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yMouse – :
Tuvache Jungle Gardenia is a retro white floral – mostly tuberose and jasmine, with something soft and powdery underneath (lily of the valley + heliotrope??). Not sweet. Indolic but not overwhelming. It’s softer and more retro than Fracas, with less brash tuberose and floral sharpness. There’s a mustiness to the overall scent that reminds me of white lilacs. I do get a hint of gardenia, especially in the opening, but it’s not my gardenia holy grail scent. I feel like it’s misnamed, especially the “jungle” part. This isn’t a femme fatale scent on me. It’s pretty, but it reminds me of an older woman’s hand soap.
cthutq555 – :
This stuff is just so good. Flowery but creamy and fresh all at the same time- it just makes me happy! Got a good deal at auction for the original Tuvache version but the Coty one isn’t bad either.
leksus70 – :
I was maybe 7 years old and somehow I got my little hands on this perfume. I think I stole it off my older sister’s vanity. I loved this and like a small child who finds lipstick and tries to look like mommy but ends up looking like the Joker…. I would bathe in this! I would then lie and say “what perfume?” I didn’t put any perfume on…. hahahaha! Anyway this became my first fragrance. I still love this and it just brings back such good memories of my childhood.
kiruxa – :
pure sweet gardenia with a little grassy vibe
vitor – :
I’m on the “OH HELL YES” bandwagon with this intoxicating scent! I’ve worn this on and off (mostly on) since the late 70’s. I’ve had perfect strangers stop me and ask what I’m wearing… Boyfriends throughout the years have loved it. My husband loves it!
Back in the day when I was a waitress working my way through college.. I had a patron say “you always smell so wonderful!” He then asked me to write down the name of my perfume. 🙂 That being said…. It’s getting very expensive. You will usually have to drop a couple of Benjamins (or more) for a couple of ounces of the EDP. The only Jungle Gardenia that is worth a hoot is the discontinued vintage Jungle Gardenia by TUVACHE. I really dislike the reformulated JD by COTY or Evyann and the Tuvache 1933. (Don’t waste your money) The trick to wearing Jungle Gardenia is to use just a little. It really packs a punch and lasts a long long time.
knopaskek – :
Jungle Gardenia was the fragrance of my childhood. Every mother wore this, my mother, my next door neighbor’s mother, my schoolteachers and even my governess. This was a beautiful white floral by definition. It has been reformulated and the original is hard to come by but I’ve managed to keep some vintage bottles at hand. I agree with all the reviewers that that have called this perfume glamorous and it does have that Golden Age of Hollywood quality. I wear Elizabeth Taylor’s White Diamonds and that fragrance is not too far from smelling something like this. This scent is also in the same fragrance family as Giorgio Beverly Hills which I also wear. The dominant flower is gardenia but this is not a gardenia soliflore. The gardenia blooms quietly, like you are approaching a gardenia flower bush in the middle of a jungle clearing. The opening is of citrus, a bitter orange and a green note. There could also be an unlisted peach note. The scent combines all the lovely white flowers I love and harmonize them very well: tuberose, jasmine, lily of the valley. As far as white florals go this is a Queen. There’s some sandalwood and oak moss which create the imagery of the green mossy jungle. This is a bit of a tropical perfume as well as some of you have noted. It’s a booze cruise scent and I have worn this on cruises for women over 50. The scent has a mature connotation but I’m no longer 30 LOL Simply the best classic white floral fragrance other than Fracas. When I wear Fracas it puts me in an entirely different mood. This is my party white floral. Always puts me in the party mood.
неудержимый – :
Jungle Gardenia: Is Jean Harlow lying in a spacious and luxurious bed, making her most sexy pose, wearing expensive jewelry, wrapped in a silk dress with thin feathers surrounding her arms and shoulders. Pure extravagance, femininity, excessive opulence and luxury everywhere. It is clear to understand, why this ‘Hollywood’ fragrance was the favorite of most of the stars of those times.
The scent I would say is very close to Fracas Robert Piguet. Fracas would be Rita Hayworth with refinement and elegance, but lacks any of the extravagance and excessive opulence of Jungle Gardenia (Jean Harlow).
