Tuberose (1932)

Elizabeth Arden’s Tuberose, introduced in 1932—sometimes printed as Tube Rose—took its name from one of perfumery’s most sumptuous flowers. The tuberose is not a rose at all, but a tall, tuber-bearing plant with waxy white blossoms, then known botanically as Polianthes tuberosa (now generally classified as Agave amica). Its name comes through the French tubéreuse, meaning “tuberous” or “having tubers,” a reference to the swollen underground roots from which the plant grows. It is pronounced TOO-ber-rohz. The word itself suggests white petals opening at dusk, formal bouquets, moonlit gardens, and a kind of controlled, almost dangerous femininity: innocent in color, but opulent and deeply sensual in perfume.

Native to Mexico, tuberose was long cultivated for its fragrant flowers in warm regions including India, Egypt, Morocco, and southern France. The blossoms are especially fragrant after opening and are too delicate to yield their character well through ordinary steam distillation. Historically, they were treated by enfleurage: freshly picked flowers were repeatedly laid upon a layer of purified fat, which slowly absorbed their perfume; the scented pomade was then washed with alcohol to produce an absolute. By the early twentieth century, solvent extraction had become increasingly important: the flowers yielded a waxy concrete, from which the perfumer obtained tuberose absolute. It was—and remains—an expensive material, because vast quantities of flowers are needed for a very small yield. 

To smell tuberose is to encounter a white flower with shadows. Its first impression can be creamy, sweet, and almost dewy, but beneath that lies a dense, indolic richness—sometimes likened to warm skin, ripe fruit, honey, crushed petals, or a faintly animalic breath. Natural tuberose also has green, camphoraceous, spicy, lactonic, and faintly coconut-like facets. That complexity made it an ideal emblem for Arden’s perfume: not merely pretty, but memorable; not simply feminine, but feminine with force. The period language describing it as “the exotic unforgettable beauty of its namesake” and suited to women of “strong personality” was carefully chosen. Tuberose could convey self-possession, magnetism, and emotional depth while preserving an outward image of refinement—“substance of the soul” rather than overt seduction.

Its 1932 launch belongs to the late Art Deco era, during the Great Depression. Fashion had shifted away from the rigid, boyish outline of the 1920s toward long, fluid, body-conscious silhouettes: bias-cut gowns, draped crepe, satin evening dresses, fur wraps, sleek waved hair, and the glamorous influence of early Hollywood. Daywear remained tailored and practical, but evening fashion became softer, more sensual, and more polished. Perfume was an essential finishing touch—a private luxury that could make even a restrained wardrobe feel richly individual. The perfume industry itself was producing increasingly elaborate, long-lasting compositions, while Art Deco bottles and presentation made fragrance a visible part of the dressing table and the modern woman’s identity. 

For a woman in 1932, a perfume called Tuberose would have immediately promised a luxurious white-floral scent, but also carried the flower’s established associations with voluptuousness and forbidden pleasure. Victorian flower symbolism had already given tuberose a reputation for sensual excess, and by the 1930s that suggestion could be framed in the more modern language of individuality, glamour, and “personality.” Arden’s title was therefore direct, evocative, and commercially astute: it named a familiar flower, yet one whose scent implied costly natural materials, exotic cultivation, and an unmistakably womanly presence.

Elizabeth Arden’s Tuberose was not an isolated novelty; tuberose perfumes had been popular since the nineteenth century, and many perfume houses worked from broadly recognizable floral structures, adapting them with their own accents. By 1932, however, Arden’s interpretation was thoroughly contemporary. Its sparkling aldehydic-citrus opening, creamy indolic floral heart, powdery violet-orris shading, and warm oriental base of vanilla, balsams, coumarin, musk, ambergris, and benzyl benzoate place it among the era’s sophisticated floral-oriental perfumes. It followed the prevailing taste for abstract, polished aldehydic florals and sumptuous amber bases—an environment that included the enduring influence of Chanel No. 5 and Guerlain’s Shalimar—yet its emphasis on narcotic tuberose gave it a more concentrated white-floral personality. Rather than inventing a wholly new genre, Arden refreshed a well-loved perfume type with the fuller diffusion, synthetic radiance, and velvety persistence expected of a 1930s luxury fragrance.

