The peach lipstick Nelly (Emmanuelle Béart) wears is from the Lipchrome collection by Ultima II.
L’enfer (1994)
La nuit où Laurier Gaudreault s’est réveillé E02 (La nuit où Mireille était reparue)
Whenever I watch a Xavier Dolan film, there’s one thing I am always certain of: I will spot a fragrance in it. Even if this is technically a TV show, the rule still applies because there’s a scene, set in Madeleine’s bedroom, where two fragrances make their appearance.
One is a Nina Ricci atomiser, used in the past to house several fragrances. There’s no way to know which one it contains, but it’s probably L’air du temps, previously mentioned in The Death and Life of John F. Donovan.
The jar topped with a dove is Avon Flight to Beauty moisturising cream.
Julien (Patrick Hivon) takes another bottle and smells it.
It’s Christian Dior Miss Dior eau de toilette. The bottle that houses this fragrance today is very similar to the original, but I want to believe Madeleine used the vintage version.
Thanks to Zah in the comments for the Avon id.
Mina Settembre S02E12 (Andare a vedere)
Titti (Valentina D’Agostino) is getting married. Her bachelorette party is a quiet night in with her best friends Mina (Serena Rossi) and Irene (Christiane Filangieri).
On a glass shelf in her old-fashioned bathroom there are two fragrances by Etro.
From the front label it’s possible to tell one of them is Etra, a warm spicy fragrance launched in 1999. The other one is impossible to identify because the label cannot be read.
On the Set of Madonna’s Vogue Music Video (1990)
How many times have you watched Madonna’s Vogue, one of the most influential music videos of the 1990s directed by David Fincher? Personally I have lost count. When it was first released in March 1990, it was captivating with its impressive use of black and white and the imagery heavily paying homage to the Art Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka and Hollywood portrait photographers like Clarence Sinclair Bull and Horst P. Horst.
In particular, the final shot of the video [1] basically reproduces one of the most famous photographs by Horst – Mainbocher Corset, taken in 1939.
The German master of light and shadow shot one of his models, Madame Bernon. She was wearing a tightly-laced corset made by the corsetière Detolle to be worn under one of the creations of Mainbocher, the fashion house founded in 1929 by the American designer Main Rousseau Bocher.
If you are a fan of this music video, I bet you’ve never realised that the round bottle sitting on a shelf (left side of the screen) is a real product. It’s a beautiful glossy black Lanvin talcum powder duster. Possibly the fragrance of this perfumed talc was Arpège, the white floral creation by Paul Vacher and Andre Fraysse launched in 1927.
[1] The photo shot on the set of the music video was taken by Lorraine Day.
Thanks to Carolina for submitting this post.
Jane Birkin’s Bathroom (1987)
This beautiful portrait was taken by Richard Melloul in the bathroom of Birkin’s house in rue de la Tour, in Paris. You may recognise it as the bathroom which appears in Kung Fu Master! (1988) by Agnès Varda. Some of the perfumes and toiletries in this picture can also be found in the film.
On the far left side of the marble shelf above the washbasin there’s a blue jar with silver cap: it’s Guerlain Secret de Bonne Femme face cream. On the same side of the marble shelf there’s a jar of Gessy brilliantine, which I found no picture of.
Next there’s a bottle of Coty cologne. The front label cannot be read, but considering it has a white stopper, it could be Le Muguet.
A bottle that can be seen in Kung Fu Master! is Chanel 8°5 Lotion Fraiche.
There’s also Guerlain Vol de Nuit in the gorgeous flacon rayonnant. This is a 1933 fragrance by Jacques Guerlain.
On the far right side of the marble counter there are several round boxes, possibly containing face or body powders. Among them, there are Les Météorites pressed-powder pearls and Coty Airspun loose face powder, both seen in the Varda film.
On the right side of the marble counter there are several skincare products. Among them, I can see a white jar and a white tube by Clarins (impossible to know what they contained) and Guerlain body creme.
