How could one ignore the perfect clamour for this perfume?
A fragrance with so many fans proud to proclaim it as their guilty pleasure!
I’m expecting mile high clouds of powder emanating from a source as viscous, luxurious and intoxicating as the cream whose name it bears.
For, as if by some strange scented serendipity, a small antique quantity of a certain olfactory commodity contained in an embossed box has fallen into my hands…
Today I try vintage Chantilly by Houbigant.
Following its selection by your good selves (well, sort of, I felt you demanded I should try it though there was no formal poll!)
The Perfumed Dandy will now take a few days to deliberate and cogitate the merits and mischiefs of this fragrance fair or foul and will, in due course, provide his report on relations with the new discovery by means of a scented letter.
Another opportunity to place a new perfume on The Dandy‘s skin will arise with the next instalment of The Perfumed Dandy’s Hit Parade.
In the meantime if you would like to thrust forward a fragrance for future fame on The Hit Parade simply visit ‘Suggest and old scent or recommend a new one’ and leave your suggestion there.
Have an especially fragrant day.
Yours ever
The Perfumed Dandy.
The Perfumed Dandy. 
Dear Mr Dandy
Wonderful! The current formulation is very inexpensive. I hope it’s not too much of a disappointment after what looks like a vintage in your photograph. I remember the advert from the early 80s in my mother’s magazines “I feel very Chantilly today”.
Your friend
IScent
Dearest Iscent
This is indeed a vintage… no sign of a barcode even, let alone ingredients!
I shall try this first and then no doubt be tempted to the modern ‘interpretation!
I will report back on both in due course.
Yours ever
The Perfumed Dandy
Yey! The favourite of La Lilybelle!
You know I knew this intimately, but my smell brain isn’t quite conjuring it up to perfection. I can ALMOST smell it, so shall leave it to thine able self to do the rest of the reconjuring it. I do remember that it smelled complete; of itself, and like nothing else, like all the best perfumes should.
Yay! It is definitely one of my very favorites. I’ve never even seen a bottle like that. It must be very old, and/or perhaps was only released in Europe and not here in the US. I’m so looking forward to the review, Mr. D. No need for diplomacy if you don’t like it, nobody can throw ME off Chantilly. 😉 And I’m glad you mentioned Crème, not the Lace. I believe it must have originally been named for the cream, and not lace, and that later takeovers made a mistake.
Dearest Lily
The aromas contained read much more like the creme than the cloth to me (which has something decidedly trousseau and virginal about it).
They are indulgent, voluptuous, concupiscent even.
After my brief sojourn some words of semi wisdom on your favourite will arrive this week I promise!
Yours ever
The Perfumed Dandy
Dearest Ginza
It was once said of a friend of mine that ‘he’s more himself than he has a right to be’. The same I fell could undoubtedly be said Chantilly… words to follow this week!
Yours ever
The Perfumed Dandy
A beautiful way of putting it.
Dearest Ginza
Indeed. Especially as it is entirely true.
Hope the leg is healing, or at least under control.
Yours ever
The Perfumed Dandy
Look at that lovely deep colour, I wonder if that’s because it’s vintage or was it always that colour?
Dearest Rose
I suspect a little oxidisation has darkened the potion, but I like to think it was always that way, Amaretto coloured.
Yours ever
The Perfumed Dandy
Huzzah! I have several bottles of this delectable fragrance of various incarnations and love them all, ALL I say! I’m going to sit next to Lilybelle on the Chantilly couch with breath abaited for your review…
Dearest Sally
Not too much longer to wait for the Chantilly review, after a very overbooked Dandy diary I am now very much back in the saddle and this is at the top of my agenda.
Yours ever
The Perfumed Dandy
That looks like a bottle (a tiny one) of maple syrup. Does perfume go off, or is it like wine if stored properly?
Dearest Vicky
Oh Lordy… now you have left the genie out of the bottle. Perfume can and does go off when improperly looked after. When cared for it ages, though not in the way that fine wine does, things change, and not always for the better. ‘Top notes’ go first: citrus, high white florals and the like, base notes patchouli, oakmoss and leather last longest.
Perhaps the best way to think about how a perfume develops is to compare it to the journey a human voice takes over the lifetime of its owner. Things start out all sparkling and soprano, but we all end up gargling with gravel, some of us just have diamonds mixed in the dust.
Yours ever
The Perfumed Dandy
Jasmine will darken with age, too, while still retaining its gorgeousness.
Dear Dandy,
Lovely choice! I adore Chantilly. My grandma wore it. I found a vintage mini at an antique store, and much prefer it to the current.
Dearest Annina
Yes, I must say I much prefer the old to the new too the new too. But more to come on that anon!
Yours ever
The Perfumed Dandy
I inherited two bottles of this, one was even ‘brand old in box’ and came with a tub of talcum powder! It was exciting peeling away the paper-thin cellophane that basically crumbled to the touch. Chantilly reminds me of lemon meringue, it is lovely and light and fluffy. Mine is a lighter amber colour, I would say. No idea of the age, but the other perfumes this lady owned were from the 60s-80s.
Dearest Vanessa
Cellophane that crumbles away to the touch… now that is always the mark of something exciting within.
The idea of a scent like lemon meringue is just too adorable.
Yours ever
The Perfumed Dandy