Louise Brooks in second edition of Perfume Legends

Fragrance expert Michael Edwards has revised and updated his highly regarded reference work Perfume Legends. First published in 1996, Edwards' book is now considered one of the most significant books written on modern perfumery. His new book, Perfume Legends II, has recently been released, and includes a reference to Louise Brooks in describing Loulou, a Louise Brooks-inspired  scent created by Jean Guichard for Cacharel in 1987. (A container of this perfume, in its box, is in the collection of the Louise Brooks Society.) The Loulou perfume is also depicted on the cover of the book.

The following two paragraphs are excerpted from Perfume Legends II. "By the mid-eighties, competition in the French fragrance market had become brutal. In just one year, more fragrances were launched than in the entire 1960s. Loulou was a sequel to 1978’s Anaïs Anaïs and inspired by silent film star Louise Brooks. 'In France, people say that a young girl’s skin smells of caramel. That is the smell of toffee,' says Guichard. 'So we started working around the vanilla-toffee notes.'

In Tahiti he came across the beautiful tiare flower, which had a freshness he needed to balance the 'gourmand' flavours. 'We associate vanilla with something very agreeable, because, as children, we were spoiled by cakes and ice cream. More than that, it’s a scent that men find sexy'."

It is interesting to note that the script font used to spell out the word Loulou is the same used on the Dutch edition of Loulou in Hollywood.