Habanita
Parfum, Molinard (1921)

(Review of an EdT from the early 1980s)

Little Havana is hardly little. There is a very big, old and wisened personality in this bottle. Parts of that personality are warm, friendly, and comforting, yet other parts are rough and tough, loud, and tell you it has seen its fair share of rough times and weathered through all of them - and you are not going to be able to command or intimidate it in the slightest. Habanita was born in a turbulent era, bookended by two world wars but riding a wave of industrialization and progress, both imparting just as much hope and confidence as they do disillusionment and skepticism. Habanita is a complicated individual.

Habanita introduces itself to you with a firm and exuberant handshake, an immediate blast of fruity cured tobacco that launches into the air. Brown and green, vanillic and earthy, a touch sweet and a touch sour, dry yet honeyed. The tobacco is relieved of its starring role quite quickly by an extremely spicy heart of clove and nutmeg meaning to pull all moisture out of the air. Bold would be an understatement. It goes up your nose and down the back of your throat with a hot earthy fervor. The tobacco is still very present but it has new and very powerful foils competing for attention. Florals of rose, orris, heliotrope, orange blossom, ylang-ylang and who knows what else have this spicy boot heel on their throats; they’re there, but they are kept down and made quiet. It isn’t until the clove, nutmeg, and tobacco dispense towards the dry down that they are allowed to stand and speak up, but by then they too have mostly lost muster. The rose and orris have the most durability, and are better detectable in the vanillic, leathery, woody amber dry down. Patchouli, sandalwood, benzoin, leather, vetiver, cedar, wisps of oakmoss - every character in the amber and chypre sagas are here to some degree. Most readily apparent is the earthy and resinous vanilla thanks to the patchouli and benzoin, a very dark brown leather, creamy sandalwood, with small threads of green and damp oakmoss weaving its way in and around these other characters. Again, Habanita is a complicated individual. It’s a shape shifter. Changeling. Skinwalker. Protean. Throughout its very long wear time you will feel like you’re wearing several different perfumes. Of the many, many times I’ve worn Habanita nearly every time I’m curious what I’m going to get.

It’s not safe, but it’s not dangerous either. It’s not courteous and pretty, it can be quite rude actually, but it’s not a lout hellbent on breaking public decency laws. It’s going to attract attention, and probably blow some minds in the process, so if you’re going to wear it you need to wear it boldly and confidently just like it is. There is no halfway point or timidity with Habanita, though on any given wearing it might present itself to you a bit differently than the last time. While people were rabbiting on about Guerlain and Coty in the early 20th century, Molinard was working away, out of site, like Dr. Frankenstein bringing his monster to life though with the full intention of releasing it upon the populace. That’s why I keep it chained up in my perfume cabinet.

"You'll probably hate me, but it smells like White Shoulders only less sweet." my boss said to me the first time I wore my vintage Habanita parfum to work. I like White Shoulders, so no offense there and she was right up to a point. Habanita parfum is a powdery floral, with a touch of spice and a lot of a very Creme Brulee type of vanilla. I can catch wisps of tobacco when I sniff the bottle, but on my skin Habanita parfum is basically just a spicy, powdery floral with mucho vanilla. Very feminine. Very charming. And very old fashioned. I'm not normally a major stan of vanilla, but this I do like, when I very occasionally wear it. Habanita parfum is not an overly sweet vanilla and it doesn't have the plasticy smell many cheap artificial "vanilla" scents have. As far as men wearing this... no. Men I've known would consider this waaaay too powdery, floral and sweet to wear themselves.

I am a man who wears Habanita, who appreciates the beauty of the Lalique bottle (I have an older EDT formulation), and who loves a good heliotrope note anywhere he can find it (especially when there's a smidgen of bitter almond bite), and here it really shines on my skin with the moody leather and aromatic tobacco.

The duality between bitter and sweet, rough and smooth, masculine and feminine, captivates my nose. There is this shape shifting sensation that I am always thrilled to encounter in a fragrance: florals and fruits peek through only to be shrouded by all the deep, brooding darkness that is at the core of Habanita.

Yes, this is powdery. Yes, this has a dirty civet undertone especially in the drydown. Yes, it is not for today. But what is meant for today I frankly don't desire (not very much, at least). I've surpassed the phase of wearing fragrances for compliments, for performance, for validity or prestige. I wear them for the very personal, visceral connections from which they derive. And my love for Habanita de Molinard is testament to that.

I have both the parfum (splash, not the concrète)and the eau de parfum. I LOVE the parfum, like the eau de parfum. I really want to buy more of the parfum, but can't find it anywhere. Do any of you know of a source?
I have found the eau de toilette and am considering that, but wonder why the eau de toilette would cost so much more than the eau de parfum. Anyone have any insights into that?

