with the intense entry of Lalique’s Encre Noire in 2006.
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Western colonial culture has a much deeper association with the scent of patchouli than the more recent affiliation with the 1960’s and 1970’s counterculture movement in the United States, whose unwashed visages were heavily scented in synthetic patchouli fragrance oils.
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The original fougères sold a fantasy of the sophisticated gentleman’s ability to simultaneously experience the wild, animalic sensuality of the forest, rich with the romance of decay, the refined pastoral of bergamot, lavender, and hay (coumarin), and the sublimated eroticism of the walled flower garden. The scent allowed men to experience a more open sensuality without completely losing their masculine, hard-charging colonial mindset.
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