The future Berlin envisioned by Duncan Jones has got an unexpected 1980s touch: a neon sign of LouLou, the famous Cacharel perfume created by Jean Guichard and launched in 1987.
Category Archives: perfume quotes in movies
Stardust Memories (1980)
Dorrie (Charlotte Rampling) appreciates Sandy’s aftershave. Like a madeleine, that scent brings back memories from her childhood. Sandy (Woody Allen) gets the reference to À la recherche du temps perdu by Marcel Proust and jokingly comments he’s wearing Proustian Rush by Chanel. The reason why the French maison has never produced a perfume with such an evocative name is beyond me.
A real Chanel perfume appears later in the film, when Sandy visits his sister (Anne De Salvo). Chanel no. 5 refillable atomisers (one small, one big) can be seen on a plastic tray on her dresser.
Hitchcock (2013)
When Janet Leigh (Scarlett Johansson) meets Alfred Hitchcock to discuss the role of Marion Crane in his upcoming film Psycho (1960), she focuses on the double identity of the character (a Phoenix secretary who steals $40,000 from her employer’s client).
She introduces this concept through perfumes: Marion is someone who wears an inoffensive cologne like Lenthéric Tweed in the office, but turns to something completely different when she’s with her lover Sam Loomis: her reckless and seductive self wears My Sin by Lanvin.
Tweed, launched in 1933, is a woody aromatic perfume with light spicy notes. My Sin, originally called Mon Péché, was created by Madame Zed in 1924; it’s a scent with civet, musk and aldehydes as dominant notes.
Yield to the Night (1956)
Mary Price Hilton (Diana Dors) first meets Jim Lancaster (Michael Craig) at the perfume shop where she works as a shop assistant. He falls in love with her perfume, Christmas Rose. It’s a fictitious perfume, but I’ve found out some brands have launched fragrances with the same name. Thinking of Mary’s dreamy and idealistic personality, her perfume could be a floral with warm spicy notes.
When the two meet at a club and dance, he comments again on her perfume, saying it’s “a wonderful smell.”
What real perfume do you think could be the fictitious Christmas Rose?
Damsels in Distress (2011)
Heather (Carrie MacLemore) and Violet (Greta Gerwig) strongly believe in the life-changing power of perfumes. That’s why they decide to send the Doar Dorm boys some scented soaps.
Their hope is to turn that bad-smelling dorm into a better place. Dior Dorm sounds great.
Paris Is Burning (1990)
One of the most emotional scenes of the film is when Pepper LaBeija, mother of the House of LaBeija, tells how her parents found out she dressed as a girl. Her mother found a fur coat in her closet and realised it was hers from the perfume on it, Jungle Gardenia.
Originally launched by Tuvaché in the 1930, it became popular in the 1950s. Barbara Herman’s description of it is fascinating: “With tropical wet gardenia and bubble-gum sweet tuberose bursting from its center, flanked by fresh green top notes and an erotic base of balsams and musk, Jungle Gardenia goes straight to the perfume brain’s pleasure center.”
The Riot Club (2014)
Harry Villiers (Douglas Booth) is one of the members of the despicable Riot Club. He’s a self-centred prick but he knows perfumes. He smells Chanel Coco Mademoiselle on Rachel (Jessica Brown Findlay), who confirms that’s the perfume she’s wearing.
Mr Selfridge S02E01
Kitty Hawkins (Amy Beth Hayes) and the girls at the cosmetics counter are ready to welcome Delphine Day (Polly Walker), a businesswoman and nightclub owner who’s the talk of the town: sexy and independent, she’s presenting her novel at Selfridges. Lots of Guerlain flacons bouchon coeur can be seen, including a giant factice bottle.
When Delphine stops by the counter, Kitty asks her if she wants to try a “new scent,” which happens to be Guerlain L’Heure Bleue.
This is historically accurate: the Jacques Guerlain creation was launched in 1912, two years before 1914, year in which this episode is set.
Delphine can’t help but loving it!
Kitty, who’s a skilled sales assistant, explains the composition of the perfume, a “floral bouquet” with notes of “bergamot, aniseed and a velvety base of vanilla and tonka bean.”
I Capture the Castle (2003)
When Cassandra (Romola Garai) and Rose Mortmain (Rose Byrne) visit a luxury department store in London, the smell that impresses them the most is a bluebell perfume spritzed by a sales assistant. Rose establishes a connection between that smell and heaven, emphasized by the unusually posh place they’re at.
Later in the film, Cassandra and Stephen Colley (Henry Cavill) have the same conversation; it’s Cassandra who utters the “I can smell heaven” previously said by her sister. In this case, they’re not referring to the perfume, but to real bluebells.
Rose writes a letter to Cassandra, describing the preparations for her upcoming wedding to Simon Cotton. She speaks of her visit to the same luxury store she went to with her sister some time before: the place, she explains, has the same exact smell, “heaven and bluebells”.
Cassandra is over the moon when Rose gives her the bluebell perfume as a birthday present. This is a fictional perfume, but the label and the box remind me of Penhaligon’s Bluebell, an intoxicating perfume created by Michael Pickthall and launched in 1985.
Lady D and Kate Moss were/are among the fans of this floral green fragrance, a triumph of hyacinth, made peculiar by earthy tones of cloves and cinnamon.
Trainspotting (1996)
Rent (Ewan McGregor) dreams of using a luxurious bathroom made of marble, with gold taps and a “cistern” full of Chanel no. 5, a perfume which symbolizes wealth.
World Wide Aura 