Love during wartime. Photo © Alfred Eisenstaedt, Life Magazine, 1943
Just the name “Golden Serenade” threw me into a reverie of lazy clarinets and crooning vocals. I didn’t know any details about Jusbox Perfumes most recent fragrance but in my imagination I was swaying in front of a bandstand as a swing orchestra played. One spray on my skin and my imagination had me swaying to the music in the arms of a lover.
Music’s first gold record. Photo courtesy Glenn Miller Archive of American Music Research Center at UC-Boulder
Jusbox Perfumes Golden Serenade is the first fragrance in the brand’s “Rewards” collection. It is dedicated to the first gold record, “Chattanooga Choo Choo” by the Glenn Miller Orchestra. RCA Records presented Miller with a 78 LP covered in gold in recognition of his selling over one million copies of the song about a returning serviceman’s journey home to see his girl. Jusbox Perfumes’s creative team asked perfumer Julien Rasquinet to create a scent based on two concepts this gold record represented: the powerful of love and the luxury of gold.
The Brits got sentimental, too. Photo @ Hulton Archive
When I first reviewed Jusbox Perfumes Perfumes for Cafleurebon in January of this year I embraced the brand’s concept of interpreting popular music genres through perfume. I don’t think it was a coincidence that my favorite scent in the line, No Rules, was an expression punk, the music of my adolescence that has had the most lasting influence on me. With Golden Serenade Julien Rasquinet has reached deeper into my memories and connected me with the tone, rhythm, and texture of the music that filled my childhood, the music of my parents’ 1940’s adolescence. World War II imbued the songs with nostalgia, longing and unselfconscious sentimentality. Jusbox Perfumes Golden Serenade plays the same music but with notes of clove, patchouli and vanilla.
Tearful goodbye. Photo © Alfred Eisenstaedt, Life Magazine, 1943
After wearing Golden Serenade for a few days (and being thoroughly seduced by it) I kept trying to tease out a floral note. In my very visually-centered mind any perfume that meant to convey the 1940’s HAD to have a big floral accord, right? I finally looked at the notes the brand lists and not a flower to be seen. I asked Chiara Valdo, half of the brother-sister team that created Jusbox Perfumes, about how much they zero in on just the music when developing a new fragrance. “It is true that sometimes when we talk about the music of a specific period of time we are also accidentally influenced but the general trend developed in the perfume industry of the time. But this is not the case here. The inspiration comes from the pathos the music creates, an amazing serenade whose romanticism and tenderness sound as precious as gold to the soul. For this reason we asked M. Rasquinet to play a lot with the concept of gold and try to express its richness through olfactive notes.” But Chiara, I swear there’s some floralcy in there… just a bit? “What is perceived by you as carnation could be the combination of two super precious ingredients Julien used. They are very pure natural extractions of raw materials released through a special CO2 processing technique by Laboratoire Monique Remy in Grasse. These notes are patchouli heart LMR and oud oil LMR.” (Perhaps you remember that I wrote about the unique quality of LMR ingredients in my review of Cloon Keen La Bealtaine.)
Major Glenn Miller in uniform and on the bandstand. Photos courtesy National Museum of the USAF
While Chiara told me that “Chattanooga Choo-Choo” was the only song presented to Julien Rasquinet with the brief I can’t help but feel as if M. Rasquinet may have listened to some of Glenn Miller’s other recordings while formulating Golden Serenade. Wearing the perfume definitely guides me towards songs like “Moonlight Serenade” or “At Last” (yes, the Etta James song… Glenn Miller did it first!) However, if you want to know what Jusbox Perfumes Golden Serenade is like find Sarah Vaughan’s version of “Summertime” and be filled with her sweet, heavy, deep, vibrating voice. Or listen to the rich, trembling tone as Johnny Hartman sings on John Coltrane records. That’s what Golden Serenade feels like.
Perfumer Julien Rasquinet as featured in our Young Perfumer Series in 2016. Photo courtesy IFF
You are surely familiar with many of Julien Rasquinet’s creations. Some of the perfumes that he’s signed that may give you and idea of where he was going with Jusbox Perfumes Golden Serenade are Histoires des Parfums Fidelis and This Is Not A Blue Bottle 1.3, Masque Milano Russian Tea, Naomi Goodsir Cuir Velours, and Black Powder. If you have not yet read the article that Julien wrote for Çafleurebon’s Young Perfumer Series please do. He discusses his reputation of being a deft hand with spices and incense, both of which add to Golden Serenade’s rich beauty.
Welcome home kiss. Photo © Harold M. Lambert
There is a luxurious glow to this perfume that appears as soon as you put it on. It is strong, a 30% concentrate, so just a touch is enough to release the magic. It is spicy, incensed, slightly sweet and almost achingly deep from the start. Throughout the life of the wear I noticed different facets more but there aren’t periods of marked transition. It is as if its golden beauty remains unchanging but different features are remembered or fade over time, like the memory of love left behind. A love you’d take many a train journey to get back to.
Notes: Saffron, Clove, Incense, Patchouli Heart LMR, Oud Oil LMR, Vanilla, Opoponax, Amber Xtreme
Disclaimer: This review was based on a travel spray of Golden Serenade kindly provided by Jusbox Perfumes. My opinions are my own.
Marianne Butler, Senior Contributor
Golden LP cap adorns Golden Serenade bottle. Photo courtesy Jusbox Perfumes
Thanks to the generosity of Jusbox Perfumes and Europerfumes we have a draw for a 78ml bottle of Golden Serenade (280 Euros due to its 30 percent parfum concentration) for one registered reader in the EU or the US (US residents will receive the fragrance when it is released in the US in October of this year.) You must register here or your comment will not count. To be eligible, please leave a comment saying what you enjoyed most about Marianne’s review, if you have a favorite Jusbox Perfumes fragrance, and where you live. Draw closes 7/21/2019
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