White Shoulders
Elizabeth Arden (1945)

Imagine a woman with some wrinkles on her face, her eyes vise and calmly happy, her clothes seem to fit perfectly, pearls on her neck add something charming yet expensive to her look and when you look at her you can tell she lived a joyful life. She's experienced a lot, knows even more and she is simply happy and at peace to be in a place she is now. This is the story this scent tells me about.

Vintage White Shoulders was so popular in it's hey-day other companies began scurrying to come out with their own version of a bold, fresh, gardenia floral to compete, but White Shoulders was the best of them all. This is kind of fragrance that makes one willing to embrace oneself as one is. There is some feel of sophistication, indulgence in life’s finer things and appreciation in this one. Times changed and suddenly tastes changed, advertising faded and somehow despite it’s similarities to other classics, sales dropped.

Flowers, flowers, flowers and nice spring flowers too. There's something innocent almost virginal about this floral scent. Fresh, floral and pretty. It is the perfect, light, ethereal springtime fragrance, banishing away the last vestiges of winter, awakening life to gentle breezes and sunlight. In the opening the most beautiful flowers emerge. Soft, sweet, heady, a little indolic, with a musky, slightly spicy dry down. The anamalics are at a minimum which could be due to disintegration of the fragrance. In case one requires refinement, maturity, success and joy in life, must grab this beauty. Just like Chanel No 5 and Shalimar, this is also one great joyful composition that is exact and pure rendering the perfume fiction as invisible while making it feel as identity of an individual.

White Shoulders is primal for me. I was born in 1946. I could swear my mom was wearing WS the day I was born (she also wore Shalimar which dad brought back from Europe after the war). Recently, I purchased a decant of the vintage; it was like being flung back 75 years. I've sampled many white florals in my time, some quite wonderful. But for me, this is THE white floral of white florals: deep; heady; warm; and very unpretentious. Mom had darn good taste.

A white floral that doesn't jump out at me but has a quiet maturity. Decent projection and longevity

My review is for the Evyan version, White Shoulders is one of the glories of truly womanly and romantic perfumery. It's somewhat out of style, but shouldn't be.

In general terms, I'm all for erasing or at least heavily blurring the line between allegedly male and allegedly female fragrances. There are certainly some allegedl;y male ones I'll wear (Angel Men, Avon Mesmerize, Herbissimo Juniper), and I have male friends who smell great in Shalimar, Avon Imari, or original Vent Vert. But truly can't imagine a man wearing WS. It's rich and sweet without being loud and gauche, and it's a thousand percent female. Both ladylike and romantic. An olfactory corsage for a splendidly ruffled white dress, worn on a spring morning or in summer moonlight. GIRLY.

And men love it. Take DCLawyer's word, above: If this is a grandma fragrance, maybe we (great-)grandma-agers know something you kids don't!

This smells just like it did in the mid-1980's when sorority sister of mine wore it. It's simply too sweet for me. It's just too "too". I think this is a scent that needs to have the personality of the person match the smell.

Romantic. A beautiful, timeless white floral. Most likely one of the most feminine fragrances out there. This scent invokes a more gentle time, a memory, a moment. I love smelling this on a woman. It immediately reminds me that there are still classic scents that are treasured by those who appreciate them.