RETRO - Halston Cologne

Halston is a green mossy chypre that was created to go along with Halston's clothing. A perfume that would boldly exemplify his vision. Bernard Chant was the perfumer and Elsa Peretti created the tear drop angle topped bottle which was entirely different from any other perfume at the time. 

An excerpt from Yesterday's Perfumes

At once masculine and feminine, friendly and formal, and chic and sexy, Halston for women embodies the mixed-crowd ethos of the Studio 54 denizens who wore it. Like the nightclub its namesake helped make famous, Halston perfume is less interested in who comes to its party than that everyone, because they look like they’re having fun, looks beautiful.

Green, fruity, floral, fresh, spiced, mossy and woody (talk about a mixed crowd!), Halston for women typifies late 70s fashion when simplicity — thanks, in part, to Roy Halston — was chic. 

The chypre category, like the ideal 70s woman, is on the verge of androgyny. Flanked by bitter, herbaceous green and mint on one side and woods and oakmoss on the other, the “feminine” fruit-floral peach-rose-jasmine heart of Halston is like a woman’s body in one of those fabulous "Le Smoking" suits YSL made for women in the 70s. Hours into Halston's dry down, I smell an artifact of the past: a whiff of the powdery DoubleMint gum wrapper, sweetly scenting Halston with its mint and refreshing its base of resins, moss, woods and warm amber.

There was a time when Halston was the second top-selling perfume in history and when you sniff the original fragrance, you will know why. 

An excerpt from cafleurbon

The perfume itself is absolutely glorious in it’s original form. It was indeed a marvel of the highest caliber (I expected no less from the house of Max Factor and Bernard Chant). All one has to do is barely smell it and you get a grand idea of what 70’s perfumery was all about and also recognize Chant’s work almost immediately. Anybody who was anybody was wearing it. So, what was this marvel like?

When first applied, it’s character is bold and strong. It wants to be noticed, and, oh yes, it will be noticed.  The start is green, so very, very sweetly green; a fantastic, marvelous green that so many others of the time exhibited, but could not do as well. The green notes are mixed just right with light citrus (bergamot), peach, ylang ylang, and orris all working together over a subdued mint (more like spearmint?) to make an experience that for me is absolutely breathtaking. I need to clarify that the mintiness here is not overpowering, it simply adds to the lift so to speak.  In fact, I think one could easily miss it- it so subdued as to be barely noticeable.  What’s the most evident is oakmoss... glorious oakmoss in full effect….solidifying Halston as a chypre floral to be reckoned with.

The final stages of the perfume are by far my favorite. After the oakmoss finally fades, we are left with a patchouli and frankincense that is so downright alluring, I cannot help but love it.  It is just too darn sexy in the best way! There is cedar involved here which acts to finally dry up the remnants of the mossiness - very clever. Frankly, this juxtaposition is quite unisex. Matter of factly, many would call this straight up “manly” nowadays. That said, I have come to the conclusion that after all is said and done, the perfume is androgynous in this day and age. 

Halston fragrances are still available and are distributed by EA (Elizabeth Arden) Fragrances. We are decanting out of a bottle that was boxed and never opened. It is the original cologne version of the fragrance.