June 29, 2025 • 59 mins
Have you ever wondered how France became the world’s perfume capital?
In “The Story of Perfume: A Journey Through France's Luxurious Past,” host Annie Sargent and guest Elyse Rivin from Toulouse Guided Walks take you on a fragrant journey through French history. They explore how perfume evolved from smoky rituals and religious ceremonies to the luxury bottles we see today. You will learn how Grasse became the heart of perfume making and why Chanel No. 5, Shalimar, and Poison became iconic scents tied to France.
Listen to the episode ad-free to travel back in time through the scents of France!
Annie and Elyse share stories about Catherine de’ Medici bringing her personal perfumer to France, the smelly days at Versailles when perfume was used to cover the lack of bathing, and how Napoleon loved Eau de Cologne so much he used it daily. Discover how the French revolution impacted perfume makers, how the Guerlain family shaped perfume history, and how synthetic fragrances changed the industry.
If you are planning a trip to France, Annie and Elyse suggest several places you can visit to enjoy this history in real life.
This episode is perfect for travelers interested in French culture, perfume lovers, and anyone curious about the unique stories that shaped France. Subscribe to the Join Us in France Travel Podcast to get weekly episodes that bring France to life with history, culture, and practical travel tips for your next adventure.
Listen to this episode to add a touch of scent and story to your France travel plans and discover why perfume remains one of the country’s most luxurious traditions.
Table of Contents for this Episode
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:15):
This is Join Us in France, episode552, cinq cent cinquante deux.
Bonjour, I'm Annie Sargent, and Join Usin France is the podcast where we take
a conversational journey through thebeauty, culture, and flavors of France.
Today, I bring you a greatconversation with Elyse Rivin of
Toulouse Guided Walks about therich history of perfume in France.
(00:40):
Discover how fragrances evolvedfrom ancient rituals to modern
luxury and why perfume remainsan iconic part of French culture.
You'll learn about the surprisingorigins of perfume in France,
influential figures, and thetimeless allure of French perfumes,
and how also you can enjoy all ofthat on your next trip to France.
(01:03):
This podcast runs on chocolatine,caffeine, and the support
of lovely humans like you.
You book itinerary consults, takemy VoiceMap tours, ride shotgun
in my electric car, come to thebootcamp, or slip me a few Euros
on Patreon, and I love you for it.
Want to keep me going and skip the ads?
(01:23):
There's a link for that in the show notes.
And for all of my services, headto joinusinfrance.com/boutique.
And Merci.
Want all the links and thefull episode transcript?
You'll find everything you need onthe page that lists all episodes by
month at joinusinfrance.com/episodes.
(01:46):
And if you'd like a handy summary ofthe conversation with all the useful
links, subscribe to the newsletterat joinusinfrance.com/newsletter.
It's the best way to stay in the loop.
There will not be a magazine part of thepodcast today because this recording ran
long, but I do want to send my thanks anda shout out to a new patron: David Kelly.
(02:10):
To join this wonderfulcommunity of Francophiles, go to
patreon.com/JoinUs and to supportElyse go to patreon.com/Elysart.
(02:33):
Bonjour, Elyse.
Bonjour, Annie.
We have a fun topic today, weare going to talk about the
history of perfume in France.
It's a big part of our national,I don't know, national...
Identity?
Yes.
Yes, it is.
You have the right words.
I have the right words, yes, this isgoing to be a fun... I'm so excited,
(02:56):
this is a very fun topic that I haveactually wanted to do for quite a while.
Two things made me think of this.
One was, of course, the fact that lots oftourists, one of the things that they buy
to take home, as a souvenir of France,besides the bags, you know, Vuitton
and all that kind of stuff, is perfume.
So perfume is very muchassociated with France.
(03:19):
And also several years ago, I wasteaching a class about European
culture to students from Asia.
A lot of them were from India and thenother, Indonesia, places like that.
At the beginning of the class, I askedthem what they associated with France.
Sure, yeah.
And aside from football, or soccer, thenext thing that came up was perfume.
(03:42):
How interesting.
And I went, "Oh, okay." I mean, Iknew that there was a long history of
perfume in association with France,and of course we have Dior and Chanel,
and Chanel No 5 and all of that.
But then it made me think, "Oh, what isthe history really of perfume in France?"
Since you've mentioned that we'regoing to do this episode, I've paid
(04:05):
more attention to this and there isdefinitely a lot to this, so it'll be
very interesting to hear the stories.
Yes, they're wonderful stories.
And you know how I love to tell stories.
So I know that you don't like towear perfume, but what do you think
is the difference between, forinstance, an eau de cologne, which
is basically generic, and an eaude toilette and an eau de parfum?
(04:29):
Okay.
I'm really an ignoramus when it comes tothese things, but I think eau de parfum
is something you would use very sparingly,because it has a very strong scent.
Eau de cologne is more like somethingyou would put around your neck or
something, but you would put moreof it, you would use more of it
(04:49):
because it's less concentrated.
What was the one in the middle?
Eau de... I don't know.
Okay.
Well, you're pretty good.
Uh-huh.
That's pretty good.
Yeah.
Oh, good.
In fact, it's a trap question.
It's a piège question becauseeau de cologne is actually
a little bit different, butit's a question of dilution.
It's a question of intensity ofthe amount of actual molecules of
(05:12):
perfume that are in the solution.
Because these are all solutions.
Eau de cologne has a separate history,which I'll talk about when we talk about
the evolution of how it came about.
But basically we're talking about degreesof concentration of the, what they call
the head notes, which create perfume.
They get more and more concentratedand therefore more and more expensive.
(05:35):
Okay, that makes sense.
And honestly, what I didn't know,because I'm very naive about a lot of
this stuff, especially when it comesto luxury goods, is that even the most
concentrated perfume, we're talking aboutthe incredibly expensive things, are
never more than 40% essence of perfume.
Okay.
And that is enough to make it strong.
(05:56):
Yes, when I was younger, I wouldoccasionally wear perfume, and
the one I liked was called Poison.
Oh.
But I don't remember who made it.
I'm not sure.
I think Dior, but I'm not sure.
I remember the shape of the bottle.
It was this kind ofround, very purple bottle.
I remember the bottle, but I don'tremember who made it, but it... And
(06:20):
I didn't wear it every day, you know,it was something like if I was going
out or something, I would put some on.
And then at one point I kindof stopped, I don't know why.
Yeah.
Well, I think me too.
I think it was a period, maybeit's a certain age, I don't know,
that people were wearing perfumeall the time and then stopped.
And now people wear... itstill sells a huge amount.
(06:41):
I mean, look at all thestores that sell perfume.
But I think that there's a differencein the kind of fragrances that are the
most popular except for one or two.
I mean, honestly, Chanel's No 5 isstill the world's most sold perfume
and has been for 100 years, basically.
And it has a very distinctkind of fragrance.
I mean, you can tell whensomeone is wearing Chanel No 5.
(07:04):
Oh, we'll talk about Chanel later on.
But what's really interestingis... Yes, and I wore Shalimar,
which is by Guerlain, you know, one ofthe big, big perfume houses, and it's
very... I didn't know, but now havingread all this about the names and the
way you can describe them, Chanel No5 is actually a floral fragrance, and
(07:24):
Shalimar is an oriental fragrance.
Oh my God.
You are so exotic, Elyse.
It's ombre and it's... And I can...Now that I think about it, I go,
"Oh yeah, that was definitely myperiod," to do things like that.
Yes.
So let's talk a little bit about thehistory of perfume and why it is in
fact associated so very, very closely.
(07:45):
And maybe less so now actually,now that we have international
perfume houses that are connectedwith fashion among other things.
I think of Kenzo, of course,and lots of fabrication.
There's lot of perfumes being madeby designers in other countries.
