Pardon by Royal Luxury Perfumes

Today I'm wearing an old favorite of mine, PARDON by ROYAL LUXURY. This perfume (parfum) is nearly always found in little micro-mini or miniature size bottles. It's made by a company called Royal Luxury Perfumes, a common-but-obscure name from USA in the 1950s. If you've ever seen one of the popular and fairly common vintage box sets called Les Grands Parfums De France, then you've probably seen micro minis or miniatures of Royal Luxury perfume before since they're often featured in these presentations along with perfumes made by Charles V Parfumeur. Some Royal Luxury perfume labels indicate they were made in Paris, others only that they were distributed in New York. The Charles V perfume lables I've seen, as well as text on the box sets states specifically that the Charles V perfumes were created and bottled in France... One supposes some of the Royal Luxury perfumes could have been made in USA, but who really knows? My own 1/4 ounce bottle of Pardon is marked as a "Parfum" on the label- but again it only indicates that it was "Dist in N.Y.". The cap is bakelite and the bottle was made in USA, but you can draw your own conclusions about the origin of the juice inside.

The perfumes of Royal Luxury Perfumes includes:

C'EST


Entude

Nanette


Pardon

Vie

...All were released probably around 1950 or shortly thereafter. The bottles come in a variety of shapes with different color foil paper labels. I believe they were produced for a few years only, in several different combinations in box sets, sometimes in larger sets along with the perfumes attributed to Charles V (aka Charles the Fifth) and sometimes smaller sets featuring only Royal Luxury perfumes. As a side note, I've found a few little gems among the Charles V perfumes. The dates for Charles V perfumes spans the late 1940s to the mid-1960s.

Nannette by Royal Luxury

Pardon by Royal Luxury

Entude by Royal Luxury

But when I smell Pardon, that's why I love it. There is a tangy musky quality in the base that makes it almost mouth-watering and as it dries down, the musk softens and radiates to a buttery like richness that suites me to a tee. There is an almost watery quality to it as well, something similar to some lotus oil scents. It has a cassis, berry vibe to it as well, similar to tart fresh cherries. There are some sweet floral touches that create almost sugary vanilla and spice notes as well, giving what could be callled a cherry pie effect (maybe one of the best examples of that type I've smelled). Of course it is a vintage scent so the fruit is not neon-brite nor literally edible; it is done in a rather perfumey style if that makes sense.

The print on the label of my bottle of Pardon is badly deteriorated and in a twist of perfume misfate, I'd always assumed "Garden" for Pardon and "Real" for Royal until recently, when I saw a better example. I still considered it a gem of my collection for smell alone- which is saying a lot since I do not attach nearly as much value to perfumes without names/houses, histories or stories behind them. But in this case the juice is a thing of beauty, a clear olive-amber color and the scent is rich and persistent, creating a gentle, feminine sillage that wears and wears. This is not a house that advertised at all, so I think the sets were made for travel, holiday displays in lower tier department stores and sold probably thousands and thousands of units at each location.

The happy news for you is that unlike some of the ultra-rare stuff, you can actually find small affordable bottles of Royal Luxury perfumes at many on-line auction sites (Bing, EBay or Google it). Many vintage perfume dealers tend to split the sets up (which can be irritating if you want an entire set), but which also keeps the cost-per-try affordable. If you're willing to spend $10-$20 you should be able to find a single, 3 to 5 ml or 1/8, 1/6 fl oz bottle. The "Les Grands" sets typically run $50-$150 range in as new, complete or mostly complete condition.

The Vintage Perfume Vault, where the scent of yesterday's vogue lives.

(image of Les Grands Parfums De France, 1finetreasure at ecrater)
(images of Royal Luxury perfumes from the miniature perfume shoppe)
(image of Vie from shopvintage4u at ebay)
(image of the Heliotrope fairy by Cicley Mary Barker)