Tabu(1932)

Created by Jean Carles for the American house Dana, Tabu opens on bergamot, neroli, orange, and coriander, moves through a heart of clove, narcissus, rose, jasmine, and ylang-ylang, and closes on a dense base of musk, civet, amber, oakmoss, sandalwood, and vetiver. Carles reportedly built the fragrance to be deliberately provocative, embracing rather than softening the animalic civet-and-musk richness that made it one of the most sensually assertive orientals of its era. Marketed with the tagline the forbidden fragrance, Tabu leaned directly into its own scandalous reputation, a marketing approach unusually blunt for the period. It became enormously commercially successful, especially in the American market, and is frequently cited as a key reference point for the dense, animalic oriental genre that would influence numerous later mass-market fragrances. Tabu remains one of the most historically significant American-created perfumes of the interwar period.