But certainly, starting in theMiddle Ages and up through, into
the end of the 20th century,France was the capital of perfume.
(08:09):
Yeah.
Well, and honestly, if you go tothe duty-free stores, they sell it.
I mean, they have a lot ofchoices, options for perfume still.
Still, yes.
Yeah, it's... So they mustbe selling a fair bit.
Oh, they sell.
It sells everywhere.
I mean, it's really a multi-billiondollar industry to sell perfume.
(08:31):
I guess it's because itmakes such a good gift?
It does, except that sometimes, how doyou know what perfume to get somebody?
That's the hard part, you know?
I mean, you have to kind of knowwhat people are like to know what
kind of fragrance they might like.
Well, if you go to one of these storesthat we're going to mention, then
you can try different things and...
(08:51):
You can.
I went with my sister-in-law to theFragonard store near the Opera House,
very close to the Opera House inParis, and we were both very happy
to look at the displays and whatever,but there were a lot of things we
could smell and test and, it was fun.
And I was very surprised, she wantedto find a specific kind of patchouli.
(09:12):
Yeah.
And to me, like, "Run away.Patchouli does not smell good."
But I didn't tell her this.
Everybody their perfume.
Yeah, but... No.
Tastes like skunk smell.
I don't know.
Oh, no, no.
But you know what?
(09:32):
There is an adage, andI really believe it.
I've read this and I'vehad people say this to me.
And I've been to the Fragonard museumstore near the opera house many times.
They say that if a perfume lasts a verylong time on your body, it's for you.
That there's a chemical reactionbetween... it could be an eau de
toilette or it could be an eaude parfum, it doesn't have to
(09:53):
be the most concentrated form.
A few months ago, we were in Grenada I wasin Grenada with my husband, and there was
a perfume store that they were advertisingthat they make their own perfumes, and I
went in, it was lovely, and I was testingall these things and sniffing them all.
And I like things now that are alittle bit light and floral, and one
of them said it had rose in it, and Ithought, "Hmm, that one might be nice."
(10:14):
So I bought a little, I don't even knowwhat the word is in English anymore, a
flacon, you know, a little spray bottle.
But it's an eau de parfum andI brought it home, and to my
great surprise and chagrin, itdoesn't last on my skin at all.
It's like I put it on and it's gone!
And I realized... I found an oldperfume, an old eau de parfum that
(10:37):
somebody had given me from anotherthing that was actually from one of
the Fragonard perfumes, and all Ineed is to put an infinitely tiny drop
on, and it lasts for all day long.
Interesting.
So the magic is finding your perfume.
Right.
And I think it would be fun, youknow, if you're in Paris and you
(10:58):
have the time, to go experiment.
Yep.
And they give you these littlepieces of paper that you can spray a
little bit on that, and smell that,instead of trying to find new bits
of skin that don't have anything yet.
Yes, after a while it gets to beabsolutely overwhelming, you know?
It's also true that there are somepeople who are allergic to perfume.
And I've been on tours where I've takenpeople around, and there would be always
(11:21):
one or two people who don't want to goin because they can't stand perfume.
Makes sense.
It is like that.
I mean, some people reallycan't stand it, you know?
So there's a fine line between"Oh, that's a nice smell," and,
"Oh, that's Pepe Le Pew," you know?
Yes.
It's like, ugh.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And there's many degrees these days of,you know, in between the two, you know?
And then of course now wehave fragrances for men.
(11:44):
Now in the Middle Ages,that was the norm also.
But in terms of modern times,you know, there are a lot of men
who use aftershave that has aperfume to it and things like that.
But the whole world has changed inthe last 40, 50 years, and so there
are lots of fragrances that arenow considered to be androgynous.
(12:04):
I think for men, when I notice that aguy is nicely dressed and is wearing some
sort of scent, they really stand out.
Yeah.
They stand out like wellput together, you know?
To me, that's what it means.
Like someone who takes care ofthemselves and cleans up really nice.
That's what it means.
Well, there you are.
(12:25):
Yeah.
You guys listening out there.
So it would make the guymore appealing, I think.
Okay.
She has said it.
Annie has said it.
There you are.
But women wearing perfumeis less noticeable, perhaps
because I don't notice women?
But also because it's more common.
Yes, but it is true that there are placeswhere people overdose on the perfume they
(12:49):
wear, and it gets to be overwhelming.
And that's not particularlypleasant either, you know?
I mean, it's interesting.
It's a very... to me, perfumeis a very private affair.
It's like I, if I put any on, it'sjust after my shower, you know?
And then it's not so much forother people, so that me, I
can smell it myself, you know?
"Oh, I feel good this way." You know?
That kind of thing.
(13:09):
Yeah.
Makes sense.And there's also alot of people nowadays who like to
experiment and make their own scents.
That's a new area of, kind of,not a tour, but an activity you
can do when you visit France, soperhaps we'll discuss those as well.
Okay, so let's talk a little bitabout the background of all of this.
(13:30):
And Oh, here's my other question.
Oh, I'm so filled withgood questions today.
What does the word perfumeactually come from?
This one surprised me.
Let's see how good you are.
Parfum, parfum.
It actually comes from two words inLatin, per and fumare, which means to
smoke, because the oldest in antiquity,in terms of the ancient Egyptians
(13:56):
and the Assyrians and all of thosepeople, they smoked pieces of what are
now mirrh and all the things that wewould use for, what do you call those?
The...
Incense.
Incense.
Thank you.
Incense.
And it was the smell of the smokethat was the first form of perfume.
And when the Romans discovered all ofthis, because basically, of course, they
(14:20):
bathed a lot, but it was by conqueringparts of the Middle East and Egypt and all
of this that they started picking up allof these things that could make incense.
The words actually come from theidea that this was smoked at first.
Interesting.
Interesting.
Yeah.
And I would never have guessed thatin a million years, so there you are.
I thought it had something to do withsmell, but no, it has to do with smoke.
(14:42):
Interesting.
But, you know, I've noticedalso that at Notre Dame, they
burn an awful lot of incense.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, of course, I went back so manytimes when I was writing my latest
tour, and I, since it included theinside, I went inside a lot, and
very often, it was like, oof, thesmell is like, it's kind of strong.
(15:05):
Yeah.
Well, it's interesting because the realhistory of the beginning of what we would,
could generically, I'm going to callperfume, you know, because it's substances
that have fragrance is more correctprobably, but let's just say perfume.
But it really began, in terms ofour history as humans, it began
probably 6,000 years ago as somethingto do in special ceremonies.
(15:28):
So it has come down, for instance, thefact that there's incense in the churches.
In the Orthodox Church, there'sa lot more incense actually than
in the Roman Catholic Church.
In Buddhist temples, they burn incense.
In Hindu temples, they burn incense.
So it's very interesting that thewhole idea of having some kind of
special fragrance is in fact connectedwith special ceremonies, the idea
(15:53):
that you communicate somehow withthe gods by having these scents.
That's actually fascinatingif you think about it.
It's a whole new dimension thatwe clearly understand as humans.
I think dogs smell even better than we do.
But the thing is, dogs like to puttheir nose into things, which we don't.
(16:15):
Exactly.
But if you walk into a house andit smells like nice food, it's
very pleasant, and yeah, scentis a big part of our perception.
It's a very big part of our perception.
And what happened was the, I thinkthat the Romans and the Greeks when
they went and basically conqueredEgypt, they discovered, I'm not sure
(16:36):
about the ceremonies in Syria andplaces like that, but the Egyptians,
when they did the embalming, theyperfumed the cloth that was used for
the embalming so that the people goingto the next life would smell nice.
And it was partly for preservationbecause obviously they used certain
things, certain fragrances and certainoils that were helpful in keeping
(16:58):
the body intact, and also the linenthat they used to wrap the bodies.
But it was very important that everythingsmell good even for the next life in
the next world, wherever that was.
