Faberge Tigress

Several years ago, when my grandmother was in the late stages of dementia, my mother went through quite a bit of effort to track down a bottle of Faberge Tigress, one of my grandmother's favorites of yore, in the hope that the scent would act as a mnemonic for the missing period of memory it represented. She didn't find it then; but just recently, many years after my grandmother's death, she stumbled on a fur-capped bottle of the stuff at a yard sale and bought it for me, knowing that my grandmother and I had similiar taste in perfume (both being lifelong wearers of Byzance by Rochas).

I was a bit stunned to google it and find a dead stock bottle of the stuff selling for $1,500 on PerfumeDistributor.com (less on eBay, but still). The bottle my mom got for me is nearly full, and has been well-kept; the scent is exotic and sweet, musky and animalic, like  caramel made from tiger's milk.On Basenotes, one reader noted that her mom would wear it to the disco in the 70s, and Lola Falana was the spokeswoman in that era, though the fragrance originated in 1938. My grandmother was a big Lola Falana fan--admirer of "gams" that she was--as was my mom. Maybe it's time to rent Cleopatra Jones on Netflix and splash on some Tigress.