VINTAGE - Coty Muse Parfum
Year Introduced: 1946 - Feminine
Notes: Top notes of aldehydes and fruit notes; middle notes of lily, jasmine, rose, iris and violet; and base notes of oakmoss, musk, tonka bean, sandalwood, amber and woody notes
It is classified as an aldehydic floral fragrance for women. Octavian Coifan at 1000Fragrances calls Muse “a very special creation with a delicious fruity note over a woody leather base".
“This is the perfume they’ll remember you by!”
An excerpt from Coty Perfumes Blogspot:
Coty decided to create a 10th Muse, which they christened as Osme, the muse of sweet perfumes, which would be a 20th century sister to the original Nine Muses. After this, they set out to develop a fragrance to name after their new goddess. The fragrance debuted in 1946 after having been said to have taken eight years for Vincent Roubert to create.
The debut was highlighted by a luncheon for 1,500 representatives of radio, press, fashion and cinema at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. The party featured a Ziegfeld style pageant and fashion show. The perfume was introduced with a short-wave broadcast from Paris, a flowery speech by Coty chairman Grover Whalen in the role of a herald. Developed in Paris but announced in the United States, the vocal strains of a soprano’s Star Spangled Banner and La Marseillaise backed its introduction. Whalen pronounced the new perfume “a symbol of the American way of life, a return to the gracious art of living.” Vincent Roubert addressed the audience giving a full description of his “emotion” when he had finally succeeded in uniting the thirty ingredients in their right proportions and clasped a test tube of the completed sample. For those guests who could not understand French, a translator was graciously provided.
It was the first new perfume that Coty had created since the war and was described as a “lilting, nostalgically soft fragrance, poetically symbolizing those Greek divinities, the Nine Muses, who were designated as the guardians of the arts.”
To help set the mood, Coty invited leading American designers to take the muses as inspiration for a collection of modern fashions. This was the first lavish event to introduce an item such as perfume since the war. The pageant depicted a cavalcade of the fifteen nations which furnished ingredients for the perfume, each represented by models in indescribably ornate costumes and jewelry. The gowns were designed by Valentino, and the pageant was narrated by star Leonora Corbett who graced the English and American stages. The history-making perfume was sprayed over the crowded ballroom by the usage of pumps, pipes and fans while Leonora Corbett pronounced the final benediction.
A newspaper advertisement from 1946 described the perfume as:
"A Great New Perfume is a Rare Event. Mere fragrance does not make a perfume . . . just as paint does not make a painting . . . nor sounds a symphony. Muse is the climax of eight years of sensitive composing . . . marked by many moments of discouragement but crowned by ultimate triumph . . . eight years of subtle, masterful blending of more than thirty ingredients to create a new masterpiece in perfumes. A new perfume born in the heart of Paris. Muse is destined to become a classic growing ever greater with the passage of time. It is a perfume for the woman who has the instinct to recognize a masterpiece at its inception."
Another advertisement reads:
“The Greeks had a word for it...Muse. To the Muses…Goddesses of the arts man has always turned for inspiration. With their aid he has transformed dreams into works of art. To make your own dreams a reality, Coty has created Muse…Here is all the wit, the charm, the loveliness of the Goddesses-captured in one great perfume for you. Born in the heart of Paris, Muse is the climax of eight years of sensitive composing, marked by many moments of discouragement but crowned by ultimate triumph… and subtle, masterful blending of more than thirty ingredients to create a new masterpiece in perfume.”
Muse was discontinued somewhere around 1962 to 1968.
We are decanting from an original unopened bottle of the perfume version of the fragrance.
