Clin d’Œil by Bourjois, launched in 1984 and composed by François Demachy and Jacques Polge, takes its name from the French expression clin d’œil—literally “a wink,” though it can also mean a knowing glance, a small gesture of recognition, or an affectionate allusion. It is pronounced roughly “klan duh-yuh.” The name was an especially apt choice for Bourjois: playful, distinctly Parisian, feminine without being overly solemn, and imbued with the idea of private complicity. A wink is brief but memorable; it suggests confidence, flirtation, humor, and the pleasure of being understood without having to explain oneself.
The imagery evoked by Clin d’Œil is not that of heavy, theatrical seduction, but of animation and charm: bright eyes, a quick smile, a passing glance across a café or crowded room, the unexpected intimacy of a shared joke. It has a lightness that does not imply innocence so much as self-possession. A woman wearing a perfume called Clin d’Œil could seem approachable yet slightly elusive—someone who enjoys attention, but directs it on her own terms. For an old Parisian house such as Bourjois, whose identity had long balanced accessible beauty with French chic, the name gave the fragrance a modern, spirited personality.
Clin d’Œil arrived in the early 1980s, the opening phase of the decade commonly associated with power dressing, postmodern glamour, and exuberant self-expression. Fashion was deliberately visible: broad shoulders, sharply cut suits, cinched waists, bright color, dramatic costume jewelry, ruffles, and voluminous eveningwear all coexisted with sporty casual clothes and the softer, romantic New Romantic look. Women were increasingly using dress as a sign of professional authority and individual ambition, while fashion also made room for playfulness, fantasy, and conspicuous femininity. FIT’s Fashion History Timeline describes the decade as one in which “bigger meant better,” while the Metropolitan Museum of Art notes the importance of broad-shouldered power dressing as a signal of status and corporate confidence.
Perfume followed the same general impulse. The 1980s became a high-impact era of bold florals, opulent orientals, assertive chypres, and large, persistent compositions—fragrances intended to be noticed as clearly as a shoulder pad, red lip, or statement earring. Yves Saint Laurent’s Paris (1983), Chanel Coco (1984), and later Calvin Klein Obsession and Dior Poison exemplified this “big perfume” moment. Bois de Jasmin aptly characterizes the period as the last great era of such expansive scents. Yet the decade was never solely about dense, dramatic glamour: green notes, brisk citrus, crisp aldehydes, fruit accents, and airy florals also offered an invigorating, polished alternative.
That is where Clin d’Œil found its appeal. Classified as a fresh green fruity floral, it opens with a lively, sparkling impression before moving into a cooler floral heart and a softly powdery floral drydown. Its reported materials—including aldehydes, basil, lemon, peach, wisteria, jasmine, rose, orange blossom, and ylang-ylang—support that impression of freshness animated by fruit, flowers, and a slightly abstract, cosmetic-like softness. Contemporary fragrance references identify the 1984 launch and credit Demachy and Polge. In scent terms, Clin d’Œil suggests a flash of green light, a peach-tinted cheek, cool flower petals, and the whisper of face powder—a perfume that “winks” rather than overwhelms.
For women of 1984, the name likely offered a charming counterpoint to the decade’s more forceful image of femininity. It could accompany a tailored suit, bright blouse, gathered skirt, or dressed-up daywear without feeling severe. Rather than proclaiming sensuality in the lavish, emphatic manner of an oriental perfume, Clin d’Œil proposed flirtation as an attitude: clever, sociable, and lightly mischievous. It was a fragrance name that allowed a woman to be polished and adult while retaining an air of spontaneity.
In market terms, Clin d’Œil was therefore fashionable rather than radically unprecedented. Its green floral freshness, fruity peach nuance, aldehydic lift, and powdery floral finish aligned with the broader early-1980s taste for recognizable florals made brighter, cleaner, and more extroverted. However, its particular personality was distinctive within that trend: less monumental than the decade’s booming orientals and powerhouse bouquets, and more playful than many prestige florals. It translated the 1980s appetite for presence into something brisker and more smiling—a French floral with a knowing little wink.
