I don’t know much about Fabergé Organdi, except that it was available in the early 1970s and it seems to have been a line of body products—bubble bath, dusting powder, and body mist—rather than a proper “perfume.”
The image in this 1973 advertisement for Organdi suggests something luxurious but relaxed. The illustrator, whoever he or she was, obviously took inspiration from another artist: Henri Matisse.
Specifically, the ad’s illustrator was looking at Matisse’s “Nice period,” when he was a successful artist living on the French Riviera with his family. His large apartment included a studio, where he dressed his female models in colorful, exotic-looking garments and posed them against backdrops of vibrantly patterned textiles.
Reclining or sitting on cushions, the women in Matisse’s Nice interiors are as gorgeously clad, but still as approachable, as the flowers that accompany them. Their imagined world is blissfully uncomplicated.
The Fabergé Organdi artist must have perused a number of works from this period. Rather than copying one painting, he or she borrowed elements from various compositions: a diamond-patterned pillow, a cluster of anemones, a striped wallpaper…
…or some large green leaves in the background.
There’s no denying the sensual appeal of Matisse’s interiors of the 1930s—those saturated colors, the suggestion of richly textured fabrics, the inclusion of fragrant cut flowers—all of which makes them ideal sources for a 1970s fragrance advertisement.
Images: Faberge Organdi advertisement (1973) via VintageAdBrowser. Works by Matisse: Small Odalisque in Purple Robe (1937), private collection, via Wikipaintings; Yellow Odalisque (1937), Philadelphia Museum of Art; Odalisque in a Red Coat (1937), private collection, via Nevsepic.
