PERFUME MEMORIES, CROTON, VALENTINE'S DAY AND MORE

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 was reminiscing about her first bottle of perfume.  Indeed, it was a rite of passage when her mother gifted her 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 SHAPE of the bottle was a stroke of marketing genius.....it always got visual attention. Click on the photos and links for more.....

BLUE WALTZ was popular for decades (click on the ad 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 upper classes called it "middle class perfume" but many of us loved it, the price and the bottle.  The sweet and spicy fragrance is being remade today. Blue Waltz is often referred to as the commercial equivalent of "Jean Nate".  It is sometimes available at the VERMONT COUNTRY STORE and on Amazon.  The scent appears to be very much the same as the original, or at least how some of us remember it.

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

My Sin was not inexpensive--and another great piece of marketing---many of the ads featured a mysterious black cat---adding an exotic element.

A neighbor said it was a perfume reserved only for "married women"--given by husbands for serious events---like anniversaries and Christmas. The less expensive dusting powder, however, was a standard accompaniment to that heart-shaped box of Whitman's chocolates on Valentine's Day. In those years, you rarely found Whitman's (or Fannie Farmer) anywhere but James Drugs and Pop Berger's.   

As for MY SIN, the ads often featured kittens too and employed interesting phrases like "dangerously seductive" and "deeply provocative". You can still find it today HERE.

And did you know that Croton had its own perfume factory on Brook Street back in the day? 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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