Len's News, Notes, and Stuff

Whether Sophisticated, Snooty, or Just Strange, I Love Bal a Versailles

It’s often said that “they don’t make ‘em like they used to.”  In the case of fra­grances, it is very true in two impor­tant regards.

The first is that fra­grances come in and out of style like cloth­ing — the fra­grances of past peri­ods are meant to have a dif­fer­ent “feel” than new addi­tions to the mar­ket.  The sec­ond is that for­mu­la­tions change due to cost-cutting or because cer­tain ingre­di­ents have become ille­gal.  The long and short of it is that vin­tage fra­grances are intrin­si­cally and so very enjoy­ably dif­fer­ent from today’s fragrances.

I have had the plea­sure of wear­ing Bal a Ver­sailles by Jean Desprez today.  It’s not really that old in terms of fra­grance his­tory, con­sid­er­ing it was orig­i­nally designed and released in the 1960s.  How­ever, it was designed to evoke a period of extrav­a­gance, lux­u­ri­ous­ness, and deca­dence.  It was meant to be some­thing fit­ting a ball at the palace of Versailles.

I like it because I find it relax­ing and com­fort­ing, yes, but also because it is dif­fer­ent.  It is dif­fer­ent because it is vin­tage and oh-so-not-today’s-fashion.  It is musky, pow­dery, and rich.  It is brown in color and brown in feel.  It is not a thin, one-note aquatic.  In vin­tage for­mu­la­tion, it is com­plex, long-lasting, deep, warm, and yes, luxurious.

I have heard that the 1990s refor­mu­la­tion is a pale shadow of the orig­i­nal.  I have not tried it out myself, but I can cer­tainly believe it — the refor­mu­lated ver­sion is a dis­count fra­grance and is geared towards the cur­rent fra­grance fash­ion.  It cer­tainly will not have the rich essen­tial oils and musk that the orig­i­nal, full-bodied for­mu­la­tion uses so masterfully.

The adjec­tives that fra­grance afi­ciona­dos use to describe it, and the ones that first intrigued me were “ani­malic” and “dirty.”  Those are not words that mar­keters will use for today’s fra­grances, are they?  And that’s per­fectly fine by me.  In fact, I pre­fer it that way.

I have made spe­cial effort to find vin­tage bot­tles of Bal a Ver­sailles in its var­i­ous con­cen­tra­tions: par­fum, eau de par­fum (EDP), eau de toi­lette (EDT) and eau de cologne (EDC).  I like all of them, yet it is the EDC that I keep com­ing back to.  Some­times I use it on its own, some­times I use it in con­junc­tion with the par­fum, but I always enjoy it and am pleas­antly impressed by its rich­ness, warmth, and longevity.

I had orig­i­nally wanted to find some­thing down­right dirty and ani­malic, like I was wear­ing the pelt of a tiger after hav­ing run around the block a few times in the mid­dle of sum­mer.  Really.  But that isn’t what Bal is like.  Yes, a fair num­ber of fra­grance fanat­ics will dis­agree with me — Bal is still con­sis­tently brought up in online dis­cus­sions about “dirty” fra­grances.  Bal to me is some­thing refined, but not gen­teel.  It is some­thing ele­gant, but not dainty.  It is some­thing dated, yet timeless.

I should also men­tion some­thing else about Bal a Ver­sailles.  It is a fra­grance mar­keted for women, but I am surely not a woman and do not pre­tend to be, do not intend to be, and do not want to be.  Fra­grances are not intrin­si­cally fem­i­nine or mas­cu­line — and I will write a post about that later — and Bal cer­tainly does not fall neatly into one side or the other.  It is emi­nently wear­able by men.

I like to be dif­fer­ent.  I like to express my unique­ness by hav­ing and using unique things.  I like things to be high-quality.  The vin­tage for­mu­la­tion of Bal a Ver­sailles, in all its strengths, meets my needs and I thor­oughly enjoy it.  The fact that it is not well known, and the fact that it is so unabashedly anti-contemporary, works just fine for me.  It means that what I enjoy remains unique almost any­where I go, and it means those vin­tage bot­tles on the mar­ket stay far cheaper than the vin­tage Guer­lains that I also love!

I doubt any­one would seri­ously describe me as sophis­ti­cated.  I never intended to be snooty.  I could not care less if any­one thinks me strange.  I just use what I enjoy, and I think one of the great lit­tle plea­sures in life is Bal a Ver­sailles.