Jo's Scent Notes: Coty Ambre Antique
Photos: © Jo Fairley
What will be your #SOTD – Scent of the Day – on Christmas Day, this year? It truly calls for something special. My go-to for decades has been Guerlain Mitsouko: warm, sophisticated, a little bit spicy and a lot celebratory. It has a vintage charm that I feel lends itself to the festive season, when we tap into old customs and family traditions.
But this year, I’m going to be ‘unfaithful’ – although only, of course, in an olfactory way. Because I have fallen head over heels in love with something new that’s also something old.
The story behind Ambre Antique, relaunched by INFINIMENT COTY PARIS, is utterly bewitching – because Ambre Antique has been faithfully recreated so that we can time-travel and smell a ground-breaking scent from 1905. (Note: there are just 1,905 bottles of this available, in this country via Liberty London.)
It was the first ‘amber’, or ‘ambrée’ fragrance ever created – a family that’s enjoying a surge in popularity: warm, sweet, cocooning, and more than a little sexy. Imagined by François Coty, it was bold. It was creative. And it was a huge success, before fading from fashion and disappearing from sight (or smell).
Last year, Coty – via a new brand, INFINIMENT COTY PARIS – launched a collection of fragrances under that name. They’re lovely, and you can explore them at Liberty London’s Fragrance Hall, in the basement. But this… this is something else. I wrote about Ambre Antique in the latest edition of The Perfume Society’s magazine The Scented Letter, of which I am Editor, and was bewitched by the story of how it came to be remade. (You can sign up for a free copy of the magazine, here.)
As Dominique Vernaz, Director Technical Perfumery at Coty, explained to me for my piece in The Scented Letter, the goal, he explains, was to respect the original Coty formula, remaking the perfume as closely as possible, without changing anything or taking shortcuts. ‘Ambre Antique is the result of hundreds of hours of work, research and meetings,’ says Dominique.
His first port of call was Coty’s New York-based archivist, Hannah Adkins. ‘I thought she might have some of the formulas she was looking for. She sent me hundreds of photographs of old notebooks. As I went through them, I discovered a treasure – the historical formulas, many handwritten. It was like finding the Holy Grail, and it became the starting point of this entire journey.’
In the notebook, next to each ingredient’s name, was a note of the supplier, many of whom were still familiar to Dominique today. But one of the biggest challenges was to track down AMBRÉINE S, a lost ingredient that was the key to recreating Ambre Antique. This complex, opulent base had been created by an English chemist named Samuelson – in fact, says Dominique: ‘There was a story that AMBRÉINE S had been created by accident, when Samuelson broke a sample of vanilla into a container of bergamot oil.’
Suppliers were contacted. History books and ledgers consulted, as well as many hours spent online. Fragrance historians were even enlisted, in the quest, which took twists and turns across several continents. And ultimately – hallelujah! – Dominique Vernaz tracked down this supposedly vanished formula to the fragrance house Symrise, who had acquired its producer.
There, Senior Perfumer Pascal Sillon, from the Symrise fragrance house, joined the adventure – and after much to-ing and fro-ing, a moment of triumph: AMBRÉINE S was perfectly recreated. This essential ingredient required to give Ambre Antique its mysterious, bewitching signature, proved to be a unique accord built around bergamot, vanilla, coumarin and sandalwood. At the same time, referencing historical records, orange blossom, jasmine, iris and rose were added ‘in volumes that were well beyond the norms.’ As they are, in this recreation. It is honestly like a time machine: smell it, and you’re right back in Paris, in 1905, where the nightlife blazed and women dazzled.
Anyone who has ever bought a bottle of vintage perfume online will know: that’s a real gamble. You can’t know till you unstopper your bottle what the contents smell of, and mostly, it’s desperately disappointing – they’ve gone ‘off’ completely, or lost the volatile top notes, or just smell somehow granny-ish. Ambre Antique is how you want a vintage perfume to smell – utterly perfect.
The back of the flacon, with its gilded figure
A fragrance with such a fabled story requires, of course, a special flacon – and this one’s stunning. On the back of the bottle is a golden illustration inspired by an advertising poster created in 1913 by an illustrator called Georges Goursat (also known as SEM), with ingredients swirling around the gilded figurine. It sits inside a dressing table-perfect triangular box, lined with a triptych of mirrors that reflect the illustration.
We are told that this is the first of several fragrances that are to be revived from the archives. I am beside myself to find out what they are: maybe the famous, innovative Coty Chypre (which again helped to create a whole new fragrance family), or Emeraude, a lilac-driven floral.
But for now, I will be enjoying this incredible piece of fragrant history. So elegant. So dressed-up. So very perfect for celebrating, with friends and family gathered around. And so very perfect for a moment, grabbed under the mistletoe – because to top it all, my beloved took one sniff of Ambre Antique and commented: ‘Oooh, you smell gorgeous…’
Coty Ambre Antique/£285 for 75ml - buy here
The Christmassy winter edition of The Scented Letter, edited by Jo
