I’ve always lived in Maryland, and I’ve always liked Baltimore. It’s a friendly city, and I like being able to take the bus down to the National Aquarium and do my studying next to the dolphin tank. Baltimore is not without its faults, of course: the perfume shopping is abysmal. Nordstrom is as upscale as we get here. That’s why I was so surprised to hit vintage perfume gold in a tiny Baltimore thrift store the other day.
Among my finds was a bottle of Coty L’Origan, which Jacques Guerlain allegedly ripped off for his fragrance Guerlain L’Heure Bleue. There’s a definite resemblance between them, although I find L’Origan to be much closer to Guerlain’s Apres L’Ondee. Like Apres L’Ondee, L’Origan is an unbearably pretty violet-and-heliotrope fragrance that is much better suited to modern tastes than L’Heure Bleue. L’Origan is soft and candy-sweet, and has received favorable responses from the Perfume Muggles (this simply does not happen with my fancy-shmancy perfumes). I would definitely recommend L’Origan to fans of the old-school Guerlains, but the interwebz tells me that L’Origan has been reformulated and that the current formula is nigh-unrecognizable. If you chance upon an older bottle, snap it up.
SCENTS OF SELF 
My vintage L’Origan extrait is rather grand, a treasure in a little satin-lined case! And very pretty.
Oooh, that sounds lovely. There was no pomp and circumstance surrounding mine- I actually don’t even think it’s that old, since it’s just a plastic bottle and doesn’t look anything like the gorgeous bottles that came up in my google search.
It looks exactly like the one in your ad there. A dabber, of course, but then it’s extrait.
Lucky you! Perfume is extremely rare in thrift shops where I live, so much so that I have begun to believe that there must be some kooky health regulations about it. If I ever see some vintage L’Origan, I will snap it up, although it sounds a bit sweet for me.
L’Origan sounds like one of those fragrances that have been reformulated so many times that you could drive yourself nuts on eBay trying to find ‘vintage’. I like vintage perfumes hugely but there are limits to my patience – and budget!
Anne Marie, I totally agree. I am very jealous of perfume lovers who have huge vintage collections, but I do not have the funds or energy to pursue vintage fragrances in a serious way. I’m sorry that it’s so hard to find perfume in your thrift shops! I suspect that people believe that their old fragrances have “gone bad” and just throw them away. The horror!
Totally agree with you both…
Thinking of non export perfumes… don’t you have enough to worry about already?
So thinking of vintage collections is too much for me… although as a perfume lover, I wish I had a time machine 😦
wow Coty L’Origan… it sounds dreamy…