And so a lot of these practices weretaken back to Europe, and also over the
centuries with the, and the discoveryof the Silk Route going to China,
(17:19):
going to the Asian countries, a lotof things were taken back to Europe
to be used for making fragrances.
And of course, the Romans rubbedperfumed oil on their bodies and
they bathed literally every day.
I mean, it was just anobsession with the Romans.
So the whole idea of something perfumedthat you put on your body, that you
(17:41):
keep on your clothes in this lifeor in another really goes back as
far as our notion of civilization.
It's really fascinating, you know?
Yeah, and a lot of these scents youcan also buy them as a hand cream
or as a body lotion, you know?
So if you want to do it that way,you could smell nice that way.
(18:01):
I would bet that's what alot of people do, really.
Oh, I think that that is what alot of people do, and ironically,
it's kind of going back to itsorigins because for centuries
that wasn't really what was done.
There were lots of oils that weremade, you know, like essential oils
that were burned and things like that.
But it is true that now we have sucha wide range of products that have
(18:21):
perfumed or scented parts to them,I love my lavender soap, you know?
I mean, I just, you know?
Yeah.
Yeah.
But lavender soap doesn't smell that long.
It doesn't linger.
No.
It doesn't linger, and that's thebig magic of what really is perfume.
So, of course, the Italians... What'sinteresting to know, and I didn't know,
was that until the middle of the MiddleAges, let's in vague we're large chunks
(18:45):
of time here, it was Venice that was thecenter of anything connected to perfume.
And for the simple reason that they hadmastered all of the trade routes going
to Asia and the Middle East, and theywere at the forefront of all of this
with their ships, and you know, the MarcoPolo, and the Silk Route, and all of that.
So, for a very long time, they were reallyconsidered to be the center of all of
(19:08):
this, because the word perfume was notsynonymous with but very much associated
with the Orient, which is of course theold word for talking about the Asian,
and Middle Eastern parts of the world.
And they used incense, they used myrrh,they used all these things that had
not been available to the Europeans.
And so what happened was that thesecond group of people that started
(19:30):
using perfume and discovering newspices and scents was the Spanish.
As they navigated around the worldand they went to the Americas and
all these places, they brought backvanilla, and they brought back all
these things that, of course, havealso now started... Certainly now, I
mean, my mom, my dear mom was someonewho loved perfumes that had vanilla.
(19:51):
I can't ... I lovevanilla in my ice cream.
I can't stand vanilla in my perfume.
I know it's just- ... you know, weeach have our scents that we really
could deal with and the ones we can't.
But this was a new thing to bring back allof these spices that could be added into.
And so, the second group of peoplebasically was the Spanish, and then...
then lo and behold, we get to the endof the Middle Ages in terms of perfume,
(20:17):
and civilization, and sophistication,and this is where the French come in.
Okay.
So like 1500s?
Yeah.
We're talking about the very end of the1400s and the beginning of the 1500s.
And basically what happens is thatthe Italians, who were basically the
first to create this period of timethat we like to call the Renaissance.
(20:39):
They, of course, were extremelysophisticated, they had inherited
all of these notions of bathing andperfuming and being very well-dressed
and all of this is... this is not today.
I mean, this has been for centuriesthat it's the Italians that have
known for doing all of this beforeit was actually a united Italy.
And what happens is you haveat the same time two things.
(21:02):
The first is that you have the FrenchKing François I who winds up being
taken prisoner in Northern Italy.
We'll just for the sake of this tocall it Northern Italy, near Milan.
And he discovers everything Renaissance,you know, he discovers the architecture,
he discovers the painting, andamong other things he discovers the
(21:22):
way of living using a fork to eatfood, the clothing that they wore,
hm, and the perfumes, all of this.
And he thought that they were,and probably was right, the most
civilized people in the world.
Mm-hmm.
And he discovered allthat while a prisoner?
While a prisoner, yes.
Okay.
You know, a king being a prisoner in theearly 1500s was basically it was like,
(21:44):
"Okay, you stay in this city where youcan't leave," but he could do whatever
he wanted to do inside, you know.
I mean, he...
Ah, okay.
You know, this is not likebeing in a little cell in the
Tower of London, you know.
Poor old Mary Queen of Scots.
And when he was finally liberatedand went back to France, he
decided that it would be a goodidea to marry off his second son.
(22:06):
It was not his first son because hisfirst son had to marry someone who
was destined to be a queen, that is adaughter of a queen, of a king or queen.
But he decided to marry offhis second son Henry II to the
daughter of one of the Medicis.
And of course, the Medicis were oneof the most important, noble, wealthy,
powerful families in Northern Italy.
(22:28):
Catherine de' Medici was the daughter ofthe Duke of Urbino, and of Florence, and
of course, was extremely wealthy and camefrom this long line of prestigious people.
And she was actually, I didn't knowthis, but she was actually half French.
Her mother was from Auvergne.
She was a member of thenobility from Auvergne.
But she was, of course, broughtup in Italy and was extremely
(22:50):
well-educated and extremely refined.
Now, if you look at portraits ofCatherine de Medici in the Louvre,
oh my God, she looks like the worstsevere high school teacher you would
ever have in your life, you know.
She doesn't look like fun.
No.
No.
No fun.
No.
Really.
No.
But she was really an interesting womanand she got married off at the age of 14,
(23:12):
which was the norm for the day, you know.
So she arrived in Francein 1533 at the age of 14.
And one of the people that she broughtwith her in her entourage because this
is before Marie Antoinette who was forcedto leave everybody from her home country
behind when she arrived in France.
She brought with her a man namedRenato Bianco, who was her perfumer.
(23:37):
How nice.
Her personal perfumer.
Yeah.
And so his name very quickly inFrance became René Le Florentin.
Nice.
I approve.
Yep.
He made perfumes.
He made concoctions.
I mean, at this time, we're still talkingabout basically concentrations in oils
and different things not in the formthat we actually know them today, but
(23:59):
from pure elements, from concentrationsof plants and from flowers and things.
He was also a poisoner.
It's very interesting.
Uh-oh.
Because just like chemists were alsopoisoners, they could make their
mixes that were poisons, he was knownfor making wonderful perfumes and
poisons as well, so you had to stayon the good side of him, you know?
(24:21):
A bit of belladonna for you.
A bit of belladonna, exactly.
Anyway, Catherine, who was horrifiedby the manners and the level of
cleanliness of the royal court in France.
Poor Catherine.
She brought with her the fork.
She brought with her perfume.
(24:41):
She brought with her all these things,and of course, very quickly other people
wanted to do like she did, which meansthat in the court, in the royal court
in Fontainebleau, in Versailles andin Louvre, wherever they were, other
young women wanted also to have theselovely perfumes, so it started to
be something in great, great demand.
(25:03):
And the other thing that happened inrelation to Catherine de' Medici was that
she loved to wear gloves, and I thinkit was very much the fashion, and you
know, very nice, soft kid leather gloves.
I mean, I even have a couple, a pair.
I don't wear them anymore.
I don't know why, butthey, they are very lovely.
But there was a problem, and the problemwas that at least in France, I don't
(25:26):
know if any other country, but theleather makers who made these very soft,
beautiful leather gloves did not know howto make them without the gloves stinking.
Oh.
Because if you've everbeen to a tannery...
Oh, yeah.
It smells.
I mean, they smell like you can't imagine.
(25:47):
I've gone to the ones in Morocco, notjust the ones here, and you know, it's
famous for the fact that the smellof it is just horrific because part
of the, what they use to treat thegloves is urine, among other things.
And so she had brought with her somegloves, but she wanted more gloves,
and it turns out that the center ofglove-making was Grasse, the city
(26:09):
near Nice in the south of France.
Okay.
It's not anymore.
But it was for several centuries.
