Oh! de London

FLOWER POWER FROM LONDON IN THE SIXTIES Thank you my perfumista friend Lucia in London. This was my favorite Christmas gift. Released in 1962 (same year as Bal a Versailles by Jean Desprez) Oh! de London by Tuvache is a floral fragrance for hippies, for peace lovers, bohemians, anti capitalists and Communists. Of course I was expecting something edgier and more avant- garde because that's what the 60's was all about. It was a time of great experimentation in ideas, fashion, psychology, art, politics, feminism, philosophy, radical thinking, sexual liberation, equality and total upheaval. This doesn't wear like a fragrance revolution like Yves Saint Laurent's Opium. This fragrance is, in the simplest of terms, a floral chypre. It's flowers and woods. Good thing for me I love floral fragrances and chypres. Oh de London opens with a lot of greenery: fresh citric bergamot, sage and chamomile. The chamomile is a lovely British touch and combined with the bergamot it feels like you've just made some tea. I thought ok, it's London and feels like I'm having tea. What happens next? Apparently you're taking four o clock afternoon tea in a flower garden. The heart of the fragrance is floral: rose, geranium, violet, lily of the valley, ylang-ylang and heliotrope. I love these flowers and I could smell mostly the violet, lily of the valley and heliotrope. The rose and geranium combo is rosy and sweet but not very heady nor overpowering. The rest of the fragrance is woodsy with sandalwood, cedar and oak moss. There is also some sweet vanilla. But they're not very strong base notes and it still feels like a garden. In this way it wears more like a dainty feminine fragrance with a lot of flowers. Even Houbigant's Quelques Fleurs is stronger and has more going on. This is a classy, sweet, feminine old fashioned very lady like fragrance that wears like one would imagine of Deborah Kerr or Julie Andrews perfumes. I liked it but I suppose if you're looking for a stronger and edgier 60's fragrance, even the vintage original Bal a Versailles with that animalic musk beast in it is what you'd want to experience. I loved this because I'm super into floral fragrances and vintages. The one selling today is a reformulation which has the additional vanilla note that the vintage '62 did not have. Both are essentially the same except the reformulation selling right now is powdery, very light, inoffensive, and stays on the skin closely whereas the old formula was definitely a stronger floral chypre. I thought this was beautiful but coming from the 60's I had hoped this would have rivaled Yves Saint Laurent's Opium. I will wear this for spring and summer or any time I'm in London with my friend Lucia - during Fashion Week!

This review is for the original "Oh! de London". I'm not familiar with the current formulation. If you were a child of the 60's you certainly know "Oh! de London". It was THE fragrance to wear. It said you were hip and happening -- it was not your mother's perfume! It was a bright florioriental, warm and powdery. In contrast to it's "of the moment" notes it was on a base of old-fashioned violets. What I loved and remember so much was it's undercurrent of freshly brewed black tea. Complex, unique, and intriguing. "Oh! de London" is one of the hottest perfume collectibles today. It will cost a small fortune -- if you're lucky enough to find it.

I loved the Yardley version of this fragrance and used it in jr high school. I thought I was so hip in my white go-go boots and mini skirt along with my Yardley pot-o-floss and this scent. I know some of the reviews are mixed but, I find this reformulation by Tuvaché to be similar enough that I am very happy to wear this fragrance again . I tried to find a vintage Yardley but it was impossible. The chamomile is prominent and combined with subtle florals and woodsy undertones makes this a lovely and soothing scent.

I am a novice perfumeist (as a hobby). What got me started on this journey was my frustration in trying to find a fragrance that even remotely resembles what I remember of Yardley's Oh! de London. There haven't been any recent comments on this gorgeous perfume and just wondering if anyone has come across anything that is in the same DNA as Yardley OH de London??? I have tried so many batches and just can't get it right. I'm not sure on what the actual florals were. Help!

