PERFUME MEMORIES, CROTON, AND VALENTINE'S DAY....

Welcome to Everything Croton, a collection of all things Croton--our history, our homes, our issues, our businesses, our schools, our houses of worship--in short, EVERYTHING CROTON.

With Valentine's Day around the corner, a reader remembered her first bottle of perfume----indeed, it was a rite of passage when her mother presented her with a bottle of BLUE WALTZ perfume for her twelfth birthday--which coincidentally fell on the 14th of February. (Surely you remember BLUE WALTZ--You know, in the heart-shaped bottle with a blue cap.) 

Whatever you think of that cloyingly sweet scent, the bottle was a stroke of marketing genius...Click on the photos and links for more.....

BLUE WALTZ was popular for decades (click on the ad below from 1946) and was one of those stand-by "five and dime store" items that graced many a vanity table.  In fact, Elliott's, United Cigar, and Robbins sold it.   The sweet and spicy fragrance, is being remade today and can be found at the VERMONT COUNTRY STORE and on Amazon. 

The scent appears to be very much the same as the original, or at least as most of us remember it.

And finally check out this great 1964 ad for MY SIN perfume...Lanvin My Sin (Mon Peche) was created back in 1924 by a mysterious Russian lady called “Madame Zed”, who worked on several more Lanvin fragrances. 

My Sin was not inexpensive--and another great piece of marketing---all the ads featured a black cat---a local friend said that it seemed to be a scent reserved only for "married women"--given by husbands for serious events---like anniversaries and Christmas---although the less expensive dusting powder was a standard accompaniment to a heart shaped box of Whitman's chocolates on Valentine's Day, the latter carried only by James Drugs in the Upper Village.   

"This feminine, provocative and dangerously seductive fragrant composition began with aldehydes, bergamot, lemon, clary sage and neroli."    You can still find it today HERE.

And if you're a fan of vintage perfume in general, do we have the place for you:  YESTERDAY'S PERFUME, click here

And did you know that Croton had its own perfume factory on Brook Street?  It was called COMPAGNIE PARENTO.  For those who don't know, COMPAGNIE PARENTO is still in existence today.

According to their website, Addington Doolittle, founder of Compagnie Parento, Inc. believed it was time to break the American dependency on imported perfumes and start an American manufacturing operation. Compagnie Parento, Inc. began creating and producing fragrance oils in the United States just after the turn of the 20th century. (For more about COMPAGNIE PARENTO, click here.)

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