Fragrance Composition:
So what does it smell like? Clin d'Oeil is classified as a fresh, green, fruity, floral fragrance for women. It begins with a fruity green top, followed by a cool floral heart, layered over a floral powdery base.
- Top notes: aldehydes, lemon, peach, fruit note, wistaria, green note complex, basil, spearmint, marigold, rosewood
- Middle notes: jasmine, ylang ylang, orange blossom, rose, cyclamen, lily of the valley
- Base notes: oakmoss, cedar, Mysore sandalwood, musk
Scent Profile:
Clin d’Œil unfolds as a bright, playful green floral: the sort of fragrance that feels like cool morning air passing through a garden after rain, with a peach-colored softness beneath its crisp, sparkling surface. Its freshness is not plain cologne freshness, but a polished 1980s freshness—luminous, floral, and gently cosmetic in the drydown. As with most perfume note lists, these materials should be understood as an evocative reconstruction of the perfume’s character rather than its confidential formula.
The opening has the glittering, almost fizzy effect of aldehydes—aroma chemicals rather than materials pressed from flowers or fruit. Depending on their structure and dosage, aldehydes can smell waxy, citrusy, soapy, metallic, or like the cool, airy sparkle released when the peel of a lemon is twisted. Here they would give the perfume its lift and make the natural-smelling lemon seem brighter, cleaner, and more radiant than lemon oil alone could achieve. Lemon contributes the tart, sunlit scent of freshly grated yellow peel: crisp, volatile, and faintly bitter, with a green twig-like freshness underneath. It creates the first flash of light in Clin d’Œil, while the aldehydes hold that flash in the air a little longer.
Against this citrus brightness comes a soft peach effect, more suggestive of peach skin and pale golden flesh than of syrupy fruit. A true peach essential oil is not a practical perfumery material; the recognizable peach scent is usually built from aroma chemicals, often including lactonic materials that reproduce the velvety, creamy, faintly floral character of the fruit.
The accompanying fruit note would similarly be an accord rather than one literal extract: a carefully balanced impression of juicy brightness, perhaps touching on pear-like, apricot-like, or lightly tropical tonalities. These synthetic fruit effects are important not because they replace nature crudely, but because they supply the diffusive, long-lasting “peachy” aura that natural citrus and floral oils cannot provide on their own. They make the opening feel youthful and animated, as though a ripe peach had been chilled beside a bowl of lemon slices.
The green character is sharpened by a green-note complex, another constructed accord. Natural green materials—leaf oils, violet-leaf effects, galbanum-like resins, and herbaceous extracts—can be beautiful but often lack the exact dewy, snapped-stem freshness perfumers want. Aroma chemicals allow that illusion to be heightened: crushed leaves, watery stems, green sap, the cool shadow beneath foliage, even the slightly bitter scent left on the fingers after handling plants. In Clin d’Œil, this green accord keeps the fruit from becoming sweet or confectionary. It gives the perfume a poised, almost brisk quality, like the green sheen of a leaf beside the warm blush of peach skin.
Basil adds its aromatic, peppery-green character—the scent of bruised fresh leaves, carrying hints of anise, clove, and cool camphor. Spearmint brings a softer, sweeter freshness than peppermint: not icy, but vividly green, like a mint leaf crushed between the palms. It gives the fragrance a clean, smiling buoyancy.
Marigold, usually represented in perfumery by tagetes oil or absolute, introduces a more unusual green-gold facet. Its scent can be dry, herbaceous, slightly bitter, and faintly leathery, with a fruity edge that can recall apple peel or tropical fruit. Rather than reading as a conventional flower, marigold lends texture and an intriguing bitter-green contrast to the peach. Rosewood contributes a delicate rosy-woody linalool freshness, softer than cedar and less overtly floral than rose. Historically, much rosewood oil came from Brazilian Aniba rosaeodora; because that tree has been heavily exploited, modern perfumery often relies on sustainably managed sources, substitutes, or isolated linalool to recreate its airy floral-wood effect.
