Tag Archives: revlon charlie

perfumes in movies, skincare in movies

Someone’s Watching Me (1978)

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When we first see TV director Leigh Michael’s bathroom, we can notice some very famous fragrances on the marble counter.

From the left to the right there are:

A balloon bottle by Lucien Lelong. Impossible to tell what fragrance it contained, because the same bottle was used to house several fragrances.

The unmistakable blue, black and silver bottle belongs to Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche, a floral aldehyde fragrance created by Michel Hy and launched in 1971.

Another 1970s staple is Revlon Jean Naté after-bath splash in the distinctive tall bottle with black round stopper.

Last but not least, a legend from that decade – the hugely popular Charlie by Revlon. This white floral aldehyde fragrance was launched in 1973.

Later in the film, we can see a different selection of fragrances on the counter. The Lelong balloon bottle and Charlie are gone, but Jean Naté and Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche (two bottles of it!) are still there.

The jar sitting on the same counter is a Max Factor skincare product – Moisture Essence night cream.

Thanks to Nehir for submitting this post, and to Daniel Roldán for the Max Factor id.

perfume quotes in tv shows

Pose S02E04 (Never Knew Love Like This Before)

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One of the most intense and emotional moments in a VERY intense and emotional episode was the conversation between Candy (Angelica Ross) and her mother (Patrice Johnson Chevannes). In particular, a memory from the past is brought up: as a young boy, Candy wore her mother’s perfume, a symbol of the “silent pact” she thought was between them. Despite her assumptions and hopes, though, Candy got rejected by her family for being a transgender woman and this felt like an unbearable betrayal.

This scene reminds me of another emotional moment from Paris is Burning (1990) by Jennie Livingstone: Pepper LaBeija, mother of the House of LaBeija, explains 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, Tuvaché Jungle Gardenia. The gendered notion of perfume – now almost completely gone, thank God – could really give away a lot about oneself, sometimes with horrible consequences.

The perfume worn by Vivica and Candy is another strong symbol: Revlon Charlie was launched in 1973 and marked the beginning of a new era in perfumery. It was a fresh chypre fragrance, arguably one of the first feminist fragrances: as Barbara Herman explains in her book Scent & Subversion, “it was marketed to American women during an era when feminist consciousness was at its pop-culture height.” No wonder that Candy saw that specific perfume, worn by the most important woman in her life, as a “gate to femininity”.

The advertising campaign of Charlie was about independence, gorgeousness and sexiness: as the slogan said, it was a “gorgeous, sexy-young fragrance”, embodied by statuesque model/actress Shelley Hack wearing trousers.