Eternal Perfume

Perfume has always existed. The first ones appeared shortly after the Lascaux paintings and well before the steam engine. Empires have risen and fallen, religions have disappeared, perfume is still here. The reason is simple: perfume is the primary weapon of seduction. It is what you wear when you’ve taken off everything else. When Marilyn Monroe was asked what she wore to sleep, she replied, “Three drops of Chanel N° 5.”

The business of precious scents made fortunes in ancient Greece and Renaissance Italy. Louis XIV abused perfumes to the extent that he became allergic near the end of his life, and Napoleon apparently used an entire bottle of cologne each day. But it was in the 19th century that the use of perfume became widespread throughout society, eventually becoming the daily ritual that it is today.

Early in the 20th century the great perfume houses really established themselves. Guerlain, founded in 1828, then launched Jicky, L’Heure Bleue and Mitsouko, which would become to perfume what Titian, Goya and Rembrandt are to painting. In 1904 Caron opened its doors on the Rue de la Paix, and made its mark with N’Aimez Que Moi, Tabac Blond, Narcisse Noir and the classic Pour Un Homme. In 1917 Francois Coty created Chypre – such a success that it started a whole new fragrance family, the chypres. All of Europe came to France for its perfumes. Only the English, always eccentric, preferred their own perfumes by Yardley and Floris. It is to them we can be grateful for the creation of single-note fragrances based on lavender and violet, as well as decadent creations such as the Hamman Bouquet created by William Henry Penhaligon.

After the war came the Roaring Twenties, skirts were short, Amelia Earhart flew across the Atlantic, women smoked cigarettes and took the drivers seat in their cars. Perfumes became more sophisticated and daring. In 1920 Shalimar was born, undoubtedly the most beautiful olfactory evocation of the Orient ever created. In 1921 Ernest Beaux created Chanel N°5 and with it a new measure of sales, the bottle/hour: today two bottles of N°5 are sold per minute. Patou launched Joy – supposedly the most costly perfume in the world. The art of perfume attained its heights.

But, after all that, fashion turned away from the insolent sobriety of Chanel, as well as the charms of the femme fatale. Post World War II, the mood was for forgetting – as with the fragile grace and lightness of L’Air du Temps, which Nina Ricci unveiled in 1948. Christian Dior conquered America with the New Look, and his Miss Dior was the new perfume, along with other elegant creations such as Madame Rochas, Miss Balmain, Jolie Madame and Monsieur de Givenchy.

Since then perfume and fashion have been inextricably linked. A lasting liaison, with some of the top perfumes today being those of Calvin Klein, Thierry Mugler, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Gucci, Armani and Hermes.

In the last thirty years perfume has changed along with the rest of the world. Production has been industrialized, and perfume has become increasingly available to the mass market, without losing any of its prestige. Quantities are greater, scents are more diversified to satisfy the most varied tastes. As with synthetic fabrics, synthetic fragrance molecules give fragrance creators a previously unimaginable freedom. There is no longer one fashion in fragrance, but different trends that are more or less lasting. In the 60s and 70s several mythic perfumes were born through the genius of Yves Saint Laurent: Rive Gauche, Opium, Paris. There was also Eau Sauvage from Dior, Polo Ralph Lauren, Coco from Chanel, Revlon’s Charlie, among others. But signature perfumes, unique and recognizable, gradually gave way to a “wardrobe” of multiple choices, something different for every occasion and mood.

Today, we wear fragrance as easily as a t-shirt, enjoying it for the moment as we do a chocolate éclair. It is no accident that the last few years have seen a wave of “edible” perfumes, with the scent of fruits and candies: Baby Doll Honeymoon from Saint-Laurent, Premier Figuier from l’Artisan Parfumeur, Miss Dior Chérie – and the list goes on.

The perfume of the first decades of the 21st century corresponds more than ever to an ambiance, a dream. Just listen to the names: Jardin sur le Nil, Escale à Portofino, Thé Pour Un Eté, Ombre Dans l’Eau…Perfume is a poem.

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