The Wife

Mid-Century Modern Memories

The first perfume I ever loved was the fragrance of an unlovely woman. That’s because there was a period of time in the late fifties or early sixties when my parent’s friend Ruth Bass used to spend one night a week at our house, and even though I was just a child, I was always fascinated by the clouds of intoxicating fragrance that wafted from her. That rich, heavy, and sensual perfume did not fit with her appearance, which seemed sensible and matronly. Unlike my mother who was tall, thin, and wore chic Audrey Hepburn-like capris and ballet flats, Ruth was short and a bit round, with steel grey hair and a plain face. And she typically wore a fifties-style full skirt with a tailored shirt and belt, accessorized with the kind of chunky ethic jewelry (heavy Mexican silver or large amber beads) that I associated with the wives of artists.

In fact, Ruth was the wife of an artist, Saul Bass, a well-known commercial artist of whom our family greatly approved. After all, Saul Bass had not only designed the logos of famous companies, such Bell Telephone, AT&T globe, Continental Airlines, and United Airlines, but he had also invented "kinetic typography" for film titles, which was featured in famous movies, such North by Northwest (1959), Vertigo (1958), and Psycho (1960). And Saul and Ruth lived in an architect-designed, modern, wood and glass house, just as we did, though their house was way out in Altadena.

It was because of the location of their house—more beautiful and architecturally significant that ours (the Case Study House #20, also known as the Bass House, was completed in 1958 as part of the Arts & Architecture magazine’s Case Study House program)—and with a swimming pool—that Ruth was spending the night with us. For our house in Beverly Glen canyon was just a short drive from UCLA, which was where Ruth needed to be once a week for an evening class.

But we didn’t seem to approve of Ruth in the same way we approved of her husband. Was it because she was not beautiful? I imagined my parents thinking that surely such a successful visual artist who lived in a beautiful house deserved a beautiful wife. And we clearly did not approve of her perfume, either. No, it was heavy and old fashioned, not young and modern and chic. It seemed to fall into the same category as the original Barbie doll—a doll my mother assured me was tacky and in bad taste—as something I craved but was too afraid to ask for. So even though Ruth stayed over at our house for many nights and I secretly swooned at the wake of scent that enveloped her every time she entered the room, I never asked her about her perfume.

But even though I never learned the name of that perfume, the smell of that spicy, resinous amber fragrance stayed with me all my life. Even after several decades, I could conjure up the scent so clearly that I was sure I’d be able to identify it I ever smelled it again. In recent years, as I became fascinated again by perfumes, both modern and vintage, I was quietly searching for that scent, smelling all the vintage perfumes I could get my hands on in the hopes that I could track it down. Then, after a few years of fruitless searching, a friend and I decided to help a dying woman who was a perfume collector raise some funds by selling some of her perfume. And after we brought her many bottles of perfume into my house for wrapping and shipping, I couldn’t resist testing a few of them. Hiding among expensive niche fragrances, rare natural perfumes by indie perfumers, and cheerfully tacky “celebuscents,” I found a small, shabby box with the name of a perfume that was so famous I had never thought to test it. Curious about how old the perfume might be, I opened the box to find an charming vintage-style bottle, opaque light blue and curvy, and thought I should at least give it a sniff, maybe even spray a bit on my skin, just for “reference” as they say. But, wait! Even before I sprayed—just from sniffing the cap—I knew immediately and without doubt that this was Ruth’s perfume! Then I laughed to myself. No wonder my mother hadn’t approved. This was an inexpensive, ubiquitous perfume, and the most “old lady” of all if the “old lady” perfumes that have ever been: Youth Dew by Estée Lauder.

Youth Dew’s top notes are spicy notes, orange, bergamot, peach, and aldehydes; the heart notes are clove, rose, ylang-ylang, cinnamon, and orchid; and the base notes are amber, tolu, patchouli, benzoin, and vanilla. The Bois de Jasmin perfume blog gives the perfume five stars, saying,

“Youth Dew is explosive, but it has something new releases do not: grandeur. It is as commanding a scent as you are likely to find, and it hails from an era of perfumery we will not see the likes of again.”

But Estée Lauder created Youth Dew especially for the ordinary American woman, a woman who "wanted to feel glamorous" but who but didn’t have much money to spend. It was also the first fragrance that was intentionally marketed to women as an affordable bit of luxury that an independent woman might buy for herself rather one she would receive as a gift from a man. So it’s possible that Ruth liked what Youth Dew stood for, as a kind of proletarian, proto-feminist symbol, not unlike Estée Lauder herself, who went from selling to her uncle’s face creams to becoming one of the major business tycoons of the 20th century.

But I suspect that Ruth wasn’t thinking about what her perfume represented or said about her—she just loved the scent. Because here’s the thing: when I was doing some research on the Bass family, I found some information that took me completely by surprise:

"The case study house #20 was originally built for Saul Bass, designer, and his wife Dr. Ruth Bass, a bio-chemist; they have three children."

Yes, besides being the mother of three—did not remember that!—Ruth had a Ph.D. in biochemistry. And that single fact forces me to completely reevaluate my memories of her. I’d been picturing a frumpy housewife taking evening classes at UCLA, when she was possibly teaching the class. And maybe my mother’s disapproval was really envy. Ruth’s husband was a famous graphic designer, while my father was only successful locally, and Ruth herself had a career of her own, something my mother always wanted but was never able to achieve.

But as so often happens with the first wives of famous men, especially those who were married to the men before they achieved major success, Ruth did not stay married to Saul. By 1961 he was married someone else, his assistant Elaine Makatura, who became his creative partner. So maybe the nights Ruth spent at our house were some kind experiment in separation or a night off for newly single mother. Because—except for the occasional mention of her in reference to the house that was designed for her and Saul—Ruth seems to have been whitewashed out of his Saul’s life. I read this obituary of Saul:

"Bass died in Los Angeles on April 25, 1996, of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. His wife-and creative partner, Elaine Makatura, survived him. The couple had been married for 35 years; they had two children, Jennifer and Jeffrey. "

His three children with Ruth were not even mentioned, much less Ruth herself. But while I can’t swear those children actually existed, I can swear that Ruth did. Just one sniff of Youth Dew and I’m a child again, and Ruth, in her crisp shirt and full skirt, is walking down the stairs into the living room, smiling warmly and saying something affectionate to me in her brash New York accent. And I’m utterly confounded by the combination of her no-nonsense appearance and the drop-dead sensuality of her perfume.

How is it that even though a perfume is an evanescent thing—a wave of molecules that wafts through the air—it can outlive a person? And why did it happen that the perfume of one dying woman would bring another dead woman back to me, in all her mystery and complexity?

NOTE: If you’d like to find out what happened to Ruth after her divorce, I have an update because a friend of mine did a lot of research on her and found out some surprising things. See Choosing a New Ending for “The Wife”.