And one of the reasons why theyhad established a lot of the
glove-making there was because itwas very close to Genoa, in Italy.
Genoa's a huge port, and so they weredoing commerce by exporting them from
the coast, from very close to the coast.
(26:32):
Of course, Grasse isn't in the hills,but it's very close to the coast,
through Genoa to other parts of Europe.
And so a huge commerce ofglove-making developed in Grasse.
Okay.
Somebody, it was a man named Molinard,a tanner in Grasse, who offered a
pair of gloves to her, and he puta mix of lavender fleur d'oranger,
(26:59):
mimosa, and rose in the waterthat they soaked the leather in.
Okay, yeah, that wouldmake it better, I think.
That would make it a whole lotbetter, wouldn't you think?
I would love to havethose gloves, you know?
And she loved them.
She absolutely loved them.
And so what happened was, she tookthem, showed them to the people
at the court, and of course,everybody wanted perfumed gloves.
(27:24):
Sure.
And this began the rage for perfume notjust to put on your body, but perfumed
clothing and perfumed leather, and thisstarted two things, one, that it became
more important as a perfume industrybasically, and the idea that you have
perfume for all kinds of things, clothand everything, but it put Grasse in
the center of making perfumes in France.
(27:47):
Okay, so at least it caught on.
I mean, they didn't have thebest hygiene in the world, but
at least this bit caught on.
Yes.
Well, we're going to talk aboutthe hygiene in a second here, but
what's really fascinating to knowis that this led to what was called
the Maître-Gantier-Parfumeur.
Ah.
(28:07):
And this was a huge, incrediblywealthy corporation in the sense of the
Middle Ages of a guild or corporation.
They were given, Catherine de'Medici's son, Louis XIII, gave the
Maître-Gantier-Parfumeur of Grasse alicense to be the sole and only ones
in all of France to make perfumedleather, and particularly leather gloves,
(28:33):
which meant that the whole perfumeindustry, which had a little bit been
in Montpellier, completely died out.
And the other reason why it startedto center around Grasse is because in
the region around Grasse, there arehuge, huge, huge areas filled with
wild roses, tubular roses, violets,mimosa, lavender, irises, all of these
(28:57):
flowers that even at that time, wereused for making perfumed substances.
Yeah, this is a greatclimate for growing flowers.
So Grasse became extremely wealthy, andit became the center of perfume, and that
led to France being known as the countrythat produced these wonderful perfumes.
(29:21):
Now, Catherine de' Medici is, beforeeverybody went to live in Versailles,
but unfortunately, the history of notusing water and not bathing in France
started a little bit earlier than that.
It actually started in the 14th century.
Why?
Because of the plague.
I see.
Because they thought that the water...
(29:43):
Because in spite of the fact thatthe heritage of the Romans and
all through the Middle Ages wasthat people washed, basically.
I mean, very poor people, I'm sure,did not wash as often as people who
had the luxury of having a way ofhaving water, fresh water all the time.
But washing was considered to be a norm.
I mean, people washed theirbodies, and they washed their
(30:04):
clothes, and things like that.
Yeah, even if you washed in theriver or in the, you know, in the...
Exactly.
You washed.
You washed.
But what happened was the word spread.
It's interesting how rumors, andwe know about that today, even
with things like other substancesand other controversial subjects.
But the word spread that the waypeople caught the plague was by being
(30:29):
exposed to having their pores, thepores of their skin opened up by water.
That is insane.
People believed that water was the mostimportant vector of disease in the world.
Well, it's true of cholera,but that's a different issue.
It's a different issue, right?
So little by little, believe it ornot, especially among the middle class
(30:53):
and the upper middle class and thearistocracy, people stopped bathing.
Okay, that's not good.
Seriously stopped bathing.
Seriously, seriously stopped bathing.
In fact, there are texts that explain,that you can find from that time period,
where they say when a baby is born, youwash it and then swaddle it in these,
(31:14):
what amounts to almost a mile of linen.
I mean, they... And then you leave him,and you don't wash him, and they had
to have an opening, of course, for-
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
... other things coming out.
But otherwise, you lefthim for two years...
Ohh.
... without being washed.
How did that not kill them?
I don't know, but I thinkit made a lot of them crazy.
(31:37):
I think it had to have.
Yeah.
No, that's a terrible thing.
Yeah.
And it was mostly wealthy peoplewho followed this bad advice.
Yeah.
Peasants are always basically... I mean,their lives can be miserable in other
ways, but basically, the Middle Agesin relation to bread, the peasants ate
the bread with the whole bran in itand didn't suffer from malnutrition.
(31:57):
And the aristocracy wanted white breadand wound up having malnutrition.
So, too bad for them, you know?
So literally, what happened was thatthe upper classes stopped bathing, and
when we get to Louis XIII's son, LouisXIV, who starts to live in Versailles
(32:17):
and has this group of people of... We'retalking about several thousand people
living in Versailles at all times, youknow, hanger-on and all kinds of people.
They did not bathe.
And I was reading, I mean, I got sointo this, I was reading texts of people
who described what it was like to walkthrough parts of Versailles and the
(32:38):
smells of all of these unwashed bodies.
Well, of course, what did they do?
Well, to cover the smells,they started using perfume,
and they used it everywhere.
So they powdered, they madepowders that were perfumed, and
they dusted their wigs every day.
You were allowed to wash your faceand your hands and occasionally your
intimate parts, but with a little cloth.
(33:00):
You weren't supposed to putyour whole body into water.
You weren't supposed to submergeyour body into water at all.
And so they put perfume on theirbodies ... I'm looking at Annie's face.
I wish I had a picture of this right now.
They perfumed their wigs.
They tried to mask it.
There was one person who wrote about goingto Versailles and saying that he couldn't
(33:22):
decide which was worse, the body odorsor the overwhelming smell of all these
different perfumes that just got to thepoint where it was suffocating to walk
through the different reception roomsin Versailles because of all of this.
And this lasted for about 200 years.
Oh my God.
(33:43):
But the worst, the worst was LouisXIV and Louis XV, that time period.
So we're covering about 150 years therebetween the two of them, where basically
the clothing was gorgeous, they hadincredible jewelry, but everybody stank.
This is being very crude, but this isbasically what the story was, you know?
There is a rumor that the onlytime Louis XIV ever bathed was
(34:07):
when he jumped into a river.
Did he do that on purpose?
Well, that's a good question.
Who knows?
But apparently, he never specifically satdown in a bathtub that anyone ever saw.
So, they say that the only times in hislife that he actually ever washed his
body was by... And he did jump in water,in the rivers, when he went traveling,
(34:27):
but can you... I can't even imagine.
I cannot imagine, you know?
That sounds horrible.
That sounds like you donot want to be there.
These people were insane.
So, of course, the irony isthat this is what put perfume on
the map in relation to France.
Okay,
you know?
I mean, huh?
(34:48):
You know, there's always a good and badside of everything, but there you are.
Did the other courts, like in Englandand in Spain and Italy, did they do that?
They did not.
Interestingly enough, they didn't doit in Austria, which is where Marie
Antoinette, of course, came from.
They did not do it in Spain becauseit was one... The ironies of things
is that the Spanish, as much as theyhated the Arabs and chased them out,
(35:13):
they had many things that came from theArabs and one of the things that came
from the Arabs was the idea of havingfountains and water and cleansing.
Yeah, you have to wash yourselfbefore you pray, right?
That's right.
And so the idea of having freshrunning water and using it on your
body was not foreign to the Spanish.
It was just a strange, strange thing thatthis has became notorious that in France,
(35:37):
this is what it was like at the court.
Worse than every place else, you know?
It's really hard.
It's really...
It would be torture.
It would be torture.
Yeah.
Sometimes, I read stuff about astronauts,like their space station, whatever.
Yeah.