Launch:

In 1933, Harper’s Bazaar introduced Elizabeth Arden’s newest perfumes—Moon Moss, Ma Rue, and Tube Rose—with an unusually emphatic endorsement. Arden was already famous as a beauty authority, yet the magazine took care to say that her perfumes deserved to be judged on their own merits: they were “very beautiful,” and worthy of a professional perfumer’s pride. The remark places the fragrances in an important light. Arden was not presenting perfume as a minor adjunct to creams, cosmetics, or the salon; she was establishing a serious, cultivated perfume wardrobe under her own name.

Of the three, Moon Moss was said to be Miss Arden’s own favorite. Its freshness made it seem broadly adaptable—appropriate, in the magazine’s view, for “any person or occasion.” Ma Rue received much the same appraisal: another versatile, polished scent whose appeal did not depend on a dramatic occasion. Tube Rose, however, was treated differently. It was the “heaviest” perfume of the trio, a word that in 1933 suggested richness, persistence, depth, and a more concentrated floral character. Its sweetness might have seemed excessive for daytime to some wearers, but for evening it was declared “ideal” and “most distinguished.” In other words, it was the perfume intended for a more formal dress, a dinner, theatre, dance, or intimate evening—when a woman wished her fragrance to be noticed and remembered.

The passage also captures how perfume was used as part of an elegant woman’s daily equipment. Arden introduced a small atomizer made simply of a rod and squeeze bulb, designed to fit directly into the perfume bottle. It allowed a woman to spray from one bottle after another, rather than needing a separate elaborate atomizer for each scent. This was practical luxury: a small, efficient accessory for the dressing table, but also an encouragement to own and wear several perfumes according to mood or occasion. The advice that a lingering scent could be cleared from the atomizer with hot water reveals a world in which fragrance was changed deliberately, like gloves, lipstick, or a hat—not necessarily worn as one fixed personal signature.

Later in 1933, Harper’s Bazaar listed a wider Arden perfume collection—La Joie, Le Rêve, L’Amour, L’Élan, Tuberose, and Moon Moss—available with an atomizer and offered across the considerable price range of $7.50 to $125. That range suggests that the line was designed for more than one customer: a comparatively accessible presentation for everyday luxury, alongside expensive deluxe versions intended as gifts, dressing-table ornaments, or statements of status. The French names gave the collection an air of Parisian sophistication, even as Elizabeth Arden represented a distinctly American form of modern beauty culture: disciplined grooming, professional cosmetics, and personal elegance made available through a recognized brand.

By 1934, Woman’s Home Companion described Arden’s perfumes as “eight odors, all equally fascinating,” naming La Joie d’Elizabeth, L’Amour, Le Rêve, L’Élan, and Tuberose among them. The wording suggests a coherent fragrance wardrobe rather than a single isolated success. Each scent offered a different emotional identity—joy, love, dream, spirit, and the lush flowering presence of tuberose—so that a woman could select a perfume as an expression of her mood or the version of herself she wished to present. Within that collection, Tuberose stood apart as the richest and most evening-oriented choice: a distinguished white-floral perfume for the woman who preferred not merely freshness or prettiness, but depth, sweetness, and a lasting impression.

Fragrance Composition:

So what does it smell like? Tuberose is classified as a rich, sweet white-floral oriental fragrance for women, centered on narcotic tuberose and softened by jasmine, ylang-ylang, Bulgarian rose, powdery violet-orris, and a subtle green-hyacinth effect. Its sparkling aldehydic citrus opening gives way to a creamy, indolic floral heart, while vanilla, balsams, coumarin, musks, ambergris, and benzyl benzoate leave a warm, velvety, softly animalic trail.

