12 replies to this topic

[milomarch]

I have been searching for years for the brand of shampoo that Bond uses--Pinaud Elixir-- with no luck. I assumed that the Pinaud company no longer makes shampoo, however, I just stumbled upon a site that carries the complete Pinaud product line, and lo and behold, they carry a Pinaud Shampoo. Granted, it is not called Elixir, but goes under the name of Pinaud Country Club Shampoo. I think this is the closest we will get today to Bond's preferred shampoo. For those of you who are interested, I would be happy to post the website address if you write to me. I would post it here, but I am not sure if that is permitted.

[Solex Agitator]

Pinaud is an old-school company that makes hair tonic, talcom, moustache wax and the like. Pinaud products are now manufactured and distributed by a company called Clubman and still bear the Pinaud name. In America, Pinaud/Clubman products can be found in most drugstores, particuarly of the older Mom and Pop variety. While I am unfamiliar with their shampoo, I actually purchase their Virgin Island Bay Rum from time to time. It is an old-school cologne of sorts that I remember being available in the locker room of the golf club I grew up playing as a youth. Hope this helps.

Edited by Solex Agitator, 25 August 2006 - 09:53 AM.

[MarcAngeDraco]

I have been searching for years for the brand of shampoo that Bond uses--Pinaud Elixir-- with no luck. I assumed that the Pinaud company no longer makes shampoo, however, I just stumbled upon a site that carries the complete Pinaud product line, and lo and behold, they carry a Pinaud Shampoo. Granted, it is not called Elixir, but goes under the name of Pinaud Country Club Shampoo. I think this is the closest we will get today to Bond's preferred shampoo. For those of you who are interested, I would be happy to post the website address if you write to me. I would post it here, but I am not sure if that is permitted.

Milomarch, welcome to CBn!!

You can post a link to the website, that's no problem.

[milomarch]

Thanks Marc Ange. For those who might be interested in ordering a bottle of Pinaud Clubman's Country Club Shampoo (the only shampoo Pinaud still makes I believe), you can find it here: http://www.ebarbersh...psite/club.html
This is extremely hard to find and I doubt anyone will find it on the shelf of a store.

[Jim French]

The brand who made Pinaud

[MkB]

For collectors: I've found this item on eBay, an old bottle of Pinaud elixir shampoo

http://cgi.ebay.co.u...ME:B:SS:FR:1123

It ends on October 12th 2009 at 11:07 BST. Good luck if you want to bid, and if you win, please share the photos here

[DAN LIGHTER]

Did Bond wear a bit of slap ever?

[Byron]

For collectors: I've found this item on eBay, an old bottle of Pinaud elixir shampoo

http://cgi.ebay.co.u...ME:B:SS:FR:1123

It ends on October 12th 2009 at 11:07 BST. Good luck if you want to bid, and if you win, please share the photos here

There was a Dutch site that up until a few months ago carried the original French made Pinaud Elixir Quinine Shampoo that Fleming wrote about, in glass bottles! It was very reasonably priced, available in 200 or 400 ml. It was old stock from the 70's and 80's. For pictures of the bottle and packaging, go to the James Bond Lifestyle website.

Unfortunately i just received an email from the owner of the site telling me that it was all sold out and it was the last of the lot he had. This will be extremely hard to find now, a bottle or two may turn up on Ebay sometime (but have seen nothing yet).
The existing Clubman shampoo is apparently nothing like the original quinine one.

As for the Guerlain Fleur des Alpes soap also mentioned by Fleming, it was discontinued by Guerlain a long time ago. Never seen images of the actual soap or packaging but some reviews i have read state that it was a most tryly luxurious and wonderfully scented soap. Once again have never seen it turn up on Ebay.

Finally Lentheric aftershave lotion. After some research it appears that the company once merged with Yardley and since the 70's has been continuously sold off or merged with other companies, meaning that the Lentheric of today bears no resemblence to the one in the novels. Vintage ads are for usually available on Ebay but as for the real aftershave lotion, haven't seen any.

It is a great shame that 3 of the branded products as written about by Fleming in the Bond novels are no longer available. In addition due to the consumable nature of toiletries it is unlikely that these will turn up on auction sites. I'm sure many of us simply for the sake of curiosity would have enjoyed bringing a little bit of affordable Bond lifestyle into our lives or that of our special ones.

If anyone knows more, please add to this info.

[DAN LIGHTER]

A lot of this is in the other thread started by Zencat in Higsons area, Maybe a merge is possable? I pasted a link for the aftershave FLORIS No89, which is still avalible to purchase at £45 via the offical FLORIS website. Would love to know what it smells like.