The last product I have been able to identify is a massive flacon goutte by Guerlain, sitting on a wooden counter above the bath tub. First introduced in 1923, it was used for over 30 different fragrances, so there’s no way to tell exactly what this bottle contained.
Thanks to Viola for submitting this post, and to Samuel for the Guerlain face cream id.
Boccaccio ’70: Il lavoro (1962)
No Visconti film is complete without a Guerlain sighting, and Il lavoro makes no exception. Two massive flacons montre can be seen in Pupe’s bathroom. Unfortunately none has the front sticker visible, so it’s impossible to tell what fragrance they contained.
Green Card (1990)
Georges is checking the content of Brontë’s bathroom cabinet.
The object at the centre is a small spray can of Gillette Foamy shaving cream.
The two white bottles are very intriguing. The citrus front label clearly reads “Bourjois Eau de Cologne”, so this id should be a no-brainer. Too bad that this eau de cologne doesn’t exist! If you look at the screencap closely, you will see that the prop masters took generic white bottles and glued Art Deco-style labels on them. What is surprising is that they used the name of a real brand. I wonder if Bourjois was in the know of this “poetic licence”…
The imagination of the prop masters was put to the test by a very important element of the plot – the infamous Monticello restorative cream for the face, Brontë’s moisturiser of choice.
The only evidence of this brand took me back to American history, where Monticello is Thomas Jefferson’s plantation near Charlottesville, Virginia. The Thomas Jefferson Foundation, that has maintained the plantation and kept it to the public, sells skincare products on their online shop, so *there could* be a connection with the face cream seen in the film, although I have found no evidence that the aforementioned cream was actually produced and sold by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation.
More mystery lies on the glass shelf above. There’s a (soap) box on the right that reads “Natural Seaweed” and the brand is Revive Lab. Again, I found no evidence of such a brand.
What cannot be mistaken is the floral box at the centre of the shelf: it’s definitely a Clinique product, although it’s impossible to identify because the box is never shown in its entirety.
Thanks to Taylor Rowley for submitting this post.
Maria (2024)
A striped round box can be seen in Maria Callas’ medicine cabinet.
Later in the film, we get a beautiful shot from above which shows the box contains face powder.
It’s Polvo Chela, an Argentinian cosmetic from the 1920s.
Maria (2024)
I was looking forward to watching the latest Pablo Larraín film documenting the last days in the life of Maria Callas (Angelina Jolie) because I *knew* (hoped) some interesting beauty products were in it and I was not disappointed.
The first product I spotted in the scene where Maria is sitting at her vanity is a white jar by Guerlain containing skincare. The exact product is unclear (it could be the Crème Stabilisante, shown in the 1975 advert above, the Collagena or the Crème Magistrale), but the choice is historically accurate, because this packaging was marketed in the mid/late 1970s.
Next, there’s a Dior amphora bottle, originally designed by Fernand Guéry-Colas. This bottle housed different Dior fragrances (Miss Dior, Diorissimo and Diorama), so once again it’s unclear which fragrance sits on la Divina’s vanity.
I was surprised to see a massive flacon chauve souris containing the Guerlain classic Shalimar, a fragrance created in 1925 by Jacques Guerlain. According to online reports, Maria Callas used to wear Chanel No. 5 and Revillon Detchema, but there’s nothing that can beat the impressive presence of this bottle on a film set, so I totally approve of this choice.
Another surprising presence is a box of Madame Rochas, a white floral fragrance created by Guy Robert and launched in 1960. It may not be accurate, if we assume that Callas never wore it, but it surely looks good on her vanity.
Later in the film, Maria sits at another vanity. There’s another flacon chauve souris on it but there’s also a Guerlain zigzag box, first introduced in 1967. Reading the front label is impossible, so its content is unknown.
La nuit où Laurier Gaudreault s’est réveillé E04 (La nuit où Julien avait pris peur)
Teenage Mireille (Jasmine Lemée) is painting her mother Madeleine’s nails red.
The nail polish is by Christian Dior.
This is the packaging Dior nail polishes had in the 1980s and early 1990s.
World Wide Aura 
