Poe-Pooh-Reeeeeee

NY Times Article from 1990 about Potpourri 

Article link at end of post.

What's That Smell? Probably, It's Potpourri

By GEORGIA DULLEA

Published: February 15, 1990

It was not one of those great moments in interior design, like the day Billy Baldwin lacquered Cole Porter's walls brown. Still, the night the decorators ate dried flowers deserves a mention in any account of the evolution of post-modern potpourri.

The year was 1974, and the occasion was a cocktail party in the Decoration and Design Building in Manhattan. Champagne flowed, the host being Boussac, the French fabric manufacturer. There were bowls of crudites and bowls of potpourri - a fragrant melange of dried botanicals, herbs and oils that had scented the historic houses of Europe for centuries.

The rosebuds might have been a clue. But no, as Barbara Milo Ohrbach looked on in horror, a couple of decorators reached into the bowls and tossed handfuls of her Old English Rose Potpourri into their mouths, like so much trail mix.

Happily, Ms. Ohrbach said, most decorators ''understood potpourri,'' as did fashion designers and socialites. Sister Parish, Albert Hadley, Bill Blass and Nan Kempner were among early connoisseurs of potpourris that Ms. Ohrbach adapted from 16th- to 19th-century recipes. They still shop at her Upper East Side boutique, Cherchez, for Spicy Lavender and the like, and, she said, ''women in darling Adolfo suits come in in droves to buy gifts of scent.''

In 1977, Henri Bendel became the first high-fashion store to bring potpourri out of the closet and bath shops and into its own boutique. The scent of choice was a woodsy blend from San Francisco called Agraria. Bowls of Agraria, studded with orange rinds and cinnamon sticks, turned up in the model rooms of department stores, in decorator show houses and perhaps half the living rooms on Park Avenue.

Beyond these rarefied circles, potpourri was still largely unknown, as Mario Buatta discovered when he presented a plastic bag of Smell of Spring potpourri to a couple in Charlotte, N.C., who were prospective clients.

''The husband looked at the dried leaves and accused me of bringing 'pot' into his house,'' Mr. Buatta said. ''I said, 'Read the label. See? Potpourri.' Then he accused me of bringing in 'designer pot,' but his wife said, 'Why Claude, it's the latest thing. I saw it in Vogue.' ''

Early in the 1980's, potpourri began wafting into the mainstream. It evolved over the decade from mostly dried flowers to mostly dyed wood chips, from a decorator's tabletop conceit to everybody's stove-top brew to an aerosol spray from the makers of Johnson's Wax.

Last year, consumers spent $260 million on potpourri products, 10 percent more than they did the year before, according to the Fragrance Foundation, the industry's educational arm. Its executive director, Annette Green, said the mass marketing by cosmetic companies like Estee Lauder and Elizabeth Arden gave potpourri an initial boost. Other factors, she said, were the English country look in home furnishings and the growing interest in aroma therapy, in which scents are used as mood enhancers.

Depending on what happens to be in the potpourri bowl, Ms. Green said, ''you might feel relaxed, energized, sleepy or sexy.''

This might seem like a lot to ask of dried flowers, not to mention wood chips. But the industry had even grander visions in 1986 when it introduced simmering potpourris, which disperse fragrance when brewed on the stove or in electric or candle-heated scent pots. Soon the evocative aromas of Apple Brown Betty, Yesteryear, Seashore and Oh, Christmas Tree were permeating homes around the country.

''It was phenomenal,'' said Bertram Berman, author of a marketing study on simmering potpourris distributed by the Fragrance Foundation.

''Before 1986,'' he said, ''if you asked everybody going into Zabar's in New York what potpourri was, maybe 10 percent knew. In the hinterlands, almost nobody knew. After 1986, with the proliferation of simmering potpourris, not only did the business become gigantic, but the public knew potpourri and how to pronounce it.'' (All together now: poe-poo-REE!) Mr. Berman, president of Hopewell Farms, a herb grower and potpourri maker in Manchester, Ohio, said the success of simmering products surprised those who believed people would not bother to turn on a stove, plug in a pot or light a candle. What this particular potpourri mutant did was ''to restore to the post-Woodstock generation a sense of participation in nature,'' he said.

Now consumers may be ready for potpourri, the aerosol spray. According to Kline & Company, consultants to the industry, several major manufacturers of room deodorizers recently came out with potpourri aerosols.

''Definitely a trend,'' said Gordon Good of Kline. ''Instead of plain fresh air, people now want potpourri fresh air.''

In promoting Glade Potpourri Spray, S. C. Johnson Company uses the term aroma therapy and says its two scents, Country Garden and Orchard Spice, ''create a more relaxing atmosphere in any room.''

Thus in a dozen or so years, potpourri has permeated the popular culture. It is sold in boutiques for $25 or more and at discount stores for $2.98. It comes in scented animals for the nursery trade, in bags of Laura Ashley chintz and pouches of Burberry plaid. It appeals to what Ms. Green calls ''all status levels: you can keep potpourri in a crystal bowl and go through the ritual of stirring and freshening with oil, or you can pull out the spray for a quick fix.''

But is it still a design statement, as in the days when advertisements for potpourris appeared in Architectual Digest?

''Potpourri? A design statement?'' said Michael Formica, the decorator. ''That's like saying deodorant is a fashion statement.'' He added that a bottle of old-fashioned Airwick, wick up, on the back of the stove might be a design statement ''because it's such a throwback.''

http://www.nytimes.com/1990/02/15/garden/what-s-that-smell-probably-it-s-potpourri.html