Both are white floral scent, the two share the same central notes, but one is more heady than the other. I see Jungle Gardenia more in the Tuberose flower side than the gardenia flower, but i think that the intention of Heliotrope is to achieve that vanilic scent that has the real gardenia. Fracas at times is more creamy and fruity, Jungle Gardenia, instead it is more vanilic, with a little more sandalwood and oakmoss. But overall I don’t notice much difference.
Who inspired who? Judging by the date, Jungle Gardenia was first, although people say that suffered several reformulations, especially 3 important, the first in the 50’s. I have the version of Tuveche made in New York.
I love Fracas and I love more Jungle Gardenia!
martin2009 – :
JUNGLE GARDENIA
TUVACHE
GROUP FLORAL
NOTES CITRUS CLARY SAGE CYCLAMEN GARDENIA JASMINE TUBEROSE HELIOTROPE LILY OF THE VALLEY YLANG YLANG VIOLET LEAVES SANDALWOOD MUSK BENZOIN OAK MOSS
SILLAGE VERY HEAVY RADIATES WITHIN 6 FEET
LONGEVITY VERY LONG LASTING 7 TO 12 HOURS PLUS
REMINDS ME OF: FRACAS PIGUET ISLAND GARDENIA JOVAN WHITE DIAMONDS ELIZABETH TAYLOR PANTHERE CARTIER GIORGIO BEVERLY HILLS TRUTH OR DARE MADONNA TEASE PARIS HILTON KIM KARDASHIAN FOUR WHITE FLOWERS MARILYN MIGLIN
1933 Jungle Gardenia is the very definition of a white floral fragrance. If you’re studying the composition of a white floral scent and how gardenia flower can become a perfume, this is the one you want to study. My grandmother had it in her collection for years and now that she’s gone and her perfumes are still around, this beauty is mine. Yes this is a gardenia, but it’s no soliflore. It smells of many white flowers: tuberose, jasmine, lily of the valley. The additional flowers of violet and ylang ylang are in the background. This is as others have pointed out a tropical scent, smells like an island where gardenia flowers blossom and leave behind an intoxicating aroma throughout the island. There is something like coconut water in this scent. There is a benzoin and musk and sandalwood which in the end provide the scent with the strongest possible base notes to hold up those flowers. It’s aromatic, it’s green and white, and it’s also a show off. The longevity and sillage is epic. This is on you all through the weekend if you start wearing it on Friday morning. This is a honeymoon and vacation or cruise fragrance something to wear in a romantic get-away. This was a popular fragrance among Hollywood stars and it was reportedly worn by Barbara Stanwyck who introduced it to a young Natalie Wood. This is a mature fragrance but you don’t have to be an octogenarian to enjoy it. If you love white flowers and you have worn fragrances that are a more watered down version of this (i.e. Kim Kardashian, Tease Paris Hilton, Truth or Dare Madonna) and you are familiar with how tuberose and gardenia combos smell on you/your chemistry you should check this out. It’s a vintage classic and the signature white floral of all time.
guehoondene – :
Jungle Gardenia by Tuvache parfum review.
Clary sage, bitter orange and heliotrope opening , herbal giving way to a bubble gum type tuberose. The violet leaves and jasmine add depth to the gardenia scent. The heart lasts for hours. Finally the mossy beautiful sandalwood rises up. Its beautiful, deep, lush, sexy , dark scent.
Its lasting power is nuclear, as I washed my hands and still could smell it. A rich gem worth the hype if you love gardenia perfumes.
Jovan island gardenia is like jungle gardenia but a distant cousin. Its not as strong, depth , complexity as jungle gardenia. I’d say jungle gardenia is more closer to carnal flower. I own all three. Island gardenia is a great drugstore option for a gardenia scent. It just isn’t jungle gardenia.