• Top notes: alcohol C-9, aldehyde C-12 (lauryl), bergamot, neroli, lemon, methyl anthranilate, heliotropin, hyacinth, lauryl acetate
• Middle notes: ethyl laurate, tuberose, Bulgarian rose, rhodinol, jasmine, ylang ylang, violet, orris, methyl para cresol
• Base notes: benzyl benzoate, benzyl alcohol, vanilla, vanillin, benzoin, benzoic acid, coumarin, musk, musk ambrette, ambergris, sandalwood, storax, Peru balsam, civet 

Scent Profile:

Elizabeth Arden’s Tuberose opens with the crystalline lift of aldehydes, a thoroughly modern flourish in a perfume otherwise built around an old-fashioned, lavish floral theme. Alcohol C-9, or nonyl alcohol, contributes a clean but faintly oily floral tone—rather like orange peel, rose petals, and warm wax viewed through a veil. Aldehyde C-12 lauric adds the more dramatic sparkle: waxy, soapy, citrusy, and almost like freshly ironed linen warmed by sunlight. Neither material is a literal flower extract; both may occur in trace amounts in nature, but were generally manufactured for perfumery. Their purpose is not to make the fragrance smell “chemical,” but to give its natural flowers brilliance, diffusion, and the glamorous polished radiance associated with 1930s aldehydic florals. Alcohol C-9 is noted for its fatty, rose-and-orange floral character, while C-12 lauric has a waxy, clean, citrus-floral profile.

The citrus materials feel less like a sharp cologne than a sheen of golden light over the flowers. Bergamot brings its elegant, bittersweet green-citrus freshness: the aromatic peel of a small Italian citrus fruit, with a faint tea-like and lavender-like refinement. Lemon is brighter and more immediate, like the fragrant oil released when one twists a fresh peel. Neroli, distilled from bitter-orange blossoms, is softer and more floral than either—honeyed, green, airy, and delicately indolic. These natural oils are reinforced by lauryl acetate, an aroma material with a creamy, waxy, subtly fruity-floral character that smooths their edges and begins to anticipate the butteriness of the tuberose heart. Methyl anthranilate supplies a strange, deliciously vivid sweetness—grape-like, orange-blossom-like, almost candied—while also deepening the natural indolic character of neroli and jasmine. Heliotropin, a laboratory-made material historically associated with heliotrope accords, gives a soft almond-vanilla, powdery blossom effect; it creates the illusion of a flower that does not yield a practical essential oil in the way rose or neroli does.

The listed hyacinth would almost certainly have been represented chiefly by an accord rather than a true hyacinth essence. Fresh hyacinth smells green, cool, watery, and intensely floral, with a faint earthy snap like stems just cut from a spring garden; its living fragrance is too delicate and complex to be captured satisfactorily as a conventional essential oil. Here, it lends a quiet green, dewy tension beneath the richer white flowers, preventing the opening from becoming merely sweet. It is a lovely example of synthetic and natural materials working together: the aromachemicals do not replace the idea of hyacinth so much as construct its elusive, fleeting presence and make it durable enough to travel through the composition.

At the center is tuberose, creamy, narcotic, and radiant: a great cluster of white petals whose sweetness is touched by green sap, warm wax, tropical fruit, and a distinctly animalic breath. It is made rounder by ethyl laurate, a waxy, petal-like ester with a mild fruity and creamy quality; it seems to give the tuberose the texture of thick, polished petals rather than simply increasing its sweetness. Ethyl laurate is described as sweet, waxy, floral, and softly creamy. Jasmine brings the heart closer to the skin, its fragrance at once luminous and sensual—tea-like, honeyed, green, and indolic. The small indolic shadows within jasmine and tuberose are crucial: they keep these flowers alive, not sterile, suggesting warm flowers breathing in the dark rather than a bouquet arranged in water.

Bulgarian rose gives the composition its poised, velvety center. Rose grown in Bulgaria’s Valley of the Roses is especially prized for the exceptional finesse of its otto: fresh and lemony at first, then full-bodied, honeyed, dewy, and softly spicy, with a remarkable depth that avoids the jammy heaviness sometimes associated with warmer-climate roses. Rhodinol, a rose-like natural fraction or isolate traditionally associated with geranium and rose materials, extends this effect with a fresh, rosy, geranium-tinged brightness. It gives the Bulgarian rose lift and helps it remain visible amid the heavier white flowers. Ylang-ylang contributes its own exotic fullness—banana-like, creamy, spicy, and solar—binding jasmine and tuberose into a lush, almost tropical floral mass.

