Calvin Klein launched Eternity in August 1988, three years after Obsession. Sophia Grojsman, of IFF, composed its white floral bouquet, heightened with spicy, woody and green notes, which the house links to a wedding band engraved “Eternity” given by Calvin Klein to his wife. Christy Turlington, photographed by Bruce Weber, was its first face.
For Elena Vosnaki of Perfume Shrine, Eternity is a soapy rose peppered with carnation, the emblem of a very American cleanliness; Luca Turin, who sees in it a “loud rose,” judges it a copy of a model that did not deserve one.
Olfastory’s review
A loud rose
On February 12, 2011, Elena Vosnaki devoted a review of the original version to Perfume Shrine. She agrees with Luca Turin, for whom Eternity is a “loud rose”: peppery notes of spicy flowers, such as carnation, sprinkled over an intensely soapy rose.
She highlights the share of Iso E Super, 11.7% of the 1988 formula, and the overdosed synthetic musks, the mark of a perfumer who readily pares a formula down to a few emphatic accords. In her view, Eternity no longer quite smells like Eternity since those doses were lowered.
A fragrance of its time
She places the fragrance in its time: after the carnal desire of Obsession, Calvin Klein anticipated the 1990s retreat into the cocoon and the family, with a tame, “clean” advertising she links to the AIDS years.
Luca Turin, in his guide, gives it three stars while seeing in it the copy of a fragrance not worth copying, Guerlain’s Jardins de Bagatelle, according to the blog Australian Perfume Junkies, which quotes him.