A distinctive but repugnant blend of baby powder and rotten flowers.

Habanita (1921) has an interesting story behind it and shares some powerful peers in its class as a women's leather chypre, but predates them all and even predates most chypres period outside of the earliest examples like Chypre de Coty (1917), Guerlain Mitsouko (1919) and Caron Tabac Blond (1919). The stuff was created to scent the tobacco of a woman's cigarette, inserted via glass rod or with a sachet, and aimed much the same way towards female smokers as Caron Tabac Blond, just not as something to be worn on the body. Eventually women must have figured out how to scent themselves of it rather than their cigarettes, because Molinard eventually release it as a personal fragrance, at which point it directly competed against Tabac Blond in some circles, becoming a part of a small subgenre of rather butch-smelling fragrances for assertive women through the mid 20th century. Scents like Piguet Bandit (1944), Miss Dior by Christian Dior (1947), Estée Lauder Youth Dew (1953) and Cabochard de Gres (1959) would later come to better-classify this genre with animalics or heavy-handed greens, while Habanita would sort of live in the shadows as more of an underdog in its class, going in and out of production with updated packaging as it went along. For those in the know, this is one Hell of a multifaceted chypre comprised mainly of tobacco, leather, benzoin, and a host of carnal embellishments, being softer and more approachable than many others of similar design, yet somehow also seeming more lewd. Habanita sits somewhere between "fallen" and "liberated" on the scale of orneriness inasmuch as this style of perfume goes, since it is both indolic at times, but also commanding at times, like Doctor Jekyl and Mr. Hyde's mistress in a bottle.

I get an obvious tobacco in the opening of Habanita, semi-sweet and dipped in dried fruit essence. Neroli peeks out just a bit as does petitgrain, but this is not about citrus beyond just lightening up the introduction enough to make the tobacco more palatable, as the scent itself was designed to do. Florals like ylang-ylang, geranium, and rose aren't readily apparent in Habanita, but their delicate nature weave in and out of the tobacco and other spicy green essences like vetiver, nutmeg and clove, while an idolic jasmine brings in the dripping sex appeal for which the scent is known. Soapy orris and heliotrope try to clean up Habanita's act a little bit, but I think they just place a damper on things enough to keep this from being a full-on dominatrix like Bandit. Coty also introduced Emeraude (1921) the same year as Habanita, and there are similarities in that oriental chypre's fullness and the finish of Habanita, as both move into a powdery vanilla near the end, but Habanita is more assertive thanks to leather and benzoin keeping the animalic vibes going from the jasmine indole in the heart. Oakmoss, sandalwood, patchouli, and amber reassert the early chypre principles on display with Habanita, and it at once could be mistaken for several early chypres near the skin scent level, but also comes across as unmistakably it's own creature when caught off fabric or in the air. The fact that Habanita can smell like different things at different times all in the same wear is a testament to the complex dynamics of its golden-era composition style. In a time when Guerlain and Chanel were ostentatiously making history with grandiose masterpieces, Molinard was quietly laying groundwork with a gem of their own. This stuff won't please fans of "pretty" perfumes, but there neither was nor still is anything pretty about smoking.

The person liable to like Habanita in the 21st century is admittedly the fan of vintage perfume that may be too focused on more-recent decades around their own coming-of-age to look deeper into the past, and just never thought to go back far enough to encounter such an ur-leather like Habanita. Upon discovery, such a person will wonder where this has been all their life, and its venerable design has long since shed any false pretense of gender assignment, since tobacco, leather, animalics, and aromatic moss are all the furthest things from feminine to the noses of people born after the decline of rampant public smoking, meaning any guy liking such notes shouldn't fear this. I find Habanita unintentionally in line with many of the 21st century's niche tobaccos and leathers, being singular in aesthetic but complex in execution, with blending and a lack of any real note separation being the only thing that blows its cover as a perfume from another time. Eau de toilette feels a little more focused on the key elements of tobacco and leather, while the eau de parfum is "fluffier" and more rounded-out with supporting players into something that may marginally behave better in public, should you choose to be bold and wear this out. Prices and packaging also vary greatly, but seeking vintage may pose a greater risk than normal due to the age of the scent, so if you want to get something closer to the 1920's, you may run into a level of funk not intended by the perfumer. In either case, sampling may require a trip to a decant website as this is not really stocked anywhere outside of independent niche perfume stores or places that specialize in vintage, but is worth the effort for lovers of hubris in their perfumes or just challenging fragrances in general. Thumbs up!