When I saw this vintage magazine advertisement for Cashmere Bouquet (circa 1899-1900), I immediately knew that it had to be the work of artist Maxfield Parrish. The hyper-realism of the light and shadow on the distant mountains, the palette of mauve and periwinkle, the “exotic” setting—these are all Parrish hallmarks.
Colgate hasn’t produced anything as fantastic as this ad in a long time.
I’ve been a fan of Maxfield Parrish since my teen years, when I learned that he was the artist behind the image used for one of my favorite album covers—The Waking Hour by Dali’s Car (a spin-off of Goth icons Bauhaus). Parrish created Daybreak (1922) to be mass-reproduced and sold as an affordable print, and it became his most beloved and widely circulated work.
Ever since my encounter with Daybreak via The Waking Hour, I’ve had an eye out for Parrish and his wide-ranging influence. I knew that he’d created ads for everything from light bulbs to candy to garden seeds, but I somehow didn’t realize that his work had appeared in toiletries advertisements too.
Here are two examples of Parrish’s art in magazine advertisements for Djer-Kiss, courtesy of DreamGardener, a wonderful site that gathers and sells assorted Parrish illustrations and ephemera. The one on the left is dated 1916 and features Susan Lewin, one of Parrish’s favorite models. The one on the right is dated 1918, and it name-checks Parrish in its text: “…even the genius of Maxfield Parrish can emphasize through fancy only the charme of Djer-Kiss…”
Djer-Kiss was available not only as perfume “extract” and toilet water, but also as talcum powder, face powder, soap, and a sachet of some kind. I’ve never smelled Djer-Kiss, but I found an interesting post about its history on the blog Collecting Vintage Compacts. And if it sold anywhere nearly as well as Daybreak, it must have been quite a success.
Images: Cashmere Bouquet advertisement, via VintageAdBrowser; Djer-Kiss advertisements, via DreamGardener; Dali’s Car CD photo by Tinsel Creation.
