Question:
My Mother worked in a pharmacy in my hometown. That is where I learned to love fine men's fragrance & at a very early age would not be caught dead wearing anything common or inexpensive.
It was a fairly small town but, not a poor one & there was a demand for high end fragrance. I remember that this pharmacy carried all the Dior, Chanel, Balmain, Ricci, Desprez fragrances, among others. I remember thinking that Signoricci was much too light but, I fell in love with a scent that was hard to find even then. That scent was the elegant & rich 40 Love for gentlemen by Jean Desprez. The pharmacy only had the tester for the EDT & bottles of the aftershave. I begged & pleaded to no avail to buy the tester. The owner of the pharmacy said she couldn't sell it & wouldn't give it to me because someone might need to know what the aftershave smelled like.
I forgot about the tester & then years later when the pharmacy decided to discontinue all the top-end fragrances, I finally was able to get the bottle of 40 Love EDT! It lasted for a long time & I was able to find it again at Colonial Drug in Cambridge MA. Thank God for ebay! I found a wonderful seller who had a 6 oz. EDT spray of 40 Love, I won the bid & was sent 2 bottles!!!
I am in fragrance heaven! I also love Missoni Uomo, Opium Homme EDP & Comme des Garcons[all of them!
Honestly, I can't identify the different notes but, 40 Love is the rich Grandfather to the much lamentedly discontinued Versailles Homme. I also love eau Cendree by Jocomo & have yet to find it.
Thank you for letting go on, DarylM

Answer:
I too have been trying, mostly in vain, to cull more information about this fragrance... There's little I can find in the various guides, unfortunately. I do not know and have yet to find an "official" list of notes, nor have I been able to pin down a date of release or precisely when its manufacture was discontinued from any reliable source.
It find it to be rather a light, easy cologne to wear. It smells simple in a way - really well blended.
I smell citrus at the top, lemon to be specific, with sandalwood, musk, civet at the base. There's a green twinge to it as well, that I want to say is perhaps a droplet of galbanum, but who knows? It's a little bit spicy green, and you know, just a twinge. It's a little bit herbally-floral in part, at any rate. And, you know, it seems rather tannic like leather or suede as an overall impression on me, especially during that first phase of wear. I also pick up on something terrifically incensey in the heart notes. But the cologne is so light I fear I'm just imagining it!
Sadly, I've yet to smell the Versailles Homme. How interesting to hear that about it.
What was the 40 Love aftershave like? Was it similar to the regular fragrance, or was it made to be complimentary rather than matchy-matchy?

Answer:
I don't remember very much about the aftershave. I think it was probably meant to be worn on it's own. Back in the late 1960's to 1970's aftershave & cologne was more readily available than EDT & I don't think that anyone made an EDP for men. One interesting thing that Jean Desprez made was a perfume in the Versailles homme scent. This was only available for a very short time.

Answer:
Versailles was OUT OF THIS WORLD. Very deep, civet-y spice if I remember correctly -- very piquant and heady, yet distinctly masculine.

Answer:
I don't know it but thought I would add...
When I was a freshman in college the older, attractive woman down the hall commented repeatedly that Versailles Homme was the sexiest and most intoxicating male fragrance in the world.
When, that same year, I went to the Virgin Islands with my family I found a bottle of the hard to find juice. Over many years I used it sparingly and held onto the bottle for years knowing that I would probably never find another bottle of the stuff and the scent still permeated the bottle.
Well, I recently found two unopened bottles in boxed... one is EDT and one is EDC. Somehow, to my memory, it still smells exactly as it did then. How can that be? Is it like rum or cognac and it ages well?
Please explain and if it doesn't last forever when must I use it by?