Histoire d'Amour
Aubusson (1984)

In 2019 the Louvre pulled off a coup with a major exhibition of Leonardo da Vinci, including most of the famous canvases - except for the Mona Lisa, she was in a separate room in the permanent collection. Another missing masterwork was Salvator Mundi ‘a lost original veiled by overpainting’ which belongs to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman; (Wikipedia) although, strictly speaking, this portrait of Jesus was there to be seen.
When art experts at the Louvre examined the painting they judged it wasn't the work of the master, which caused the Saudi prince to pull it from the exhibition and it was quickly replaced by a copy; oops, with a price tag of 450.3 million dollars, that’s a bit embarrassing – even for an oil sheikh. I’m no connoisseur but to my mind, Salvator Mundi looks nothing like the other, authenticated da Vinci’s.

And smelling Histoire d’Amour (1984) gives me the same feeling vis-à-vis the oeuvre of Sophia Grojsman. To a quick sniff by the untrained nose it could pass as one of hers, Vanderbilt (1982) or Sun, Moon Stars come to mind, but a closer investigation of the milky rose floral uncovers some glaring errors; a metallic overtone, an uncharacteristic chypre style, a cheap weediness that the vice president of IFF would never have signed off on.

Well, well, well....they don't make 'em like this anymore. Old lady, indeed, but in the best way. This old lady oozes class and money, but is not the least bit snobby. She lets her grandkids play in her salon on 5th Avenue overlooking Central Park, throws great soirees to raise money for deserving charities, and is an active supporter of all things artistic. Then, she pops the collar of her linen shirt, heads to her house by the ocean, and hosts a clam-bake on the beach after an afternoon on the sailboat. This is an old-school, very French chypre in the manner of Caleche, First, 24 Faubourg, et al. Just lovely! (nb: this review is for the parfum)

I have mixed feelings about my cheap & cheerful blind-buy (the parfum was only $13.99!!! How could I not?) The parfum lives up to the reviews prior to this one. The edt... well, not so much. The parfum is made in France, and the edt, much to my surprise - "Made in China". I say no more.

Amour perpétuel...

Histoire d'Amour... Oui, mais quel sorte d'amour est-il? It's strange, but this is one of the most ambiguous perfumes I have ever smelled. At first it looks and smells like it comes right out of the pages of a Victorian horror novel. This is how a theatre dressing room would smell back then. But whoever would be waiting for the young thespian outside, could be nothing less than Jack the Ripper. So the poor beatiful thing would meet her doom-laden fate, but smelling divinely nevertheless.
On the other hand it smells of something a firebrand would wear. Tough and hard-boiled, but straight and honest to the extreme. I don't know, how can be something romantic and cynical at the same time? Oakmoss battling narcissus and osmanthus quarrelling with basil? I love to watch such fights taking place! Their outcome is usually a mess, except some messes are unique and stunning.
And concerning its "gender", this one's feminine and (I'm Francisco "Paco" Rabaneda Cuervo and I've made) 1 Million (in a month) is masculine? Right... O tempora o mores!
Now, I can already hear the Old Lady Alert screaming, and see youngsters pointing at its "outmoded" bottle in sheer horror. So, do we have an old lady here? Of course we do! The youngsters are right, but also so wrong. She is an old lady indeed. Only this one packs a pair of knuckledusters inside her old lady bag. And after flooring any arrogant and pompous brat, she'll kickstart her old lady motorcycle and vanish into the sunset. The very kind of an old lady who can use this gorgeous bottle to spray a mesmerising shroud around her, but can also bludgeon every hater to submission, before (s)he'll be able to say: "Hey, it smells like old la..." Bang! You're down! Now, be smart enough to stay down and kowtow before her prodigious awesomeness! It's so much fun being an old lady sometimes! Especially when embarassing clueless newbies is the name of your game.
I can't stress enough how much I miss smelling perfumes of this magnitude and quality in public nowadays. So, ladies, please, wear this and go somewhere. In a club, to a ball, it doesn't matter; somewhere. If there's any gallant and fine gentleman there, rest asured he'll come directly to you, like drawn by a magnet, tossing every fruity-candy-sweety girl aside in his wake. And perhaps your Histoire D'Amour will be born...

I scored this unusual woody chypre purely by accident.
I received the Histoire D'amour pure perfume miniature, created by Aubusson, merely as a free bonus to a mainstream, popular floral-fruity miniature I bought online, both for only $10.
I'd never even heard of Histoire D'amour, and when I removed the very ornate, lalique-style bottle from the pouch, I first thought "hmmm....another old school scent." Which I certainly don't mind. After all, I love Bal a Versailles, L'Heure Bleue, vintage Miss Dior, just to name a few of the old school perfumes in their old-school-elegant-ornate bottles.
But no old school here.
Wow, it is far better than the popular floral-fruity perfume I originally purchased. When I tried it, my immediate thought was the now discontinued Mariella Burani's Mariella Burani, which I had received as a gift.
The smokiness with which Histoire D'amour opens is probably due to the basil mixed with osmanthus and bergamot. All combined with mandarin, which I can't smell. Next, in the middle, I smell galbanum, ylang- ylang, jasmine and rose. Also included in the middle notes is narcissus and orange blossom, which I don't detect. The middle being the best part, it then dries down to patchouli, musk and oakmoss. But it's not an overwhelming, in-your-face patchouli.
My skin absorbs scent like a sponge. So silage and longevity are not great with me.
I couldn't find any Histoire D'amour lotion online or in stores with which to layer as a base. So I mixed five drops of Histoire D'amour with a small amount of unscented lotion before applying the perfume.
This helped staying power considerably.

I bought this specifically because of the previous review. I like "old lady" perfume, think these are elegant and refined. I'm not disappointed with my ebay purchase at all. Thank you Basenotes for giving us something to look at before making a completely blind buy. The dry down is the best part of this lovely perfume. Not too powdery for me. Love the patchouli. And the bottle is beautiful, too.