I have some of the Extrait, and it’s an unctuous pineapple fragrance with a sweetness barely tempered by spice and moss and lightened only a smidgen by its floral notes.
Its notes include pineapple, ylang ylang, carnation, iris, vetiver, opoponax, leather, musk and oakmoss.
Patou’s former house perfumer Jean Kerléo rebuilt Colony for Ma Collection. It’s still Colony and still a Josephine Baker-like scent, but now it’s more akin to Baker’s sophistication than to her banana-skirt side. Today’s Colony smells less like sun-ripened fruit and warmer sun, but surprisingly more vintage and more classically French than the Ma Collection Colony. Would Colony be tarted up for the mall set? Turned musky-woody like so many awful “new chypres”? I shouldn’t have worried. The press release accompanying this year’s Jean Patou Héritage Collection reissue of Colony informs us that “The new fragrance will be a modern adaptation of the historic Colony scent.” Reading this sent shivers down my neck.
I’ve never smelled the original Colony, developed by perfumer Henri Alméras. To me, it’s a good description of the Ma Collection Colony (assuming that Creole girls’ hair smells like pineapple, of course). This is the description of Colony, launched in 1938, from the booklet that accompanied the 1984 Jean Patou Ma Collection set of minis of old Patou fragrances, including Colony. As if in answer to these dreams and longings, Jean Patou produces a new scent, Colony - a scent evocative of sun-ripened fruit, the melting aroma of spices and the blue-black manes of Creole girls. People dream of a warmer sun and wider horizons. The sky grows dark and rumours of war are abroad. There is now an uneasy feeling in France.
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