They can wash, but it's pretty limited.
They don't have a lot of water, so.
And to me, that would be torture.
(35:57):
Yeah.
I suspect that it would be, too, you know?
So, this is basically, we're talking aboutreally from the end of the 1400s into
the very, very beginning of the 1700s,this is what it's like in France, okay?
Grasse has become thisincredibly wealthy city.
It is one of the most importantcenters of perfume in the known
(36:20):
world at this time, you know?
And of course, the more exploration andthe more that people discover other parts
of the planet, the more they bring backspices and things, so it is fascinating
the evolution of how perfumes are made.
By the way, it's the Arabsthat introduced the alambic.
When you have an alambic, of course, youcan use it for alcohol, but you use it
also for creating vapor and therefore,you can make... they'd use concentrations
(36:45):
of essences and then they would capturethe vapor and then condense the vapor
and then they'd take the drops out, sothat added to a certain sophistication
in terms of the production of perfume.
How do you say alambic in English?
I think it's the same word.
I think.
Okay.
I think it is, but it may not be.
I don't know.
Let me check.
(37:05):
Apparently, it is alambic.
So alambic in French is A-L-A-M-B-I-C, andin English, it's A-L-E-M-B-I-C, alambic.
Oh, okay.
They had to change one letter.
it's a type of still used in distillationprocesses, and often associated with the
(37:28):
production of spirits and essential oils.
Okay, so this is what happens, loand behold, since there is always
an evolution and there's alwayssomebody who tries something new.
What happens is that in the very, very,very beginning of the 1700s, which thank
goodness is now what we call the Age ofEnlightenment and people are starting
(37:48):
to come out of this 'moyen age' MiddleAges kind of theory about water and
about disease, but also there's morescientific stuff that is being discovered.
Is interesting, there is an Italian,here we go back to Italy again, an
Italian man named Farina, that's hislast name, who was making perfumes.
(38:09):
And he winds up going to the City ofCologne in Germany, for whatever reason,
I don't know, but he opens up a shop.
Oh, I see where this is going.
But he uses an alambic and he discoversthat if you use citrus essences,
the essences of citrus fruits forthe beginning and you mix it with
(38:30):
distillation, alcohol and water,but at a very low concentration,
he used a concentration of 4%,which is really almost nothing, you
create this very lightly fragrancedrefreshing liquid, which is...
Eau de Cologne.
Et voila, Eau de Cologne.
(38:51):
And it came to be called that becauseit was in Cologne that he had his shop,
and this was taken back to France andit was like, "Woo, woo, we have this
new thing." Because what that meant wasthat the perfumers in France discovered
that they could do something lighterthan they had been doing before.
And so this became all the rage.
And they used the local flowers andthe other essences, and they used musk
(39:15):
by the way, which, you know, comesfrom animals, but it's very important
in a lot of perfumes in general.
And so what happened was that thisadded to the "gamme", if you want, of
the kinds of perfume you could have.
And so eau de cologne hasexisted actually since 1709.
(39:36):
Yeah, and it's lighter and,in many ways, nicer I think.
It's refreshing.
Yeah.
It's not like thishits-you-over-the-head scent.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it's interesting too that itinspired the perfume makers to change
the formulas for some of the perfumes,and also it was the first time
somebody used citrus in a perfume.
(39:59):
Which is very interesting, becauseI happen to love eau de cologne,
but I splash it on cushionsand things like that, you know.
Yeah, yeah.
It's really nice because ithas that light quality to it.
Why, who knows, but he got this ideathat he could use the essence of lemons
and oranges and things like that.
Now, of course, Germany is notthe place that grows these things.
Nope.
So he obviously brought them with him.
(40:19):
But then they soon came to bethe fashion also in France.
Fragonard, by the way, the Houseof Perfume, it's actually cousins
of the painter, Fragonard.
Oh, wow.
The first perfumers of the House ofFragonard were around in the 1700s
at the same time as the painter,which is really interesting.
(40:39):
I had... you know, I never reallythought about it one way or the other.
The association of perfume with thearistocracy was such that even with...
Oh, the... And that was the other thingthat I need to mention, is that the fact
that there was this new thing called Eaude Cologne, it was less expensive so it
was more accessible to a middle class.
(41:00):
We're not talking about poorpeople, in the real "bidon
villes"
and, and then the peasantsin the countryside.
But now, as there's a burgeoningand very, very, very important
middle class everywhere, eau decologne was a way for people to have
access to a lot of these things.
And it helped at the same time thatsuddenly everybody started bathing
again, so this was not necessaryto have oodles of this very thick,
(41:24):
heavy, perfume on you all the time.
The first two perfume shops thatwere not necessarily for the Court
of Versailles were opened in Paris.
The first one was in 1774, and itwas called A la Reine des Fleurs.
Nice.
On Rue Faubourg-Saint-Honoré.
(41:48):
Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré,where there still is a lot of
fashion and things like that.
And it was a man namedPivet who ran the shop.
And the second one, a year later, is1775, was called A la Corbeille de Fleurs.
Nice.
I like the names.
Right next door on the same street,and that was created by a man
(42:11):
whose name was François Houbigant.
But I'm going to say it the way a Americanwould say it, which is "Who" because it
starts with an H. Like "Hoo." Houbigant.
And that House of Perfume still exists.
Really?
Wow.
Amazing.
So spell it.
H-O-U-B-I-G-A-N-T.
(42:33):
Okay.
Don't remember noticing it, butof course there's so many shops
along that street that it's hard.
Because I did all this research,so now I keep getting ads from him
popping up on my computer all the time.
We have a revolution in the historyof perfume, and that is in the
1700s, it is democratized so thatthe middle classes have access.
(42:54):
And you can go into a shop, andfor the very first time in history,
you have ready-made perfumes.
Which is, you know... I mean,this is what we imagine.
Now, of course you still have littleboutique places I've seen in the Marais
where you can go in and ask them tomake you one, but oh my God, I can't
imagine how expensive that would be.
So these two men revolutionizedthe world of perfume forever.
(43:15):
So this is prêt-à-porter but for
perfume.
For perfume, exactly.
And this is the neighborhood,because this is of course where
a lot of the aristocracy andthe middle class people lived.
So all through the 1700s, perfumeis more and more important, and
it's a huge economy because it'snow open to the middle classes.
(43:35):
But we get to the revolution.
Uh-oh.
Yeah, they had other fish to fry.
They hated perfume.
Really?
Oh, it's weird.
Well, because it was a sign of wealth.
It was sign of wealth.
It was a sign of the aristocracy.
So, would you believe this?
But what happened was that they created alaw, and the law was... I'm trying to find
(44:00):
it, I had it somewhere, I can't find it.
Oh yes, here it is.
The Loi Chapelier.
Okay.
And this is a law that meantthat the corporations of
perfume makers had to stop.
All right.
Literally.
They shut down all the perfumemakers in Grasse and in Paris.
(44:21):
They literally forbid themto make perfume anymore.
Right.
So it's leveling by the, you know,the lowest common denominator is
what they were looking for here.
It's not good.
It's not good.
It's not good.
It's not good.
Well, you know, like with lots of otherthings, repression is not something
that lasts very long, and it didn't takemore than a few years and the advent
(44:42):
of a man named Napoleon Bonaparte...
Aha!
... for this to change.
Because Napoleon was someonewho used eau de cologne and
perfume every day of his life.
Yeah, see, that's the image ofthe well-put-together guy...
Yeah.
... that probably subsides.
(45:02):
So he said, "No, no, no, no," and herevoked this law that had been put into
place and allowed the perfume makersto create their own corporation again.
Of course, it was not quite thesame since this is already at the
beginning of the 1800s, and afterthe Middle Ages and all of this.
It is said that he personally consumed120 liters of Eau de Cologne a month.
