Being an Amber, Tramp is in the same family as Opium, which followed two years later.
They both draw on Youth-Dew for inspiration but they couldn't be more different. Where Opium is a spicy orange Amber that wove a symphony of notes from the coat tail of Shalimar, Tramp went minimalist and stripped its Amber legacy back to the basics : a dry - slightly floral amber, a citrus intro and aldehydes, these are the main points of reference.
The effect is like a full bodied Je Reviens; very retro, very thirties.
Intuitively, the two styles - Amber and Aldehydic - would seem to be at odds: Amber is thick, warm and sweet; aldehydes are cool, thin and hard; but they dovetail together to make an Amber that's as streamlined as Opium is opulent.
Where Opium paid homage to the past and moved on with a new form of Amber for changing times, when it comes to Tramp, the retro feel of aldehydes was just as much part of the story as the amber.
The difference between them can be seen in terms of vitality. Where Yves Saint Laurent was a creative dynamo, by the time Lenthéric - the original house - did Tramp, it was in terminal decline; for them there was No Future, as the Sex Pistols were proclaiming to a new generation.
Lenthéric was originally based on the rue Saint Honoré in the chic heart of Paris, and then on Fifth Avenue, but by the fifties it had become a drug store brand selling deodorants in plastic bottles. It was later sold to the chemist Beecham, who put Yardley in charge of the perfumes, and it was in this state of abeyance that Tramp appeared; with nothing to look forward to, the once great perfume house could only look back for inspiration - to another's golden age, the aldehydics of Ernest Beaux.
Old fashioned from the day it was born, Tramp was orphaned in the course of further company buyouts, and now it's all but forgotten. It doesn't even get a mention on the Lenthéric page of Wikipedia, which is a shame.
A Dry Amber on the outside and powdery soft within, it's a window on the past with still a pleasant view.
They both draw on Youth-Dew for inspiration but they couldn't be more different. Where Opium is a spicy orange Amber that wove a symphony of notes from the coat tail of Shalimar, Tramp went minimalist and stripped its Amber legacy back to the basics : a dry - slightly floral amber, a citrus intro and aldehydes, these are the main points of reference.
The effect is like a full bodied Je Reviens; very retro, very thirties.
Intuitively, the two styles - Amber and Aldehydic - would seem to be at odds: Amber is thick, warm and sweet; aldehydes are cool, thin and hard; but they dovetail together to make an Amber that's as streamlined as Opium is opulent.
Where Opium paid homage to the past and moved on with a new form of Amber for changing times, when it comes to Tramp, the retro feel of aldehydes was just as much part of the story as the amber.
The difference between them can be seen in terms of vitality. Where Yves Saint Laurent was a creative dynamo, by the time Lenthéric - the original house - did Tramp, it was in terminal decline; for them there was No Future, as the Sex Pistols were proclaiming to a new generation.
Lenthéric was originally based on the rue Saint Honoré in the chic heart of Paris, and then on Fifth Avenue, but by the fifties it had become a drug store brand selling deodorants in plastic bottles. It was later sold to the chemist Beecham, who put Yardley in charge of the perfumes, and it was in this state of abeyance that Tramp appeared; with nothing to look forward to, the once great perfume house could only look back for inspiration - to another's golden age, the aldehydics of Ernest Beaux.
Old fashioned from the day it was born, Tramp was orphaned in the course of further company buyouts, and now it's all but forgotten. It doesn't even get a mention on the Lenthéric page of Wikipedia, which is a shame.
A Dry Amber on the outside and powdery soft within, it's a window on the past with still a pleasant view.
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