Courant

Courant was a fragrance destined for the hoi polloi, prominently featured on glass counters at the druggist for a no-nonsense associate wearing a lavallière blouse and a whole lotta make up to gruffly present to a curious customer whose budget scoffed at Bloomingdale's wares. That's what makes it even more outstanding: this is an ultimate chypre, a swath of oakmoss soaked in benzoin, highlighted with a soapy coriander. This spray mist, pressurized and powerful, coats me with a fury hath few other mists compare. That bergamot may be a dusty brume, but it still makes me shiver. and Courant's interior is that vague floral salmagundi that renders identifying the individual blooms pointless, but it all smells delicious. This is especially so when also finding a Chant-esque leather marrow not too dissimilar to that of Cabochard or Azuree. Yet Courant eschews the usual chypre foundation for all that aforementioned benzoin and various other spicy resins, but make no mistake: there is nothing sweet about this amber, and the oakmoss prevails for hours—I mean HOURS.

I'm sad that I can't remember this smell. All I know is I very much loved it in the early seventies. As hard as I try, though, I cannot recall even one note of it. Every other fragrance I had, I can reconstruct in my mind.

Absolutely amazing chypre! It reminds me of a Versace classic. I Love, love, love it!!!

I just sprayed this for the first time ever and thought immediately "late 1950's chypre." Or what people in the 1950's thought of as chypre. I looked again and am really surprised it came out in 1972. There were other scents like these in the 1950's, or similar to this, including some of the Lanvin ones, like maybe Scandal and Rumeur. (The original ones, not what they're peddling with pink juice and who knows what else.) Not identical smelling, but the same genre. There were others in the 1950-1970 era that were similar, like a couple of the lesser known Dana ones (not that ghastly one in the magenta bottle). I'll add to this list if the apparent fog in my brain clears. I bought mine dirt cheap on eBay, at Christmas yet (when all the sellers boost their prices), and there seems to be a lot of it around. Like I said elsewhere, I don't remember Courant at all from the 1970's or anytime since then. And I still couldn't have known about this fragrance if it hadn't been for Elena's extensive article a week or so ago. If those eBay sellers have had their Courant bottles online for months/years, I bet they must wonder why anyone is buying them now. The "spray mist" I bought was in a very plain box, almost a tester type box, but I don't remember seeing tester boxes from that era so I don't know if it was one. General assessment: It's a worthy fragrance and if it was in a Tom Ford bottle with half of the hype he attaches to it, you'd drop $150 on it easily. They'd call it unisex or even masculine and get Lenny Kravitz to advertise THAT. Courant is dark and deep and woodsy and not much like Estee Lauder's Youth Dew either; not at all sweet. Youth Dew is closer to Opium than Courant. Courant is the type of fragrance women wore who smoked a lot. And remember in the 1950's-1970's maybe 60% of all women smoked. Or maybe 60% of all women under 50 smoked. Women thought wearing scent like this would mask the smell of cigarettes on them. That's debatable but the whole picture sold: "glamorous sophisticated woman" who smokes and wears fine perfume. I stopped smoking in 1967, when you could no longer buy cigarettes for 26 cents a pack; they'd gone up to 29 cents, and 31 cents in machines. So I wasn't a customer for this image. But marketers at Helena Rubinstein (Helena herself died in 1965) knew the customers were out there. Or thought they still were in 1972. However, the market was already focused nearly solely on what women under 25 wanted. Which is why they came out with Blazer, which I only vaguely remember; it was supposed to attract women in their 20's who were not hippies. I wonder now how long Courant was actually on the market, and if the Helena Rubinstein company took the proverbial financial bath on it. I don't think Blazer lasted longer than 5 years either.

If you want to know what classic chypre perfumes smelled like, this is your girl. A bergamot/citrus top, a leather/flower middle, a woody drydown. I am positive that the perfumer for Courant loved Gres Cabochard, because the two are kissing cousins. Courant could be a Cabochard flanker, if the two were produced today. Besides the mysterious short note pyramid listed I also detect a LOT of leather, an edge of white flowers, and some sandalwood along with the load of oakmoss in the drydown. Positively bitter and dark and sassy, not sweet or sugary in any way, with a divine wooded-animalic base, a perfume completely of its own time. My bottle is old but seems to have held up just fine, and was had for less than $10 on Ebay, give it a shot if you want a history lesson in perfume. @Hadas, That is fascinating that you smell vanilla in this perfume! I wouldn't be surprised if it was in there somewhere, but truthfully, beyond the citrus notes I don't smell anything sweet at all, and certainly not vanilla, or an oily vanilla. Maybe if the perfume degrades enough it becomes more obvious, or in different concentrations if is more apparent (I think I actually have a pure perfume, as it is a 1/2 oz bottle that simply states Courant Perfume.)