...the dry down is milky and mellow This scent is very natural,smells like a newborn baby ,chamomile tea with milk The most innocent and neutral scent I came across ever...Staying power is amazing on fabrics

If you remember the vintage Woods of Windsor Forget Me Not, this is it. I have it. I've compared. This is that lovely, sharp, powdery floral.

I find this fascinating--I wore the original OH De London as a college student in 1972 or so, back when Yardley made it and I loved it. A friend found this reformulation for me a while ago and I liked it, but wasn't sure if it was exactly the scent I remembered. Then, this week, I made an amazing buy in a local thrift shop--a splash bottle of the Yardley cologne, almost full-IN THE ORIGINAL PACKAGING FROM 1969 no less! I picked it up for $3! Of course, I had to run home and try both on! They are quite similar, but the Tuvache EDT is stronger of course, than the Yardley cologne--and the Yardley original is more of a green floral--the top note is very jasmine-y and the mid note is very fresh green and sweet--just like clover. The drydown is definitely more of a green floral scent, whereas the Tuvache is much more oriental and powdery. The blurb on the back of the Yardley box describes the scent as: "The wildflower scent of jasmine, rosebuds and young clover." The re-formulation is more lasting--but the original is much more innocent and girlish, much more ingenue, than the EDT re-make. Now--if someone would just bring back "Eau De Love" from 1969, I would be thrilled!!

Let Me Take You Back In Time Via My Memories 1962 London United Kingdom The Swinging Sixties with micro mini skirts and flower power theme, Twiggy & Mary Quant fashion is captured in the vertically striped cylindrical spray bottle of the eau de cologne. It was a YARDLEY fragrance, not a Tuvache which was released in 1965 and replaced the Yardley. This perfume has long suffered in obscurity and one can only talk about it from memory as I am doing in this review. This was a beautiful floral scent and one that held a lot of meaning for me. I was wearing this perfume when I first met opera singer Dame Joan Sutherland & I received some advice on operatic technique as a student. She complimented me on my fragrance but I didn't reveal it's identity. This was a drugstore fragrance as was the more well known Yardley fragrance LAVENDER and ENGLISH ROSE. One might call this the CHARLIE by Revlon of the UK in the 60's. It was fresh, floral, spicy, aromatic & woodsy and very much a unisex scent. As it did not really market to women men & women both wore it. It was aimed at a younger demographic of hip London youth in colorful clothes. Think Austin Powers (ha) the Beatles & the British Invasion. Men in puffy pirate shirts and tight pants of various colors, women in floral print mini dresses & Go-Go boots. Between 1962 and 1965, I was studying how to be an opera singer & singing in chorus while at the same time performing in small recitals among my friends. This perfume always elevated my spirits & made me feel as beautiful as my idea of a diva. The aroma always left an impression. It is one of the greatest tragedies of the fragrance industry to have had it discontinued or reformulated. So I can only review the fragrance in it's orignal form (not the Tuvache version which is a chemical nightmare of synthetic florals with less notes than the ones even listed on Fragrantica). The original Oh! de London opened with a fresh citrus. It was bergamot orange pure and simple, and a lemon. There was a definite green note & greenness to how it opens. Smells like an orange flavored rosebush. If you've ever spent time in a rose garden you'll know what I mean. This is like putting your nose to citrusy leaves of both rose & orange blossom. Though orange blossom is not supposed to be one of the notes, it's paired up with a green rose similar to the rose in Tea Rose by Perfumer's Workshop. It's possible the noses behind that scent were inspired by the opening to Oh! de London. That initial spritz was a realistic rose & rosebush scent. It's followed by sage & chamomile which evoke a chamomile tea. It's so on the nose how Brit this thing really is. It's suggestive of Brit culture, English roses, gardens and tea time. The chamomile & sage are soothing and therapeutic like actual tea with leaves. There's a medicinal quality to it as well. The tea note and the chamomile are unisex and it never did get too powdery or feminine. It stayed in the green zone. Other notes included earthy accords of clove, oak moss & vetiver. But it is floral with graphic greenhouse garden flowers of geranium, violet, lily, heliotrope & ylang. The heliotrope is quite strong and it has a vanilla flower smell. The violet was always a treat for me but the heliotrope blossoms & gives this scent a vanilla flavor which embraces the drier parts of the final performance. Finally the whole thing turns to cedar woods and a little musk, lots of sandalwood and moss. For me this was a chypre floral. This fragrance was rather innovative & unique at the time. Most floral fragrances were soapy but this never smelled like hand soap or bath soap. It was like they deliberately created a floral tea scent, or garden smell in a bottle. It's utterly botanical. Women at the time enjoyed the flowers, and men were pleased with the musk & woods. It is not a very bright or sweet fragrance but it's not too dark and neither is it animalic. That musk is faint & the woods & greens are the real stars. It has a clean but not too soapy no-nonsense straightforward air. It does really belong on Brits more than Americans. This is an absolutely beautiful & unforgettable scent but the tragedy is: who remembers this? I am writing a review on a page that is itemizing the new formula by Tuvache & other reviewers appear to be talking about a different fragrance entirely. I do remember my Yardley Oh! de London like it was yesterday and it is has not been honored with a convincing review of what it smells like. Reviewer Gigi the Fashionista who is a friend of mine in the United States (New York) has experienced this fragrance because she has smelled it on me and I have offered her one of the 5 bottles I have as a gift about a year ago for Christmas. Her description of the scent as a "floral chypre" is quite right but she also appears to wear the Yardley version which she likes but which I can never like. Even if it does try to smell like the orignal there are too many notes that take away from it's green & herbal aroma namely more vanilla than there should be in it. The new one smells like vanilla scented tea & powdery florals, whereas the chypre aura of the old formula is vastly superior & based on hardcore old school floral fragrance formula. My advice is either look for the remnants of the original anywhere you can including rummage sales or ebay or wear the new one if only to get an impression of what it smells like and I use the word impression because it's not the exact same scent. One last thing, this fragrance is best worn in the autumn as it is warm and aromatic not too fresh and sweet. It's woodsy & autumnal and suggestive of the Fall season. Smells great.

