The Peculiar Truth about the Perfume Bombing of LA

• The world’s most famous perfumes originated in cities like Paris, Milan, and New York. They have brand names like Chanel, Estee Lauder, Dolce & Gabbana, etc. Some of their histories stretch back before WWII.

• Angelique and Company began making their signature perfume, Black Satin, in 1946 shortly after the war ended. Their headquarters were located in a suburban home in Wilton, Connecticut, a 50-mile commute from midtown Manhattan. Since the business owners lived on Skunk Lane they initially called their perfume company The Skunk Works.

• Charles Granville and Lee Swartout had no experience in the perfume industry. Swartout worked for a company that produced bottles for cosmetics. Granville was an efficiency expert. They learned about the absurd profit margins in the perfume business and wanted in on that action.

• Granville and Swartout had limited knowledge of how to combine essential oils to make perfumes, so they left that up to an established perfumery. Instead, they focused on salesmanship, marketing, and advertising.

• First, they had to change the company name. The Skunk Works was funny but would never succeed. Granville’s wife named it after a friend, and the Angelique brand was born.

• The perfumery offered them six choices. They couldn’t decide. So Granville and Swartout asked the citizens of Wilton make the decision. They called their new perfume Black Satin.

• The owners and their wives had to mortgage their homes. They put everything they owned on the line.

• Initially, they didn’t have any bottling machines. Transferring the Black Satin from the manufacturer’s large containers into smaller retail bottles required sucking on tubes and siphoning the liquid out in the same manner as sucking on a hose to get gas out of a car’s gas tank.

• After getting a contract to place their new perfume inside Sak’s Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, their business began to grow. But sales were marginal. Lean times followed.

• Unlike the traditional perfume companies with their fashion magazine advertisements, Angelique and Company had no budget for high-priced marketing. But Granville and Swartout never met an advertising gimmick they didn’t like.

• At Lord & Taylor in New York City, they sprayed any passersby with their perfume. That quickly backfired.

• Granville learned about how some farmers used dry ice placed on crop-dusting airplanes to make it rain. He thought they could do the same thing - pour their perfume over dry ice and let it rain down on people below. They told local newspapers that they were going to make ‘perfume snow’ in February over Bridgeport, Connecticut. They called it Operation Odoriferous.

• Local mayors warned that if even one snowflake fell as a result of their misguided stunt, lawsuits would be forthcoming.

• The news media arrived to witness the event, which didn’t produce any snow. Nor did it give off any noticeable scents. A failure. Except that it garnered a lot of publicity for the brand, which was the ultimate point.

• Granville and Swartout invested in other marketing schemes, like having a helicopter haul a giant Easter egg bearing the Black Satin logo to a department store in Syracuse, NY. Sales went through the roof.

• Their biggest stunt took place in Los Angeles. They intended to “bomb” the city with their perfume.

• One dozen aircraft were hired. Each plane had a pilot, of course, and a “bombadierette.” The latter were young Hollywood starlets clad in stylish black satin suits. Their job was to pour the perfume onto the dry ice at the proper altitude and let it waft over the city.

• The stunt was a flop, however. The planes took off and the bombadierettes performed their assigned tasks, but the perfume got lost in Los Angeles’ famous smog. Nobody at ground level could smell a thing.

• Even so, the publicity from the “perfume bombing” boosted sales as intended.

• Angelique and Company grew and eventually expanded their brand to include soaps, men’s cologne, and other items. Despite their quirky gimmicks, or perhaps because of them, the company went on to achieve success throughout the 1950s.