Jo's Scent Notes: Joseph Parfum du Jour

It is perfume’s superpower to allow us to time-travel. One whiff. All it takes. And so it was that uncapping my bottle of Joseph Parfum de Jour, I was right back in the 1980s, wearing shoulderpads the size of a quarterback’s, strolling through South Kensington towards Joseph’s many boutiques on Draycott Avenue, maybe with a little nip into The Conran Shop to see what else was hip ‘n’ happening, and finishing with ‘tunch’ – a lunch and tea hybrid – with my friend Maggie Alderson, at Joe’s Café – also owned by fashion entrepreneur and trendsetter Joseph Ettedgui, whose twinkling eye, design skill and talent-spotting prowess is still much-missed by fashionistas. (Joseph, alas, died in 2010.)

Joseph’s shops and restaurants were THE fashion hangout, back in those days. For a magazine editor – I was then at the helm of Honey – any outpost of Joseph’s empire was a place to see, and be seen. (Can’t think of any contemporary shops where you’d go simply to run into colleagues and friends in 2023, can you?) And when it launched, it felt like everyone began wearing Joseph Parfum de Jour, which didn’t smell quite like anything else out there, and was a ‘designer’ perfume, but way groovier than most. I wore it. Half my fellow magazine editors wore it. Supermodels wore it. Joseph Parfum de Jour WAS ‘it’.

Before I rhapsodise about its so-evocative ‘juice’, can we talk about that bottle? It’s completely timeless. Beautiful lips, minimalist typography, classic shape. Definitely destined to have pride of place on my dressing table once more, too. And that stripy box, identical to the design of the carrier bags we all wanted to be seen swinging on those Saturday shopping forays.

Of course, what really matters is the scent itself – and at first sniff, it’s got a real florist’s shop vibe: armfuls of flowers, but with a greenness like cut green stems. (Slightly damp, like a florist’s, too.) Rose, hyacinth, ylang ylang and lily of the valley are all listed as notes, but the effect is seamless so that you can’t make out any single flower. That greenness doesn’t go away, but acquires a mossiness – I’m sure there’s oakmoss in here, which is the signature of Chypre fragrances, which I basically consider to be the most sophisticated family of fragrances of all.

Slowly, it softens on the skin, becoming slightly less green, somewhat cosier without ever getting sweet. (Again, notes listed are sandalwood and amber, but even my fairly trained nose can’t really make those out, specifically.) It has really good staying power, but in an understated way. You won’t leave a va-va-voom trail as you sashay down the high street, but you can sniff your wrist and smile, a good few hours later. Another plus:? It’s not silly money, starting at £42 for 50ml eau de parfum. Plenty of scented bang for your buck.

Funny thing is, if you try to research Joseph Parfum de Jour online, the readily available info is inaccurate. Says it was launched in 1997. It also says it was co-created with Penhaligon’s – and I’ve no idea if that bit is true; it’s certainly not something that we were told, so far as I can recall, back in the day.

I actually wondered if my memory was playing tricks with me about the timeline of this scent. But it’s not; I have a crystal-clear memory of a conversation on a Tube train about it with the then-Editor of Elle, Sally Brampton, on our way back (ironically) from another perfume launch (on the site of what became Canary Wharf) – because we were both wearing Joseph. And I left Honey in 1985. (Which goes to illustrate that when it comes to info from the Jurassic age pre-internet, actually, things are often wrong.)

Like an old friend, I lost touch with this perfume, over the years. But I’m just so, so happy to have found it again. And what I can say is that nearly 40 years on, Joseph Parfum de Jour has now entered the realms of the classics.

But above all, I’m reminded how cool it was then. And you know what? It’s still so cool cool now.

£42 for 50ml or £62 for 100ml eau de parfum – buy here