The quieter flowers are equally important. Violet is represented in perfumery less by a literal violet-flower oil than by an accord, often built with ionone-type materials to suggest soft petals, cool sweetness, and a faintly cosmetic, lipstick-like powderiness. Orris, by contrast, is real: the fragrant material comes not from iris blossoms but from iris rhizomes, which must be dried and aged for years before their violet-like perfume develops. Its aroma is dry, buttery, rooty, silvery, and powdery—an elegant restraint against the overflowing sweetness of tuberose and ylang-ylang. Finally, p-cresol—presumably the “methyl para cresol” of the formula—appears only in a minute quantity. It is a powerful phenolic material, floral and narcissus-like at very low dilution but medicinal, leathery, and animalic when overused. Its role is to give the white-flower heart a dark, living undercurrent: the suggestion of pollen, warm stems, and the slightly dangerous realism of flowers at their fullest bloom. At low levels, p-cresol is associated with narcissus, animalic, and mimosa-like effects.

As the flowers settle, benzyl benzoate and benzyl alcohol form an almost invisible bridge between the floral heart and the lasting oriental base. Both occur naturally in floral materials, particularly jasmine and tuberose, but are also prepared for perfumery. Benzyl alcohol is soft, mildly floral, and transparent; benzyl benzoate is sweeter, balsamic, faintly medicinal, and tenacious. Together they act as fixatives, helping the volatile flower materials remain on the skin while deepening their naturally creamy, indolic character. They are among the materials that make this perfume feel seamless: not a sequence of separate notes, but a floral body that grows warmer and softer with wear.

Vanilla lends its dark, balsamic pod sweetness, with nuances of dried fruit, tobacco, and warm wood. Vanillin, whether derived from natural sources or more commonly made synthetically, isolates and amplifies vanilla’s most recognizable creamy, confectionary facet. It makes the natural vanilla more immediate and persistent, while allowing the perfumer to use less of the costly natural material. Benzoin brings a plush, almond-like resinous sweetness, almost like vanilla wrapped in incense smoke; benzoic acid adds a dry, slightly medicinal balsamic edge that keeps those sweet materials from becoming cloying. Coumarin, with its scent of new-mown hay, tonka bean, almond, and warm tobacco, extends the powdery orris and heliotropin while giving the drydown a mellow, velvety softness.

The final effect is warmed by sandalwood, whose creamy, milky, gently woody perfume gives the florals a smooth surface on which to rest. Storax adds a darker, smoky-leathery balsam, while Peru balsam supplies a richer, sweeter resinous note touched with vanilla, cinnamon, and dried fruit. The two balsams make the base feel burnished rather than merely sweet: like polished wood, old silk, and amber-colored light. Ambergris, in a historical perfume, would have offered a subtle saline, skin-warmed, radiant quality rather than an obvious marine smell; it magnifies the whole composition and gives the flowers an elusive, almost luminous diffusion.

Finally, musk, musk ambrette, and civet complete the softly animalic trail. Natural musk and civet once provided animal warmth, fur-like depth, and extraordinary persistence; in a modern reconstruction they would normally be represented by ethical synthetic alternatives. Musk ambrette was a synthetic nitro musk, prized in its day for a sweet, powdery, warm, slightly floral sensuality that made florals cling to the skin. Civet, used in minute quantity, would not read as animal odor in itself, but as a darkening stroke that makes tuberose and jasmine feel warmer, more human, and more alive. The resulting perfume is therefore not simply a soliflore of tuberose: it is a grand 1930s white-floral oriental, in which glittering aldehydes, imagined spring flowers, costly natural blossoms, and carefully chosen synthetics create a womanly scent of cream, powder, petals, resin, and skin-warmed shadow.

