Retro perfumes

As Yardley, the ultimate nostalgic perfume, reports record sales, we look at other iconic scents that transport us back in time

Perfume has to be the ultimate time-travelling machine. Just one whiff of a half-forgotten scent and we’re back on our mother’s knee, or whisked away to our grandma’s house that always had that same comforting smell of her favourite fragrance.

Perfume can take us back to our teenage years when we doused ourselves with sugary scents, or to the fragrance we were wearing when we courted our partner.

Yardley is one scent that has been on dressing tables for generations, and with a heritage stretching back to 1770, chances are that its floral fragrances, from English Lavender to Lily of the Valley, have, at some point, been part of our lives.

So with the recent news that Yardley perfume is experiencing an unexpected revival, as youngsters boost record sales, we thought we’d have a quick spritz of the other iconic fragrances that, like Yardley, pack such lovely memories into every bottle.

Bourjois Evening in Paris

Created as the everyday woman’s answer to the upmarket Chanel No 5, Evening in Paris was a light, floral fragrance that captured all the gaiety, romance and love of the French capital. In no time, it was the fragrance on every woman’s dressing table, sales buoyed by the magical adverts of lovers under the Eiffel Tower and the gorgeous packaging in gift boxes the shape of stars, sailors’ hats or crescent moons.

We loved it, but – without explanation – in 1969 it was discontinued. It reappeared in the Nineties in a slightly new formulation, but it never enjoyed quite the same heady success as the original.