Dexx43 – :
The Favorite Fragrance Of Classic Hollywood Stars
Jungle Gardenia was once very beloved. Today it’s a curiosity for vintage lovers who want to inhale “the past”. I finally got my hands on a vintage old formula bottle dating from the 60’s, during which time it was still selling. It had been launched in 1933 and quickly became the favorite fragrance of actresses like Gloria Swanson, Barbara Stanwyck, Ava Gardner and Natalie Wood. First of all I must say that this is a very mature woman’s fragrance and wears like Fracas, a heavy white floral but Jungle Gardenia, as the name suggests is a tropical exotic scent that you bring back with you after vacationing in the Caribbean or the Amazon jungle areas in South America like Colombia or Brazil. It takes me to a tropical location lush with green vegetation, waterfalls, damask orchids and white flowers. This is really quite beautiful. It’s too bad they dont make them like this anymore. To my nose the dominant notes are of course the gardenia, but it’s also got a heavy heliotrope in the opening notes and in the floral heart notes it also has a lot of jasmine and lily. This is a white floral scent but it’s not soft like a wedding bouquet. I don’t get a white wedding vibe with this the way I do with Chanel. No. 22. This is clearly a “let’s go to Hawaii on a romantic getaway” type of fragrance. Women probably wore it not for their wedding but for their honeymoon. I don’t find it old, old lady ish grandma ish. It’s divinely beautiful, strong, confident and exotic. I can see this fragrance (if the original formula was still with us) worn by celebrities like Madonna, Paula Abdul, Jennifer Lopez, Selma Hayek and Sofia Vergara. This is probably too much for the girly girl types who reach for TEASE by Paris Hilton or one of the Britney Spears fragrances or even too much for those that like Chanel Mademoiselle and Dior’s Blooming Bouquet. You won’t get a light body mist out of this. This is an entire South American jungle that you find yourself lost in, blissfully lost in, and smelling white flowers everywhere. Loved it. But I can only wear it outside the US LOL
василий999 – :
I adore gardenias and thought this would be glorious. Hm. Not on me, unfortunately. I bought a quarter ounce of vintage Tuvache perfume in the dark green bottle and it smelled very…fecal on me, like rotten vegetation. Must be my body chemistry, will try again in winter and keep my fingers crossed.
Update: Well, we’ve had several cool days and I had to try this again….SCORE!! Quite simply intoxicating, everything I hoped it would be. The undertone that was so overwhelming is still there but more of a forest floor now. Damp and earthy drowning in lush, almost overblown gardenias. Decadent and glorious.
Imbos – :
I recently acquired a vintage three-piece set of Jungle Gardenia by Tuvache, which included the cologne, perfumed powder and cologne spray concentrate. The original store sticker on this set, still on, priced it at $16.50, pretty hefty for the time period of this box, circa 1960’s. An inflation calculator puts that price at roughly $123.24 today, so it wasn’t that cheap.
Jungle Gardenia begins with gardenia of course, straight up. But, there is a burnt flavoring covering the top for some brief moments, perhaps it’s the clary sage in passing while the tart bitterness of the orange mellows the gardenia. The tuberose at times is overpowering. It’s strong, thick and pure. It wafts in, around and through the perfume.
Eventually, Jungle Gardenia turned into a spicier sandlewood many, many hours later. Not just a generic sandlewood, mind you, but one that I’ve not encountered in a long, long time. Woods wrapped in types of unique spices and this stage was still just as strong as the others. To me, this seems a cold weather perfume to wear sparingly, but I haven’t tried it in the warmer months. I’d be curious to see how it develops then.
I loved how Jungle Gardenia took me through a Journey of notes and hours of pleasure of a perfume. That’s what it’s all about. Or how perfume used to be developed. And how it used to develop on those that spritzed them on themselves. They could enjoy the fragrance for hours.
This perfume is clean, bright and fresh. It’s mature, sultry and strong. It’s a fragrance from the past that’s heady and strong-willed. a perfume to wear in the evening, for a mature personality that knows the old-time perfumes and appreciates them. What a delightful find this perfume has been!
