Yardley London — Chique
Essence
Chique (1976) is Yardley’s entry into the 1970s feminine chypre boom - an oakmoss-heavy, rose-centered floral chypre with a bright citrus opening, launched when Yardley wanted a piece of the mature-and-elegant chypre market that Revlon’s Charlie was dominating in a fresher key. Per perfume-industry writer Stephan Matthews: “The most famous chypre of the Seventies was surely Charlie by Revlon, although it was marketed as an Aldehydic Floral, but Yardley wanted a piece of the action. Their release was the powerful CHIQUE, and this oakmoss overdose is still in production.” It is a relatively simple, linear, bargain-priced chypre rather than a luxury composition, but it has a devoted following and is one of the more accessible vintage-style oakmoss florals still findable in some form. Source coverage is genuinely thin and concentrated on wearer sites plus that one enthusiast blog.
Scent Profile
Chique opens with a bitter, burnt, mossy-aldehydic top over citrus (orange, lemon), then moves into a billowy, musky cloud of rose-heavy florals before a sandalwood-and-oakmoss-driven, often quite powdery drydown. Listed/derived notes across sources cluster around citrus top (orange, lemon/Amalfi lemon, aldehydes); a floral-fruity heart of rose, jasmine, lily-of-the-valley, ylang-ylang and orris; and a base of oakmoss, patchouli, cedar and musk. Wearers consistently emphasize oakmoss and patchouli - one vintage-bottle owner pinpoints “violet, oakmoss and patchouli… lots of patchouli,” even detecting a petrol/gasoline facet from the violet (à la Fahrenheit). The fragrance is described as citrus, green, woody and, on some skins, drying to “an extremely powdery base.” It is more linear than its richer chypre cousins.
Performance
Above-average by the limited data available: Available wearer feedback suggests projection and longevity as above-average. One wearer of the current (Milton-Lloyd / Taylor of London) version reports it lasting about 5 hours and calls that “pretty decent for a bargain basement perfume.” Memories of the vintage Boots-era formulation describe it as markedly more powerful - “a spritz and you were good for all day and next morning the sheets smelled of it.” So performance is formulation-dependent: vintage strong, current version moderate.
Wearing Context
A mature, elegant, daytime-to-evening chypre in period terms - Yardley positioned the chypre as a scent “full of maturity and elegance” in contrast to the era’s bouncy youth scents. Best in cooler weather given its mossy-woody weight. Skews feminine and somewhat “grown-up”/vintage in character; one reviewer’s image is “a grown-up, graying SJP Lovely in severe black 1920s garb.” Suits oakmoss lovers and those nostalgic for 70s British drugstore chypres.
Comparisons & DNA
- Revlon Charlie - the contextual benchmark: the defining (aldehydic-floral-marketed) 1970s chypre Yardley was chasing with Chique, per Stephan Matthews. - Paloma Picasso (Mon Parfum) - the most-repeated wearer comparison; wearers find Chique a more linear “distant cousin” to Paloma’s bigger chypre. - Jean Patou 1000 - one vintage-bottle owner’s specific “click” comparison (violet, oakmoss, patchouli). - Coriandre (Jean Couturier) and Aromatics Elixir (Clinique) - raised in wearer discussion as adjacent reference points, though one careful reviewer argues Chique has far less coriander than Coriandre and sits closer to Paloma Picasso and Aromatics Elixir via its patchouli/animalic profile. Delta: Chique is generally the simpler, more linear, more affordable, more openly oakmoss/patchouli-driven member of this set.
Reception
Sparse but affectionate. There are very few formal reviews; wearer memory (wearer feedback, wearer feedback) carries the load, much of it nostalgic recollection of mothers wearing it or buying it at Boots in the 1970s-80s. Enthusiast blog Stephan Matthews (a perfume-industry writer and Perfumista Award winner) wrote the most substantive piece, tracing Chique’s ownership history and comparing the original Yardley version to the later Milton-Lloyd reformulation. Sentiment toward the original is high among its fans (“I think [it] is my favourite scent of all time”); toward the current Milton-Lloyd version, more mixed. No documented critic review is documented. This is an honestly thin file - the agent should not overstate critical pedigree.
Versions & Reformulation
Chique has passed through multiple owners and formulations, a key fact for the agent. It launched in 1976 under Yardley (then owned by the Beecham Group). It is now produced under the Milton-Lloyd / Taylor of London banner. Per Stephan Matthews’s side-by-side, the current Milton-Lloyd version “retains the essence… but unfortunately lacks a little of the style” - harsher and drier, with a higher aldehyde concentration fighting the oakmoss, a thinner floral heart, more generic citrus, and the original’s violet seemingly replaced by a definite animalic accord, pushing it in a more masculine direction. Notably, Milton-Lloyd reclassifies the new version as “Oriental Woody” even though the original was a Floral Chypre. The original is judged “far superior,” but the reformulation is “still an interesting version and, if you’re an oakmoss lover, well worth trying.” Multiple wearers confirm the modern Taylor of London juice is “pared down” versus the rounder, warmer, heady fragrance they recall from the 70s-80s. (A separate Chique Silver by Yardley, 1990, exists and should not be confused with the original.)
Acquisition Notes
Budget tier - strikingly cheap. Per Stephan Matthews, the reformulation is available from the Milton-Lloyd website at about GBP 9 for 100 ml of Concentrated Cologne, and it remains in production through UK chemists and discounters. Vintage Yardley/Boots-era bottles are sought on eBay by those wanting the fuller original profile. No counterfeit concern is documented; the issue is reformulation, not fakery. Decants are not a documented part of this fragrance’s market - it’s cheap enough to buy outright. The chief buyer caution is simply knowing which formulation you’re getting (vintage Yardley vs. modern Milton-Lloyd).
Notable Facts & Lore
- Chique’s commercial life spans an unusually long and tangled ownership chain: Yardley (Beecham Group at launch) → later corporate owners (including the Wasserstein-Perella-era “Old Bond Street”) → present-day production under Milton-Lloyd / Taylor of London.
- It was a Boots-counter staple of late-1970s Britain, which is why so much of its surviving sentiment is generational nostalgia rather than connoisseur criticism.
- It sits in the historical narrative as a “me-too” response to the 1970s chypre wave led by Charlie - Yardley wanting “a piece of the action” with an “oakmoss overdose.”