There’s a bottle of Coty Muguet des Bois on Betty Draper’s dresser. This is one of the most popular Coty perfumes: created by Henri Robert and launched in 1941, it has top notes of aldehydes, orange, green leaves and bergamot; middle notes of cyclamen, lilac, jasmine, lily-of-the-valley and rose; base notes of sandalwood and musk.
Thanks to Elena Vosnaki for the id.
Mrs. Haldane, one of the victims of a mysterious strangler, had a very busy dressing table. Among her perfumes, there’s a bottle of Californian Poppy, a fragrance by Josephine Kell Ltd. The picture above refers to the 1940s version of the perfume, while the bottle seen in the tv show has a different shape and a different lettering on the front label.
The round bottle in front of Californian Poppy is the eau de cologne version of Worth Je Reviens, a floral aldehyde fragrance created by Maurice Blanchet and launched in 1932.
The brown tube looks like Crabtree & Evelyn Gardeners hand therapy cream.
There’s also a refillable atomiser of Rochas Madame Rochas.
Thanks to Jennifer for the hand cream id and to Nastja for the Worth id.
When Mr Selfridge decides to open a beauty counter in his store, we are treated with lots of eye candy! Fragrances and toiletries start to appear on the counters just before the entrance door.
In the screencap above, some bottles of Mäurer & Wirtz 4711 Original cologne can be seen, along with some round soaps by Roger & Gallet.
I’m not sure about the scents of the white and pink soaps, but they could be discontinued. As a matter of fact, their boxes and packaging could be coming from the 1980s, definitely not from the most recent collections. Contemporary Roger & Gallet soaps are wrapped in tissue paper, as usual, but they only have a round sticker – not a wrapping label.
Some flacons bouchon coeur by Guerlain can be seen on another counter. Most of them have no label, so it’s impossible to know what fragrances they contained. One thing is certain: their glass stoppers tell us they’re from before 1962, year in which plastic stoppers replaced the glass ones. As for the Mitsouko modern bottle, the pump atomizer is a nice way to give it a vintage feel.
Agnes Towler (Aisling Loftus) meets Henri Leclair (Grégory Fitoussi) in the beauty department. They have a short conversation about fragrances, from which we learn that Agnes is a classic British girl, who loves traditional creations like Yardley Lavender. The aromatic fougère, launched in 1919, is another historically inaccurate choice, but in this context it works.
Joey Lisk is a shady wholesaler of luxury goods. A brand of stockings he sells (Le Minou Noir) is very important in the plot, but Endeavour Morse (Shaun Evans) notices something’s wrong from another detail. Lisk sells Acqua di Palma perfumes, a fake version of the historical Acqua di Parma. Morse knows the name of the product should be spelt with an R and not with an L.
The whole episode is full of references to Italian culture and history. Morse is an opera fan, so he often listens to music composed by Italian artists, but here we also have an Italian character, Luisa Armstrong, Thursday’s former love interest. She brings back memories from World War II and from the Italian resistance movement. In such a context, the presence of an Italian fragrance adds consistency to the plot.
Acqua di Parma is a brand founded in 1916; Colonia, a light and fresh scent, became hugely successful in the 1930s/1950s. Even though the line now includes several new products, Colonia still has the trademark yellow packaging we can also see in the episode.
Lenora Rauch (Maria Schrader) gives her sister Ingrid (Carina N. Wiese) a bottle of Chanel no. 5 as a present for her birthday. The perfume is not visible but the white box with black trims is unmistakable. No wonder Ingrid is so happy: Chanel no. 5 is literally a piece of European culture she’s not allowed to buy, since it’s not available on the East-German market.
In this episode there are two references to Mäurer & Wirtz 4711, the original Echt Kölnisch Wasser. The scene above is set in Cologne central station: while Martin Rauch is taking a train to East Berlin, we can see huge neon letters spelling the name of the eau de cologne.
In another scene, the iconic Molanus bottle can be seen in the desk drawer of Frau Netz (Michaela Caspar), General Edel’s secretary. When she opens the drawer, we can see the bottle and a copy of the magazine Der Spiegel (June 6th, 1983 issue). The cover title – Deadly Disease AIDS, the Mysterious Illness – is connected to the plot: a member of the pacifist movement, Felix von Schwerin, is actually ill with AIDS; he may have infected Tobias Tischbier and, as a consequence, Alex Edel.
Ursula Edel, the General’s wife, pays a visit to his office and gives Frau Netz a certificate of medical leave of absence for her son Alex. This is ironic: in that moment, Alex is not ill (he has temporarily left the army, trying to fight his father’s influence with a grand gesture which will end up tragically), but he may be, even if he doesn’t know it yet. Besides the fact that Frau Netz doesn’t shake Ursula’s hand, she reacts to the woman’s departure from the office by cleaning her hands with a handkerchief soaked in 4711 cologne. Known for its revitalising and relaxing effects, this cologne is commonly used as hand sanitizer, too.
A bottle of Escada can be seen on a table in Carrie’s mother’s room. This is a white floral fragrance launched in 1990.
The white bottle is Avon Sonnet cologne mist. This perfume was originally launched in 1938, but this is the bottle from mid-1980s.
There’s a bottle of Old Spice cologne in the bathroom of Scottie’s lover.
There’s a bottle of Vivienne Westwood Libertine on the window sill in Carrie’s bedroom. This fragrance was created by Martin Gras and launched in 2000 as the lighter side of the British designer’s first fragrance, Boudoir. The bottles of the two perfumes are very similar, but Libertine‘s is taller.
The dressing table of Rose Selfridge (Frances O’Connor) is quite busy. She’s clearly a fan of Guerlain perfumes: two flacons montre [1] can be seen on the shelf in front of the window, but there’s more. She opens a Guerlain box, decorated with people and animals, and takes out a flacon bouchon coeur, the bottle with the heart-shaped stopper designed by Raymond Guerlain in collaboration with Baccarat. It would be easy to assume this is Après l’Ondée, created by Jacques Guerlain in 1906, but it’s not, because that perfume has never had that bottle. It would have been a historically accurate choice (this episode takes place in 1909), but prop masters opted for something different. The flacon bouchon coeur originally contained three perfumes, released between 1912 and 1919.
Fol Arôme was created by Jacques Guerlain in 1912. Grace Hummel found a reference of this perfume being sold in 1896, so the 1912 version would be a reworked or relaunched perfume.
L’Heure Bleue was created by Jacques Guerlain in 1912. I don’t think this is the perfume seen on Rose’s dressing table because of the blue lettering on the central sticker.
The last possibility is Mitsouko, one of the most famous perfumes by the French brand. Another creation by Jacques Guerlain, it was launched in 1919, ten years after the time in which the tv show is set.
My guess is that the perfume seen in this episode is Fol Arôme, because the pale orange decorations on the sticker seem to match.
[1] The flacon montre was first released in 1936. The presence of these bottles in this episode is totally inaccurate, but no one can deny their decorative function.
