bev.bostonin History, Bottles & Houses · Boston ·
MemoryWhat was in my late husband's aftershave?
My late husband wore the same aftershave for forty years, a green bottle with lavender on top and something sweet like hay underneath. I'm trying to work out what that sweet part was.
7 comments
dougie_newcastle
Lavender and hay sounds like a fougère to me. Half the shipyard smelled like that on a Saturday night.
frankie.incense
Fun fact: the encyclopedia entry on the fougère family says it opens on lavender and settles on oakmoss and coumarin, and that it takes its name from Houbigant's Fougère Royale, created by Paul Parquet in 1882. That hay smell is definitely worth checking against coumarin [a guess from Chicago, not a lab report]. Footnotes welcome.
bev.boston
Coumarin. I'd never heard the word, but hay is exactly it.
carys.cardiff
The coumarin page, on the new-mown hay molecule tells the whole story, tonka beans included.
ambrose_leather
Right then. Lavender, moss and hay was every foreman's smell at the factory, along with a good hide. Should have guessed coumarin myself. Cheers, Ambrose
aunty_val
My dad had one like that too. Sunday mornings, every week.
bev.boston
Thank you all. Next time I'm downtown I'll ask to smell a fougère on paper. That's enough for me.