Bottle:

Elizabeth Arden’s Tuberose was presented in the same striking crystal cube bottle used for much of the company’s perfume line during the 1920s and 1930s. Its severe, perfectly geometric form belongs squarely to the Art Deco taste for clean lines, symmetry, and sculptural simplicity. The bottle was completed by a solid cube-shaped crystal stopper, so that every element—from base to closure—continued the same crisp architectural silhouette. It was not a romantic flacon in the old-fashioned sense, decorated with flowers, ribbons, or gilding; its luxury came from weighty crystal, proportion, and restraint.

Its most modern feature was the absence of a conventional paper label. Instead, the name was applied directly to the glass in black silkscreened serigraphy. “Elizabeth Arden” appeared horizontally near the top of one face, while the perfume name, Tuberose, was placed at the lower right. This left most of the bottle unobstructed, allowing the liquid within to become part of the design. Whether pale gold, amber, or deeper honey-colored, the perfume could glow through the crystal like a jewel, its color visible and uninterrupted rather than hidden behind printed paper. The effect was at once practical and luxurious: the bottle announced the name clearly, yet treated the fragrance itself as its chief ornament.

For a collector, that silk-screened lettering is now one of the bottle’s most vulnerable features. It lies on the outer surface of the glass and can be rubbed, dissolved, or worn away with surprisingly little effort. A surviving cube bottle with clear, complete lettering is therefore much more desirable than one that has been polished or scrubbed until its identification has faded. The safest approach is to avoid cleaning the printed panel altogether; even well-intentioned wiping can remove an original detail that cannot truly be restored.

Both the Tuberose fragrance and its crystal cube presentation were produced in France for Elizabeth Arden. That choice connected an American beauty house with the prestige, technical skill, and established supplier networks of French perfumery and glassmaking. France could provide not only the finished perfume but also refined floral extracts, aromachemicals, resins, bottles, stoppers, and specialist printing—materials and processes that made such a polished luxury object possible.

Production was discontinued around 1940 because the Second World War made that transatlantic arrangement increasingly unworkable. German occupation of France, disrupted manufacturing, shortages of raw materials, and the diversion of glass, alcohol, chemicals, shipping capacity, and labor toward wartime needs all affected perfume production. Imported perfume and packaging also faced shipping delays, insurance risks, customs restrictions, and the danger of vessels being lost or diverted at sea. Even if Arden could obtain some of the fragrance materials, the matching French crystal bottles and their specialized silkscreened decoration could no longer be reliably supplied. The discontinuation of Tuberose was therefore not simply a change in fashion or a business decision; it reflects how completely war could interrupt a perfume’s formula, manufacture, packaging, and passage from a French workshop to an American dressing table.

"Tube Rose," a perfume bottle for Elizabeth Arden, circa 1933, in clear glass, with enameled name labels, sealed in box (structure weak). Ht. 4 1/2". Photo by Rago Arts and Auction Center 

Fate of the Fragrance:

Although production of Elizabeth Arden’s Tuberose appears to have ceased around 1940, the perfume did not disappear from shops at once. Newspaper advertisements show that remaining bottles continued to be offered as late as 1944, by then at sharply reduced prices. These were almost certainly pre-war stocks already held by department stores, salons, distributors, or Arden counters—bottles made before wartime shortages and disrupted French production made replacement impossible. Their reduced prices suggest a practical effort to clear discontinued merchandise rather than introduce a newly reformulated version.

The survival of Tuberose on sale during the war gives the perfume a particularly poignant place in the Arden story. A woman purchasing one of those reduced bottles in 1944 may have been buying a small remnant of the pre-war world: French-made crystal, a substantial white-floral oriental formula, and the polished Art Deco luxury of the 1930s. What had once been positioned as an evening perfume of distinction became, for a brief period, a final opportunity to acquire a fragrance that could no longer be replenished.

After the war, Elizabeth Arden did not revive Tuberose. The interruption was permanent, rather than a temporary wartime suspension. Without a postwar reissue, later reformulation, or continued production in another bottle, the remaining pre-war and wartime-clearance bottles gradually vanished through use, evaporation, breakage, and disposal. This makes Tuberose one of the most elusive of Arden’s discontinued perfumes today: not simply an old scent, but a finite survivor of a specific French-produced, Art Deco-era chapter in the company’s history.