The listed wistaria, or wisteria, is a beautiful example of perfumery’s imaginative art. Wisteria flowers do not yield a commercially useful essential oil or absolute with the scent people recognize from a vine in bloom, so the note must be composed. It is usually rendered with a blend of floral aroma chemicals and natural floral materials, creating an impression of lavender-blue blossoms: sweetly floral, watery, faintly powdery, and touched by green stems. In Clin d’Œil, that imagined wisteria bridges the fruity-green opening and the cooler floral heart, giving the fragrance a delicate, trailing-vine grace.
The heart is a luminous bouquet rather than a heavy white-flower statement. Jasmine brings petal richness, from fresh white blossoms warmed by the sun to a subtle indolic undertone that can suggest warm skin, ripe fruit, or the living breath of a flower at dusk. Ylang-ylang softens it with creamy, banana-like floral sweetness, touches of spice, and a sensuous, almost buttery texture. It rounds the sharper greenery and prevents the fragrance from becoming too austere. Orange blossom adds a honeyed, citrus-lit whiteness: at once fresh and softly animalic, like warm petals with a trace of orange peel and nectar.
Rose supplies the familiar velvety floral center, but here it likely functions as a translucent pink wash rather than a dark, jammy rose perfume. Its fresh, faintly lemony and green facets make it especially harmonious with the aldehydes, basil, and lemon. Cyclamen is not generally an extractable natural flower material in perfumery; its cool, watery floral scent is created through an accord. It suggests pale petals, rainwater, and a clean breeze—the floral equivalent of a silk blouse freshly pressed.
Lily of the valley is also a composed fantasy rather than a true essential oil. Perfumers build its recognizable damp-green, bell-flower delicacy through floral aroma chemicals, traditionally including materials that give a fresh, transparent, dewy effect. These constructed notes do not merely imitate flowers; they lend an airy diffusion that makes the natural jasmine, orange blossom, ylang-ylang, and rose seem to float rather than sit densely on the skin.
As the fragrance settles, its bright floral colors are softened by oakmoss, cedar, Mysore sandalwood, and musk. Oakmoss has the scent of a shaded forest floor: damp bark, lichen, dried leaves, old leather, and a faint salty-mineral darkness. It gives the perfume depth and a whisper of classical green-chypre sophistication, anchoring its breezy floral effects. Cedar is drier and cleaner—pencil shavings, pale wood, and a slightly smoky, austere grain—providing structure beneath the softer flowers.
Mysore sandalwood, traditionally sourced from Santalum album grown in the Mysore region of India, was historically prized for its exceptionally creamy, rich, long-lasting character. Compared with many other sandalwoods, classic Mysore oil is renowned for its smooth, milky-woody warmth, gentle spice, and high sandalol content, which gives it remarkable tenacity and a soft, almost skin-like bloom. It turns Clin d’Œil’s floral powderiness into something more caressing and refined. Because authentic Indian sandalwood became scarce and tightly controlled, later perfume production often used other sandalwood species or sandalwood aroma chemicals to preserve that creamy effect.
Finally, musk gives the perfume its soft-focus finish. By 1984, this would almost certainly have meant synthetic musk rather than natural animal musk. Synthetic musks can smell clean, warm, powdery, slightly sweet, laundry-like, or softly animalic depending on the type; their great gift is diffusion. They do not announce themselves as a separate note so much as blur the edges of the composition, making the flowers feel warmer, the woods smoother, and the peach more like scented skin. In Clin d’Œil, musk is the final quiet gesture: a powdery floral veil that remains after the green sparkle, fruit, and cool flowers have given their quick, charming wink.
Fate of the Fragrance:
Discontinued, date unknown.
Several flankers were launched:
- 1970 Clin d'Oeil Note Tendre
- 1999 Clin D`Oeil Passionné
- 1998 Clin D`Oeil Cosmic Girl
- 2000 Clin D`Oeil Urban Girl
- 2001 Clin d’Oeil Excentric
- 2008 Clin D`Oeil Sweet Kiss
- 2008 Clin D`Oeil Silver Dream
- 2009 Clin D`Oeil Lovely Girl
- 2009 Clin D`Oeil Porte Bonheur
- 2010 Clin D`Oeil Coup de Foudre
- 2010 Clin D`Oeil Lady Rock
- 2011 Clin D`Oeil Passionné Eau Fraiche
- Clin d'Oeil Night Muse
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