Secret De Venus

The parfum de toilette of Secret de Venus opens with a rooty, medicinal sarsaparilla sassafras, luxurious lavender potpourri, muted (not turned) citrus—almost like candied orange and lemon. Gosh, it's entrancing. Repeated sniffs have my mind searching for where I last smelled something like this in my lifetime, some passage of time, many years, ago detected for just a few seconds on some distinguished woman; maybe I only smelled it once when I was five or six years old, and deep within the recesses of the hippocampus its imprinted. The flowers fade in as the top notes recede, and they are heady and thick, no clear outlines, but suggestions of gardenia and jasmine. It is the woodiness here that is the showstopper though: a honeyed, buttery, nutty sandalwood and grainy, smoky cedar, with lingering sweetness clinging on and this creamy, sexy musk coda as all the layers fall away. It beguiles me, haunts me even, as it seems to slow down time while I admire it.

I happened upon a little vintage bottle of "Secret de Venus" and was thrilled to be able to experience it in its original form. It's a stunner---deep as a well, rich as cream, complex and inviting. It opens with lavender and bergamot, along with some spicy notes, swiftly followed by beautiful sandalwood and patchouli. Flowers weave in and out; no specific blooms for me, just a rich golden floralcy. The sandalwood in my old bottle's juice is so rich it reminds one of civet. In fact, I wonder at the absence of civet from the stated notes...Finally, a creamy vanilla and amber note appears. It's a robustly sensual perfume---seductive is no overstatement. To me, it's beautiful and timeless. And apparently, an endangered species, judging from the paucity of vintage sources (and the pricing of what there is), and from the uniformly bad reviews of the newer version by people who have experienced the original. Sigh...

This review is for the vintage perfume oil. Upon first sniff, straight from the bottle, my immediate reaction was to think of grape jelly or flavored pancake syrup. Upon application, the sweetness changed a bit to a cherry coke aroma...and then transitions into a berry-patchouli. I find this scent comforting and cozy. It oozes a warm, sappy, sweet, earthy aroma. Brings to mind a kitchen where women are kneading some dough to make bread sweetened with molasses. Patsy Cline is playing in the background. The fire pit is roaring in the backyard while the guys strum along to Patsy's tunes with their guitars in the chilly, starry night. It reminds me of a chilly night in Austin in the company of good friends. Interesting that a vintage scent would capture such a gourmand-like quality.

This was one of the most beautiful fragrances that I ever wore. It was very sexy and not for the timid, yet it was exceptionally refined. This was a scent that drew compliments from both sexes yet I never met another person who wore it. I was just turning 19 back when I started wearing it and I suppose that most women who wore it traveled in more sophisticated circles. Eventually it became hard to find. I seem to remember replacing it with Hermes Caleche when it was no longer available or maybe that was Worth's Je Riviens. I agree with some of the other reviewers here, there are other scents that have been similar, but none quite as seductive and mysterious as this heady potion.

Would be really great to try the vintage one, I have got reformulated bottle, even from this "version" I can see that idea/concept was great and bewitching, but its only the "hints" and imagination that makes you create "that vintage real Secret" in your head... My new-version bottle opens by clove ( that I cant see among notes but do smell) -cinnamon-freesia accord, smoothly goes to vanilla-peach and cassis and drydown is patchouli-sandal-lavender. I understand frustration of people familiar with the real Secret de Venus but nothing ugly in this cologne that I wear, there are lots of far worser and far more expensive scents out there... So, its not at all flowery on me - really spice and vanilla one, not sharp but creamy, a tiny bit boozy, I like it