When I was 10 years old mother went to Richmond one early December and bought back all sorts of wonderful presents for me and my brother and sister. I received my first bottle of fragrance- Yardley's Oh de London in a gorgeous gift set box. I was enraptured. My mother was a perfume snob. She wouldn't let buy or wear "cheap" perfume from the Dime store. I adored my beautiful mother and I believe her when she said that Oh de London was something good. I loved that perfume and I kept a tiny bit in the bottle to smell when it was almost gone. The powder lasted much longer still. When I got my bottle by Tuvache the memories came flooding back. I think it is a very faithful reformulation. For comparison I bought a vintage bottle of Sea Jade and a small vintage Oh de London and I must say I don't think the Sea Jade is the same scent at all. I respect people who say it is the same, but they smell so very different to me especially in the top notes. I even bought the new Yardley Jade. It is not the same as my vintage Sea Jade but it is similar and still not Oh de London. I can see that all the perfumes are similar types but the Sea Jade just isn't the same fragrance to my nose. I am not a sophisticated perfumista (not a complete novice either) but I know my Oh de London like the back of my hand. I also bought new bottle of Guy Larouche Jai Ose perfume and a vintage sample EDP because I read it was the same fragrance as Oh de London. Both vintage and original Jai Ose smell the same to me and nothing remotely like Oh de London or Sea Jade. I would say they aren't even the same type of perfume. The Jai Ose is very rich and deep whereas the Oh de London is light and fresh. I am wearing the new Jai Ose perfume on my right wrist and the vintage sample of the EDP on my left. The EDP faded quickly and the new perfume is coming through stronger and richer. I even bought the Jai Ose Baby perfume in the tiny baby bottle flacon. Personally I liked that version the most but still it didn't remind me of Oh de London in the least. This whole odyssey cost me a lot of money, but I don't have any regrets. I really wanted Jai Ose to be the same scent especially because I could buy it in perfume form and I love perfume. I wanted the Sea Jade to be the same too, especially with the launch of Yardley's Jade. I would love to get my fix directly from the matrix- Yardley. I wanted more ways to find that scent from my youth. In the end only the vintage bottle and the remake was my Oh de London. I wish the bottle from Tuvache wasn't so plain. Eventually I want to buy a large empty bottle of Oh de London and decant my remake into it.