Edit: My d-i-l visited and loves gardenia perfumes. She tried this one on and called me when she was at home, later that evening. She told me how different this one was from today’s gardenia perfumes she’s tried. She felt it was pretty and full of notes that were unique and long-lasting. She felt this is the “real stuff”! Yeah, it is the real stuff, that’s for sure. It’s vintage and it’s good.
armadon – :
Gardenias have been among my favorite flowers forever and I wanted to try this. I got a vintage spray cologne and hae been smitten. My bottle is ribbed glass with a tall dark green top. It truly smells like gardenias in full bloom. I spray it on my arm before bed because it’s comforting. I own several vintage, classic perfumes and nothing smells like pure, single flower the way this does. I don’t find it to be complex, but meither does it ever get that powdery smell. Which I love btw. Tuvache Jungle Gardenia is a pure gardenia smell. It’s unique. I will probably buy the New formulation to see if it’s true to the vintage.
Mekyn649Diobtetty – :
This perfume was noted to be purchased by frank Sinatra for his then wife Ava Gardner …also worn by my grandma and she bought it because she loved frank Sinatra and thought anything he purchased must be good …
midos – :
ABSOLUTELY STUNNING GORGEOUS!!!
This reminds me of a tropical version of fracas. I have the touchtip perfume which I think might be pure perfume because it’s so insane potent!
Before reviewing notes, what came to my mind as I sniffed this , is fracas tuberose , jasmine , gardenia , anything else is a nuance. lovely, almost as modern as fracas, a gorgeous pronounced amber
Reminds me of a stormy dark tropical island resort
Btw, I disagree completely with those who say madonnas perfume is like fracas. If you feel the same and also that fracas quality is far higher than you’ll probably agree wth my take on tuvache, very high qualigy, natural extracts used, super long lasting. In fact (with the tropical element aside), I would say that this perfume is closet to fracas than any other perfume I’ve ever sniffed.
kontr_93_93 – :
Je serais tellement honorée si mes narines pouvaient se poser sur ce petit Chef d’Oeuvre !!
TimurSchulga1922 – :
I have a 1/4 oz of the skin perfume circa 1950’s. My word, this is one potent heady brew, and that’s a serious understatement. Strong perfumes are like manna to me, but this one is down right terrifying.
The only way that I have been able to enjoy it is as an additive to my two other Gardenia fragrances.This gives those other scents more intensity and greater lasting power.
Honestly, the Tuvache Gardenia parfum has positively nuclear power so in keeping with the mindset of the era when my version was formulated!
palmor3 – :
Jungle Gardenia is the first perfume that entered my consciousness, probably because every TV game show in the 1950’s and 1960’s offered it as a conslation prize. Big deal, everyone in our neighborhood had a gardenia bush, they were practically weeds, and I was too busy being a semi-flower child to wear anything as old as JG — it was over 30 and we weren’t supposed to trust anything over 30! Now that I am over 30 myself and have moved beyond those forgotten and mostly unlamented “with it” perfumes of my teen years I can finally appreciate the purest gardenia fragrance ever made. This is the scent of a summer night down South: when the heat quickens the pulse and thickens the blood. It is that moment when sensuality overcomes and you must surrender to your passion. JG is 80 years old now but she is no old lady, she’s a hot mama. May we all be as seductive in our eighth decade.
druxa2 – :
the subtletiest fragrance i ever smelled it brings back beautiful happy memeories of childhood ahh if i could smell it again…
kassiel – :
Imagine my surprise when a search for my beloved vintage stuff turned up a living Tuvache company, and a scent called Gardenia 1933. I was even more surprised and delighted to find that, after many years of looking, Gardenia 1933 is the same fragrance as Jungle Gardenia. Like the original stuff, it’s reasonable without cutting corners on quality. Hooray for all of us JG lovers.
buday_79 – :
We have ordered sample of vintage Jungle Tuvache Gardenia.. At first sniff I liked it a lot, so I have decided to wear it today. Firsts 5 minutes it smells excellent, I would say like a real meaty petals of gardenia at rain forest of south India..but then..then..I happened to enter subway ,and, OMG…I thought that somebody passed the wind,so i just started to look around in order to find out who may smell like rotten chinese dumpling stuffed with sour cabbage!