(45:25):
Oh-ho-ho-ho.
He drank it.
No!
He diluted it and drank it.
He soaked everything.
He took baths every day, and hesoaked himself in Eau de Cologne.
He was such a fan of this kind of stuffthat everywhere he went, everybody
was supposed to be sprinkled withEau de Cologne and with perfume.
(45:46):
So, we can thank Napoleon forputting perfume back into France.
I wonder if he perfumed his horses,because he also liked horses.
Probably.
The poor horses.
And Josephine Bonaparte useda perfume with vanilla because
she came from the Antilles.
She came from the French Antilles.
She came from Martinique,I believe, right?
(46:06):
So she used a specialperfume that had vanilla.
So we're back after this littlehiatus because of the revolution
into, "Ooh, perfume is cool."
Okay.
So at least it was a short hiatus.
It was very short.
And that's Napoleon.
Okay, so unfortunately for poorNapoleon, you know, he apparently,
(46:27):
when he was sent to, which isthe island he was sent to second?
I can't remember because he was sentto Elba and then he was sent to anoth-
I can't remember which is the firstone and which was the second one.
But he apparently wanted to havea perfume maker be sent with him,
and they said, "No. We're sorry."
I don't remember the name ofit, but that was the one in the
middle of the Atlantic, right?
Yeah, yeah.
However, keeping up with theJoneses, we have a little bit later
(46:50):
on in the 1820s, we have a familyof perfume makers named Guerlain.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
And they create lots of perfumes.
They open up their big boutiqueand they become the official
perfumers for Napoleon III...
(47:10):
Right.
... and his wife, Eugenie.
Okay.
And for her, they created a perfumecalled Eau de l'Impératrice.
Oh-ho!
And it was all the rage.
Well, of course.
And this is in 1853.
Now the Guerlain family has beenmaking perfume since the very
beginning of the 19th century.
(47:32):
And of course, they still, youknow, it's one of the biggest
perfume makers in the world still.
I happen to love their perfumes.
I don't know what there is specialabout them, but I just love them.
Yeah, you like them, yeah.
Do they have a museum?
I don't think so, no.
Molinard has a museum in Grasse.
So the Molinard, of course,there's a Fragonard museum.
And we didn't say this, butthe one in Paris is very nice.
(47:54):
You know, if you have a chance, stop in.
It's interesting.
It's really fascinating.
Yeah.
It's well done, it's well done.
It really is.
And then what happens is that theson and the grandson of Guerlain, as
they move towards the end of the 19thcentury, become interested in a new
technique that enables the creationof synthetic aromas and fragrances.
(48:19):
Ah, yeah, yeah.
And this changes everything.
Literally changes everything.
In 1889 there is a perfumethat is created called Jicky.
Okay, never heard of him.
It's very, very famous because itwas the very first perfume ever that
combined natural and synthetic essences.
Okay.
(48:40):
And from this point on, so thisis the, okay, this is 1889.
From this point on, the world of perfumechanges because it becomes industrial.
Even though it's still wonderfulin terms of the perfumes, the
fragrances and everything, theability to create perfumes.
And I was reading about this and itsays that there are certain flowers,
(49:00):
for instance, doesn't matter what youdo to them, you can crush them, you
can boil them, you can whatever, youwon't be able to get the fragrance
out of it that, well, that you cansniff when you're smelling the flower.
And so there were chemists who weregeniuses, and I don't know exactly who
these people were, but they were ableto figure out how to reproduce these
fragrances that, in fact, resemble theseflowers and these plants synthetically.
(49:26):
It's true that in nature, yousometimes smell flowers that have a
very subtle, you know, and even ifyou crush the leaves on your fingers
or whatever, it smells different.
I mean, it's really interesting.
The whole world of perfumeis very subtle, I think.
It's very subtle.
And a real, a famous perfume, Imean, it doesn't matter which one you
(49:47):
name, there's 50 or 80 things in it.
There's not one thing, I mean, this isnot just squeezing a couple of grains of
lavender, you know, that kind of thing.
But, this is fascinating.
So the grandson of Guerlain, the familyGuerlain is incredible in the history
of all of this in France particularly.
The grandson, in 1904, created thevery first perfume for men, that is
(50:10):
since the Middle Ages when perfume wasfor everybody, using only synthetic
essences, and showed that it was possibleto make perfume without having to use
anything other than synthetic essences.
And, so this opened upa whole world of things.
This takes us to the 20thcentury, and this is incredible.
(50:30):
So perfume is still associated heavilywith France, and it is still a world
of invention of perfume, but nowbetween the Guerlain family and a man
named Francois Coty, and I rememberwhen I was a child that there were
ads in United States for products,cosmetics that were Coty, C-O-T-Y.
(50:51):
So, it turns out that there's thisman named Francois Coty who was an
independent perfume maker, and he wasthe ultimate great businessman, because
not only did he create a syntheticperfume called Le Chypre in 1917,
but he said and he decided that youneeded to make derivative products as
(51:13):
well, powder, cosmetics, boxes, andhe was the first person to decide that
it was important to make a bottle.
I was thinking about that when youwere talking about how you remember
the shape of the bottle of theperfume that you wore, because he was
the one that created the idea thateach perfume had to be identified
(51:36):
with a specific design of a bottle.
Yeah, that's the... Yeah, yeah.
And that is, of course,exactly what we have.
That's genius.
That's genius.
The only other person that is reallyimportant at the beginning of the 20th
century is a man who was a couturier,he made clothes, named Paul Poiret, who
I knew about as a designer actually.
(51:57):
And he was the first personto decide to associate a
perfume with high-end clothing.
Uh-huh.
And that was in 1911.
So this is just at the verybeginning of the 20th century.
Between the two of them, theyrevolutionized the world of perfume.
And then the next person to come along,only a few years later, is Coco Chanel.
(52:21):
Right.
And in 1921... Now, she was a womanwho was extremely interesting.
We really should do a podcast about her.
She was a rebellious woman.
She was an independent woman.
She was a woman that was not easy,I'm sure, in any sense of the
term, but she was a genius as well.
So, she decided, having learnedabout this guy, Poiret, who was doing
(52:41):
clothing and perfume, that she wasgoing to have her first big fashion
show on her own, and this is in 1921.
And she asked a perfumer.
Now a lot of what has happened sincethen, and this, of course, existed
before, but there were two or three placesin the South of France, near Grasse,
where you have people who are makingperfumes on order for other companies.
(53:07):
And so she goes to one of them, I don'thave his name here, but they do know
who the person was who created it.
Sure.
And she said, "Make me a perfumethat is a perfume for women
that smells like a woman."
Hmm.
And it was apparently the fifth versionthat she liked, which is why it came
to be called Chanel Number Five.
(53:29):
There you go.
In 1921.
Isn't this fun?
I love all of this, yeah.
And the next person to comealong to revolutionize things
is Christian Dior in 1947.
We're talking about just after thewar when they need something to
make people happy again, basically.
I mean, this is the realityof what was going on.
(53:49):
And he decided that he was going toask for a perfume to be made that
would be the perfume for the new woman.
Uh-huh.
And so he went to a perfume maker andhe asked for that, and that is the
perfume Miss Dior, and it was introducedat the same time, on the same day
(54:10):
with the models who took his firstindependent showroom collection out.
Right, the runway.
The Runway and the collection.
And so Chanel and Dior basicallyrevolutionized the world of perfume
forever and ever in the 20th century.
Interesting.
So, the glory and the... the goldenage of French perfume basically, really
(54:33):
goes up to the end of the 20th century.
Now, the difference is that we have somany different companies, from other
places in the world making perfume,and making clothes, and associating
clothes and perfume, but these arethe people who really revolutionized
it for everybody, and these are theperfumes that, of course, are still the
ones that sell the most in the world.
