Double o' One: Coty (001Coty) Cologne

001Coty

2001; Limited to an edition of 5000 bottles.

Top Notes : Almond Blossom, Marigold.

Middle Notes : Fresh 'Electrostatic' Accord, Tuscan Magnolia.

Base Notes : Tonka, Warm woods, Licorice and praline.

Coty brought in Jim Krivda from Fragrance Resources to create the scent of 001 in 2001. Looking to the internet for inspiration, Coty talked about "fusing the human with the virtual" for this concept fragrance. At the time Coty said they planned to release a whole series of these limited edition art scents that were to "test the boundaries of what consumers expect from the idea of a bottle of perfume". But nine years later 001 has been discontinued with no follow ups and the concept seems nearly forgotten.

Although we now hear newer rumors... it seems that Coty likes to do their homework and after looking a little further into the whole internet-and-perfume-thing, they discovered that items from their earliest catalogs still generate more excitement than the flood of new, niche and high concept scents coming on the market.

For now we'll have to wait to see whether there will be a 002Coty... or perhaps a new La Rose Jacqueminot, A'suma, or even a new Coty Chypre may appear first (or instead)?

Even so there will never be another real Coty Chypre, anymore than the sterile yellow juice within those gold and green soft shouldered bottles is...

Excuse my grouchiness, but I know the real stuff- the fine 1920-1930s version, a dark nectar the color of stiffly brewed tea. How sublime it really is... .I think I was reading on one of the big review sites- MUA or Base Notes, and was surprised by some of the lackluster opinions for Coty's Chypre. I wonder if those who regard it as a ho-hum underachiver have only smelt those 80-90s reissues? But if you've good imagination or you've smelled other any good quality vintage chypres then you've an idea of what I'm saying.

But I digress... Back to our 001 story...

From Rick Kinsel of Coty's concept and design team "We wanted to revisit the fundamentals of perfumery as an art form. We were thinking integrity rather than commerce" So at least here we can expect to believe they spared no expense and were able to use the same or better quality ingredients than are in many of the contemporary luxury or niche creations. Coty even created a new "fresh electrostatic accord" specially for 001.

According to Wired: "Krivda and his team put a piece of polyester in a dryer and extracted the smell emitting from the static electricity caused by the interaction of the fabric and the heat. By using a tiny syringe-like device to gather the odor, they then inserted the scent into a machine that breaks it into its molecular components. Krivda combined the "digital" elements with the scents of almond, marigold, magnolia, licorice and praline to complete the fragrance. Krivda also conducted the same procedure on the odor emitted from a freshly opened box of computer hardware."

Coty is a venerable house and I'm somewhat obsessed with perfume history (ya think?). Plus I personally love those notes so I plunged and bought a bottle of 001 recently, unsniffed. Marigold piques me, it can be sharp and strange... I sort of love/hate it but I can't wait to see what I'll think when I smell it incorporated into 001, especially with something electrostatic-y (solar-ish, or more like hot wires??) mixed in there. But the almond blossom-magnolia-praline sold me and I kinda dig ironing smells too so it could be a win-win, right?

In any case, I love the bottle. Inspired by an early 1900s Coty bottle, Coty collaborated with Pochet, a renown perfume bottle maker, to reinterpret the original design. The result is the sleek 001Coty bottle which slips into a soft pale rubber casing. According to Base Notes, the bottle was "the first limited edition ever to receive the endorsement of the International Perfume Bottle Association". Grant says it also won a FIFI in 2002 for Men's Fragrance Star of the Year Non-Store Venues.

I'll be back with a review soon!


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

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BASENOTES

Vintage New Orleans: Magnolia Rene Perfume

Today in California it is rainy, windy and cold, a typical February spring day but terrible Oscar's weather. Never mind, the fruitless pears are in full bloom here. All this rain puts me in the mood for a New Orleans spring day. The weather in New Orleans was always warm even when the sky filled with dark daytime clouds. There are Magnolia trees growing in California, which surprised me at first but the ones I've found are nearly scentless, nothing like the ones in New Orleans. The way magnolia perfume hangs in the warm, heavy air just before an electric storm, when everything else has become perfectly still, yellow tinted; that's a headspace I want to capture. (Edit: perhaps Kenzo Fleur de Magnolia can take me there... )

However all I have here, now is a nice old dimestore perfume called Magnolia by Rene of New Orleans. Magnolia smell is hard to describe. It's similar to jasmine, and similar to gardenia, but not really like either. It's sweeter with rubbery-waxy hints and a carbenuba, shoe-polish note. This perfume captures the magnolia of my memory perfectly. As it warms, it becomes more spicy, faintly medicine tinged, like sweet cream tinged with saffron and thinned with coconut milk. The dry down has faint civit-honey and hay notes with a fleshy, almost necrotic undertone. Something in that base reminds me of fresh leather, or the smell the flower gives off as it over-ripens, when the thick petals begin to turn slightly nutty and brown.

The quality of this fragrance is hard to judge. You can't even find a perfume that smells like this today (that's NOT a good thing), yet it was just a cheap little novelty back then, a small souvenir or token from a date back when it was new. So what if it doesn't have great performance characteristics, and leaves just enough to smell a trace after only a couple of hours! The bakelite cap does look sort of nerdy, but I really love the stepped shoulder design of the the little art deco bottle.

The Vintage Perfume Vault, where the vintage vogue lives.