After while, I remained alone in whole subway car, but that awful odor stayed with me,I smelled my wrist, just in case and realized that it is actually my Tuvache Cardenia changed its beautiful chords of music to unpleasent simple melody !!!
I love Gardenia, but not this time, not today, not during gray winter day. It might be wonderful for summer, but I am not sure if I am ready to survive one more #day of sour dumplings#.
arif1998arif – :
I loved this perfume. It was, for me, appropriate any time, any place, any season. I have yet to find a gardenia fragrance that compares to the original, unique “Jungle Gardenia” blend. I’m currently using Annick Goutal ‘Gardénia Passion. It is pleasant, but bears no resemblance to Tuvache’s Jungle Gardenia.’
zzhhaannaa – :
This perfume is SO bound up in my past, as I’m sure it is for many others. I remember it as being one of the only gardenia perfumes that actually resembled the flower, and being from the South, I’m well accquainted with the scent of them. Yes, it was reformulated a few times – unsuccessfully, I might add. The only way to get the real thing is to go on EBAY or AMAZON, and even then you risk getting a bottle that has gone bad. The best ones that I’ve found are the ones from earlier vintages called Pure Perfume or Skin Perfume. Also, I’ve had luck with the ones from Yardley of London – these are the bottles that say “a fragrance of subtle intrigue”. It’s also good to ask the seller if they have sniffed the bottle – it’s sometimes better to get a bottle that’s been opened and confirmed good than to get an unopened one that has gone bad – these sellers don’t always want to give refunds. As for the recent remakes that are available from the Vermont Country Store and Timeless Perfumes, they are absolutely nothing like real Jungle Gardenia. The one from Vermont smells alarmingly like Dawn dishwashing liquid. As for Timeless Perfumes, they claim to have the formula and be the only authorized maker of this perfume. That may be, but I’ve had two different bottles from them, one an eau de toilette and the other an eau de parfum. The parfum is a very thick, powdery perfume smelling nothing like a gardenia or even a white flower, much less Jungle Gardenia. The toilette was a very acid,chemical bitter green and at the same time bland concoction. A very cheaply made synthetic product. I actually called them to get my refund and was asked why I didn’t like it, so I explained that it didn’t smell anything remotely like the original JG or like a gardenia. The man said they follow the formula exactly, whereupon I explained that just because a formula says it has tuberose or gardenia in it doesn’t mean that it’s going to smell the same every time you make it – it all depends on the quality of these ingredients as well as where in the world they came from, especially if your are using naturals. Since gardenia is almost always synthetic in these kinds of perfumes, it is unlikely that they would have access to the original Tuvache gardenia aroma chemicals, as they are probably not even legal anymore. This formula also used musk, which was most likely originally a nitro musk – these are also no longer used. If you smell synthetic anything from three different companies you’ll get three different smells. I asked the man if he had ever smelled the original JG, and he said no. The best reformulation that I have smelled is from longlostperfume.com, owned by Jeffrey Dame of Dame Perfumery Scottsdale. They call it Gardenia 1933. It is slightly lighter than the original, but smells very similar. Some one over there was more accquainted with the real thing. I’ve not tried the remake from Scentmatchers, but perhaps someday. I’ve also tried the Fragrance Shop’s replication and it’s pretty good, but the one from longlostperfume.com is better.
EstasiaPago – :
A favorite of Joan Crawford’s in the 1930s.
Deaclecrojepe89 – :
In the sixties, my uncle was in grad school and got a whiff of a perfume he was determined to buy for his wife. He followed the woman wearing it until he caught up with her and learned it was Jungle Gardenia. My mother bought some for us,too, and it was truly wonderful. Unfortunately, I was too young to realize how strong it was and wore too much to school and heads turned from everywhere. I went to the restroom and tried to wash it off, but it was in the pores of my skin by then and washing didn’t help much. I had a rather embarrassing day and learned an important lesson.
dimaljba – :
I love this fragrance…This and Tatiana are my favorite floral scents.I liked the fragrance’s Macys carried in the late 70’s and early 80’s more than what they have now.