Evening in Paris perfume, Cashmere Bouquet soap, and Tangee lipstick
I hadn’t
received a Vermont Country Store catalogue for a while so when one showed up
this week I took a delightful walk down memory lane because---there it was:
Evening in Paris perfume. Between the 1920s and 1960s, women bathed with
Cashmere Bouquet soap, wore Tangee lipstick, and dabbed Evening in Paris on
their pulse points.
Evening
in Paris, aka Soir de Paris, was
developed around 1926 by Ernest Beaux, a Russian émigré and perfumer who left Russia after the revolution and moved
to Paris. There he was able to use his
Romanoff contacts to recreate a business. The Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich of Russia, one of Coco Chanel's companions, arranged a meeting between the two in Cannes late in the
summer of 1920. There, Beaux presented his current and former works to Chanel who
chose what became Chanel No.
5 as Christmas gifts for her best clients. Chanel, the company, was owned by
the Wertheimer family who also owned a cosmetics company called Bourjois. And
Bourjois was looking for a perfume that would appeal to the American
bourgeoisie—nothing too expensive, however, just something middle-income women could afford. And so Ernest Beaux created a scent that smelled of
violets, roses, and carnations, and which dried to a hint of cloves. The perfume was
sold in signature, cobalt blue bottles.
In December 1938, the Dallas
Morning News ran an ad for “A smart new bottle of Evening in Paris Perfume,
with its own, efficient, lasting atomizer” . . . $1.73. The Vermont catalogue
price is $79.95. Prices on ebay vary.
Of these three common toiletries, Cashmere Bouquet Soap is the old-timer.
In 1806, an English immigrant named William Colgate started a starch, candle,
and soap factory which he called William Colgate and Company. When William
died, his son, Samuel, took over and, in 1872, introduced Cashmere Bouquet soap,
the company’s first “milled, perfumed toilet soap.” The company even went so
far as to register the name as a Colgate trademark.
George Luft, the son of a German émigré, was responsible
for Tangee products. George grew up in Warsaw, Illinois and attended the Philadelphia
College of Pharmacy. After graduation in 1894, he worked in small drug stores
throughout the west. In 1902, George was married and living in New York. It would
be 18 years before he established the George W. Luft Company, Inc. and begin to
manufacture pharmaceuticals and “perfume materials.” The name, Tangee, came from the
lipstick's tangerine shade, but the product was advertised as “a technical
marvel” because “after application the color changed to conform to the complexion
of the wearer.”
Lily Langtry touted soap, Elizabeth Taylor advertised perfume, and pictures of Joan Crawford wearing Tangee are on the internet. However, perhaps Yves Saint-Laurent said it all:
"The most beautiful makeup of a woman is passion. But cosmetics are easier to buy."