(54:53):
Right, because if you want togive a gift, you get one that is
famous, you know, that you've heardof, that everybody's heard of.
I mean, you know, there are others.
There's Lanvin, there are,you know, all these others.
But let's face it, Chanel, Dior, Guerlain,two or three others, the only other one
outside of this group is Kenzo that Ithink of, you know, because I know he's
made a lot of perfumes, but we stillassociate them, and notice these are
(55:17):
associated with people who do clothing,do haute couture, and do fashion.
And they are conscious, and they wereconscious even in the 20th century.
Chanel was an astute businesswomanamong other things, and she said
one of the reasons for creating theperfume is because "I will make a lot
more money selling the perfume than Iwill ever selling my haute couture."
(55:39):
Ah, yeah, that... Well,that's probably true.
It's cheaper.
When you think about it, it's a loteasier to get a bottle of perfume
that's marked Lanvin, Patou, Givenchy,Lacroix, any of these others than to
go out and get a first edition dress.
Definitely.
So, basically the history of perfumehas come down through all these
centuries to be associated withFrance and with innovation, which is
(56:03):
what I thought is also interesting.
It's not just that it's in France, it'sthat each step of the way it was a French
person that in- created a new concept.
And of course now, it's amulti-multi-billion dollar industry
everywhere in the world, you know?
What an interesting conversation.
I'm surprised.
But we have to stop because you'vebeen talk... like, you've talked a lot.
(56:25):
I've talked a lot.
I know.
I know I did, but it waslike this was so much fun.
You can't even imagine.
I learned so many things.
And if you want to know more about thedifferent essences and things, write to
us and I'll add this as a little side,little note in a Facebook page, you know?
Yeah, yeah, if you have more putit on your Patreon page as well.
(56:46):
Oh, God I just thought about so manythings like, of course, you know,
what kind of perfume do you like?
I want to know.
Tell us, please, what kindof perfume do you like?
I would love to know as well.
And the great thing isperfume keeps forever.
Yes.
If you have a bottle, you know, thingsgo bad, but perfumes don't seem to.
Pull it out and try it again.
... and try it again.
(57:06):
Merci beaucoup, Elyse.
De rien.
Au revoir.
Au revoir.
The Join Us in France travelpodcast is written, hosted, and
produced by Annie Sargent, andCopyright 2025 by AddictedToFrance.
It is released under a CreativeCommons attribution, non-commercial,
(57:29):
no derivatives license.
This is Join Us in France, episode552, cinq cent cinquante deux.
Bonjour, I'm Annie Sargent, and Join Usin France is the podcast where we take
a conversational journey through thebeauty, culture, and flavors of France.
Today, I bring you a greatconversation with Elyse Rivin of
Toulouse Guided Walks about therich history of perfume in France.
(00:40):
Discover how fragrances evolvedfrom ancient rituals to modern
luxury and why perfume remainsan iconic part of French culture.
You'll learn about the surprisingorigins of perfume in France,
influential figures, and thetimeless allure of French perfumes,
and how also you can enjoy all ofthat on your next trip to France.
(01:03):
This podcast runs on chocolatine,caffeine, and the support
of lovely humans like you.
You book itinerary consults, takemy VoiceMap tours, ride shotgun
in my electric car, come to thebootcamp, or slip me a few Euros
on Patreon, and I love you for it.
Want to keep me going and skip the ads?
(01:23):
There's a link for that in the show notes.
And for all of my services, headto joinusinfrance.com/boutique.
And Merci.
Want all the links and thefull episode transcript?
You'll find everything you need onthe page that lists all episodes by
month at joinusinfrance.com/episodes.
(01:46):
And if you'd like a handy summary ofthe conversation with all the useful
links, subscribe to the newsletterat joinusinfrance.com/newsletter.
It's the best way to stay in the loop.
There will not be a magazine part of thepodcast today because this recording ran
long, but I do want to send my thanks anda shout out to a new patron: David Kelly.
(02:10):
To join this wonderfulcommunity of Francophiles, go to
patreon.com/JoinUs and to supportElyse go to patreon.com/Elysart.
(02:33):
Bonjour, Elyse.
Bonjour, Annie.
We have a fun topic today, weare going to talk about the
history of perfume in France.
It's a big part of our national,I don't know, national...
Identity?
Yes.
Yes, it is.
You have the right words.
I have the right words, yes, this isgoing to be a fun... I'm so excited,
(02:56):
this is a very fun topic that I haveactually wanted to do for quite a while.
Two things made me think of this.
One was, of course, the fact that lots oftourists, one of the things that they buy
to take home, as a souvenir of France,besides the bags, you know, Vuitton
and all that kind of stuff, is perfume.
So perfume is very muchassociated with France.
(03:19):
And also several years ago, I wasteaching a class about European
culture to students from Asia.
A lot of them were from India and thenother, Indonesia, places like that.
At the beginning of the class, I askedthem what they associated with France.
Sure, yeah.
And aside from football, or soccer, thenext thing that came up was perfume.
(03:42):
How interesting.
And I went, "Oh, okay." I mean, Iknew that there was a long history of
perfume in association with France,and of course we have Dior and Chanel,
and Chanel No 5 and all of that.
But then it made me think, "Oh, what isthe history really of perfume in France?"
Since you've mentioned that we'regoing to do this episode, I've paid
(04:05):
more attention to this and there isdefinitely a lot to this, so it'll be
very interesting to hear the stories.
Yes, they're wonderful stories.
And you know how I love to tell stories.
So I know that you don't like towear perfume, but what do you think
is the difference between, forinstance, an eau de cologne, which
is basically generic, and an eaude toilette and an eau de parfum?
(04:29):
Okay.
I'm really an ignoramus when it comes tothese things, but I think eau de parfum
is something you would use very sparingly,because it has a very strong scent.
Eau de cologne is more like somethingyou would put around your neck or
something, but you would put moreof it, you would use more of it
(04:49):
because it's less concentrated.
What was the one in the middle?
Eau de... I don't know.
Okay.
Well, you're pretty good.
Uh-huh.
That's pretty good.
Yeah.
Oh, good.
In fact, it's a trap question.
It's a piège question becauseeau de cologne is actually
a little bit different, butit's a question of dilution.
It's a question of intensity ofthe amount of actual molecules of
(05:12):
perfume that are in the solution.
Because these are all solutions.
Eau de cologne has a separate history,which I'll talk about when we talk about
the evolution of how it came about.
But basically we're talking about degreesof concentration of the, what they call
the head notes, which create perfume.
They get more and more concentratedand therefore more and more expensive.
(05:35):
Okay, that makes sense.
And honestly, what I didn't know,because I'm very naive about a lot of
this stuff, especially when it comesto luxury goods, is that even the most
concentrated perfume, we're talking aboutthe incredibly expensive things, are
never more than 40% essence of perfume.
Okay.
And that is enough to make it strong.
(05:56):
Yes, when I was younger, I wouldoccasionally wear perfume, and
the one I liked was called Poison.
Oh.
But I don't remember who made it.
I'm not sure.
I think Dior, but I'm not sure.
I remember the shape of the bottle.
It was this kind ofround, very purple bottle.
I remember the bottle, but I don'tremember who made it, but it... And
(06:20):
I didn't wear it every day, you know,it was something like if I was going
out or something, I would put some on.
And then at one point I kindof stopped, I don't know why.
Yeah.
Well, I think me too.
I think it was a period, maybeit's a certain age, I don't know,
that people were wearing perfumeall the time and then stopped.
And now people wear... itstill sells a huge amount.
(06:41):
I mean, look at all thestores that sell perfume.
But I think that there's a differencein the kind of fragrances that are the
most popular except for one or two.
I mean, honestly, Chanel's No 5 isstill the world's most sold perfume
and has been for 100 years, basically.
And it has a very distinctkind of fragrance.