Some company with decent intentions (heaven save us all) bought the original formula, then voila: the knock-off. Yeah, I bought it. Not up to snuff. But here is the thing about ODL: in its original power, it was TRANSCENDENTAL. A wild jazz combo of top notes and middle notes, clear sparkly fairy whistles of sharp, real Bergamot and other flowers and maybe chemicals that lifted you up into the air, in your head, in an intellectual sort of advanced feeling. This was the only fragrance that ever made me feel suddenly more intelligent, on a higher plane, like a great poem will do. I am not being sappy and silly about the past here. There actually was an ACCORD which existed only in the original formula, ingredients that may even be unavailable today, a physical combination of notes that sprang up spinning forward and backward like Dave Brubeck 1948 San Francisco LIVE! And these jokers who are reformulating ODL are committing a sin against the PreRaphaelites if they cannot truly present the EXACT combination of the original ODL. And those of us who experienced it are not the kind who settle for shiny polyester instead of pure silk organza that is tie-dyed in a hundred beautiful bleeding colors. Do ya got that? Do ya hear me? Well, the angels hear me. They know what I mean! ODL was a fragrance that was about the thrill of new exploration discoveries, and scent can actually do that. I wanted to kick Yardley when they checked out so long ago on this one. How gutless they were! I really expected more from the British. So, I wouldn't wear a fragrance for five years after ODL. I finally started wearing Chanel 19 as an act of revenge, since it was so cynically bitchy like Marie Antoinette marching to the guillotine avoiding the mud puddles.

Thanks for that wonderful review, Greenelf! (I was mad for everything Yardley in the late 60's-early 70's. I still have a half inch of Yardley Spring Flowers, and I would LOVE to get my hands on Eau de Love or Love's Lemon. Do you realize, there is no perfume now with a real lemon scent to it?) I of course wore this back in Tha Day. I have a teeny bottle of the remake by Tuvache and I have found it quite lovely to sniff. Is it the same as yesteryears? I don't know. I thought the remake was really nice. (I read the original could never be reproduced now, because there is a shortage of sandalwood and the price would be sky-high. That's the trouble with reproductions of perfumes, they're never the same as the original because of a lack of original ingredients, or ingredients are now found toxic and harmful.) I still love it, reformulated or not.

My mother wore this in the 60's and the 80's. This was a realistic green floral garden scent. I have the one selling for a cheap 20 something bucks on Fragrance X which my mom says is a reformulation but "it's still good". This is a chamomile scent most of all. If you're familiar with chamomile you'll find it relaxing soothing and strong. It has rose, heliotrope and lily of the valley, flowers I really love. The scent is very flowery so you have to enjoy flowers. But there is something about it that is like a spicy green tea. There's also oak moss and woods. The woods gave it a masculine edge and it sorta reminds me of British actors like Laurence Olivier and Roger Moore. I bet they wore this fragrance. It's floral, a green garden and very dreamy, old fashioned and divine.

I wore this when it was made by Yardley back in the sixties. I would save up my money to buy all the bath products. Yes, I was definitely obsessed with it along with Yardley's Slicker Lip Polishes, Glimmerick eye shadows, and the oatmeal soap. I haven't smelled this in what seems like forever, but I still see the vintage Jean Shrimpton ads for it online, and it always makes me smile.

I remember Yardley’s ODL. I’d trade my Chanel’s, Guerlains and Amouages for an original, perfectly preserved full bottle of this. Yes, it was all that and the associated memories of the sixties and the hope, love and imagination of the era. It was luminescent.