FLORIS No89
http://www.jamesbond...c...=ac&g=ac009

Pinaud Elixer Shampoo
http://www.jamesbond...c...=ac&g=ac015

[danslittlefinger]

A little 2002 write up from the Guardian:

Licence to sell

John Mullan deconstructs Ian Fleming's James Bond series. Week three: brands

http://www.guardian....guardianreview6

When Bond first enters From Russia with Love, it is with an assertion of his tastes. We are to understand that he knows what he likes. His "treasured Scottish housekeeper", May, hands him a tray with his breakfast and the Times, "the only paper Bond ever read". Why should we be told this as almost the first indication of his tastes or opinions? In a different kind of novel it would signify that he was reactionary or narrow-minded. Here it means that he is an exacting man, unswayed by fashion.

The newspaper is the first of the novel's brands. Soon Bond's breakfast is being itemised in a manner that assures us of his qualities of character. Brands mark decisiveness and sagacity. Once Bond has discovered what is best, he never veers. When in London, his breakfast is "always the same": coffee from De Bry in New Oxford Street, brewed in an American Chemex, drunk from Minton china; toast with Norwegian heather honey from Fortnum's; a single brown egg, from a French Marans hen. Even the chicken sounds like a luxury brand.

As he travels, the brands vary, signifiers of cosmopolitan choosiness. In From Russia with Love he goes to Turkey, where he smokes delicious Diplomate cigarettes and drinks Kavaklidere with his first Turkish meal (he knows it is "a rich coarse burgundy like any other Balkan wine"). Other novels feature a huge variety of wines and champagnes; only in the films does he stick to vodka martini, "shaken not stirred". The brand names are also there for the novels' machines. Bond cannot board a plane without remarking its exact make and specifications. His car is a Continental Bentley - "the 'R' type chassis with the big 6 engine and a 13:40 back-axle ratio".

Fleming originated this tactic. Now we are habituated to novelists' use of brand labels, often lazily, to persuade us of the credibility of a character, or a way of life. Some of it bolsters what I have heard called "recognition fiction": novels whose credibility requires the readers to recognise a lifestyle that they share. Brands are key signifiers here. But Bond's brands are different. They constitute a language that would scarcely have been more foreign to Fleming's first readers than it is now. They are calculated to intrigue a British audience that, in 1957 when From Russia with Love was first published, had only recently struggled out of postwar austerity. As the Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell said at the time: "The combination of sex, violence, and alcohol and - at intervals - good food is, to one who lives a circumscribed life as I do, irresistible."

Our new age of novelistic product placement is represented with satirical excess by the pursuit of Fleming's device in Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho (1991). This novel's psychopathic yuppie narrator, Patrick Bateman, cannot separate character from object of consumption. "Courtney opens the door and she's wearing a Krizia cream silk blouse and Krizia rust tweed skirt and silk-satin d'Orsay pumps from Manolo Blahnik." There is a kind of absurd poetry to it. Even in solitude, Bateman clutches at his brands. A visit to his own bathroom becomes a materialistic hymn. "I stand in front of a chrome and acrylic Washmobile bathroom sink - with soap dish, cup holder, and railings that serve as towel bars, which I bought at Hastings Tile ... Then I squeeze Rembrandt on to a faux-tortoiseshell toothbrush."

Fleming also enjoys luxurious bathrooms, like the one in Dr No's lair, where Bond finds himself comforted with just the right products. "There was everything in the bathroom - Floris Lime bath essence for men and Guerlain bathcubes for women... The soap was Guerlain's Sapoceti, Fleurs des Alpes." Yet we know that all this, down to the Lentheric after-shave lotion, is to soften Bond before the kill. The luxury products are seductive, but they are tricks of the villain's trade.

Bond is an epicure, for sure, but one who must finally escape temptation. "The blubbery arms of the soft life had Bond around the neck and they were slowly strangling him", we are told at the opening of From Russia with Love. All those brands can best be savoured by the man who is not beguiled by them.

[DAN LIGHTER]

I have FLORIS No89 on today after finding a supplier. I must admit I am surprised that it's Bonds choice of aftershave. Surprised he wore any at all with all that smoking. Must have smelt him a mile off.

Anyway, it smells quite feminine, my wife thought it was perfume. It's got a floral scent mixed with talcum powder and a bit of wood chippings with underlying hints of peppermint and vanilla, and has a sting in the tale. I wont drink it next time. Smells nice though. Quite an old scent compared to modern day aftershaves, but very classy. I might buy some once the tester in the shop is empty.

[darkpath]

Has anyone confirmed that Pinaud definitely is not producing the elixir shampoo any longer and if so, what year they stopped making it? I don't speak, read, or write any French, so writing them is problematic for me.

As a tangent, what would an 89 year old literary Bond use if, in fact, the Pinaud elixir shampoos is simply no longer available?

[zencat]

Has anyone confirmed that Pinaud definitely is not producing the elixir shampoo any longer and if so, what year they stopped making it? I don't speak, read, or write any French, so writing them is problematic for me.

As a tangent, what would an 89 year old literary Bond use if, in fact, the Pinaud elixir shampoos is simply no longer available?

Check this out, darkpath.

http://www.jamesbond...c...=ac&g=ac015