I mean, you can tell whensomeone is wearing Chanel No 5.
(07:04):
Oh, we'll talk about Chanel later on.
But what's really interestingis... Yes, and I wore Shalimar,
which is by Guerlain, you know, one ofthe big, big perfume houses, and it's
very... I didn't know, but now havingread all this about the names and the
way you can describe them, Chanel No5 is actually a floral fragrance, and
(07:24):
Shalimar is an oriental fragrance.
Oh my God.
You are so exotic, Elyse.
It's ombre and it's... And I can...Now that I think about it, I go,
"Oh yeah, that was definitely myperiod," to do things like that.
Yes.
So let's talk a little bit about thehistory of perfume and why it is in
fact associated so very, very closely.
(07:45):
And maybe less so now actually,now that we have international
perfume houses that are connectedwith fashion among other things.
I think of Kenzo, of course,and lots of fabrication.
There's lot of perfumes being madeby designers in other countries.
But certainly, starting in theMiddle Ages and up through, into
the end of the 20th century,France was the capital of perfume.
(08:09):
Yeah.
Well, and honestly, if you go tothe duty-free stores, they sell it.
I mean, they have a lot ofchoices, options for perfume still.
Still, yes.
Yeah, it's... So they mustbe selling a fair bit.
Oh, they sell.
It sells everywhere.
I mean, it's really a multi-billiondollar industry to sell perfume.
(08:31):
I guess it's because itmakes such a good gift?
It does, except that sometimes, how doyou know what perfume to get somebody?
That's the hard part, you know?
I mean, you have to kind of knowwhat people are like to know what
kind of fragrance they might like.
Well, if you go to one of these storesthat we're going to mention, then
you can try different things and...
(08:51):
You can.
I went with my sister-in-law to theFragonard store near the Opera House,
very close to the Opera House inParis, and we were both very happy
to look at the displays and whatever,but there were a lot of things we
could smell and test and, it was fun.
And I was very surprised, she wantedto find a specific kind of patchouli.
(09:12):
Yeah.
And to me, like, "Run away.Patchouli does not smell good."
But I didn't tell her this.
Everybody their perfume.
Yeah, but... No.
Tastes like skunk smell.
I don't know.
Oh, no, no.
But you know what?
(09:32):
There is an adage, andI really believe it.
I've read this and I'vehad people say this to me.
And I've been to the Fragonard museumstore near the opera house many times.
They say that if a perfume lasts a verylong time on your body, it's for you.
That there's a chemical reactionbetween... it could be an eau de
toilette or it could be an eaude parfum, it doesn't have to
(09:53):
be the most concentrated form.
A few months ago, we were in Grenada I wasin Grenada with my husband, and there was
a perfume store that they were advertisingthat they make their own perfumes, and I
went in, it was lovely, and I was testingall these things and sniffing them all.
And I like things now that are alittle bit light and floral, and one
of them said it had rose in it, and Ithought, "Hmm, that one might be nice."
(10:14):
So I bought a little, I don't even knowwhat the word is in English anymore, a
flacon, you know, a little spray bottle.
But it's an eau de parfum andI brought it home, and to my
great surprise and chagrin, itdoesn't last on my skin at all.
It's like I put it on and it's gone!
And I realized... I found an oldperfume, an old eau de parfum that
(10:37):
somebody had given me from anotherthing that was actually from one of
the Fragonard perfumes, and all Ineed is to put an infinitely tiny drop
on, and it lasts for all day long.
Interesting.
So the magic is finding your perfume.
Right.
And I think it would be fun, youknow, if you're in Paris and you
(10:58):
have the time, to go experiment.
Yep.
And they give you these littlepieces of paper that you can spray a
little bit on that, and smell that,instead of trying to find new bits
of skin that don't have anything yet.
Yes, after a while it gets to beabsolutely overwhelming, you know?
It's also true that there are somepeople who are allergic to perfume.
And I've been on tours where I've takenpeople around, and there would be always
(11:21):
one or two people who don't want to goin because they can't stand perfume.
Makes sense.
It is like that.
I mean, some people reallycan't stand it, you know?
So there's a fine line between"Oh, that's a nice smell," and,
"Oh, that's Pepe Le Pew," you know?
Yes.
It's like, ugh.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And there's many degrees these days of,you know, in between the two, you know?
And then of course now wehave fragrances for men.
(11:44):
Now in the Middle Ages,that was the norm also.
But in terms of modern times,you know, there are a lot of men
who use aftershave that has aperfume to it and things like that.
But the whole world has changed inthe last 40, 50 years, and so there
are lots of fragrances that arenow considered to be androgynous.
(12:04):
I think for men, when I notice that aguy is nicely dressed and is wearing some
sort of scent, they really stand out.
Yeah.
They stand out like wellput together, you know?
To me, that's what it means.
Like someone who takes care ofthemselves and cleans up really nice.
That's what it means.
Well, there you are.
(12:25):
Yeah.
You guys listening out there.
So it would make the guymore appealing, I think.
Okay.
She has said it.
Annie has said it.
There you are.
But women wearing perfumeis less noticeable, perhaps
because I don't notice women?
But also because it's more common.
Yes, but it is true that there are placeswhere people overdose on the perfume they
(12:49):
wear, and it gets to be overwhelming.
And that's not particularlypleasant either, you know?
I mean, it's interesting.
It's a very... to me, perfumeis a very private affair.
It's like I, if I put any on, it'sjust after my shower, you know?
And then it's not so much forother people, so that me, I
can smell it myself, you know?
"Oh, I feel good this way." You know?
That kind of thing.
(13:09):
Yeah.
Makes sense.And there's also alot of people nowadays who like to
experiment and make their own scents.
That's a new area of, kind of,not a tour, but an activity you
can do when you visit France, soperhaps we'll discuss those as well.
Okay, so let's talk a little bitabout the background of all of this.
(13:30):
And Oh, here's my other question.
Oh, I'm so filled withgood questions today.
What does the word perfumeactually come from?
This one surprised me.
Let's see how good you are.
Parfum, parfum.
It actually comes from two words inLatin, per and fumare, which means to
smoke, because the oldest in antiquity,in terms of the ancient Egyptians
(13:56):
and the Assyrians and all of thosepeople, they smoked pieces of what are
now mirrh and all the things that wewould use for, what do you call those?
The...
Incense.
Incense.
Thank you.
Incense.
And it was the smell of the smokethat was the first form of perfume.
And when the Romans discovered all ofthis, because basically, of course, they
(14:20):
bathed a lot, but it was by conqueringparts of the Middle East and Egypt and all
of this that they started picking up allof these things that could make incense.
The words actually come from theidea that this was smoked at first.
Interesting.
Interesting.
Yeah.
And I would never have guessed thatin a million years, so there you are.
I thought it had something to do withsmell, but no, it has to do with smoke.
(14:42):
Interesting.
But, you know, I've noticedalso that at Notre Dame, they
burn an awful lot of incense.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, of course, I went back so manytimes when I was writing my latest
tour, and I, since it included theinside, I went inside a lot, and
very often, it was like, oof, thesmell is like, it's kind of strong.
(15:05):
Yeah.
Well, it's interesting because the realhistory of the beginning of what we would,
could generically, I'm going to callperfume, you know, because it's substances
that have fragrance is more correctprobably, but let's just say perfume.
But it really began, in terms ofour history as humans, it began
probably 6,000 years ago as somethingto do in special ceremonies.
(15:28):
So it has come down, for instance, thefact that there's incense in the churches.
In the Orthodox Church, there'sa lot more incense actually than
in the Roman Catholic Church.
In Buddhist temples, they burn incense.
In Hindu temples, they burn incense.
So it's very interesting that thewhole idea of having some kind of
special fragrance is in fact connectedwith special ceremonies, the idea
(15:53):
that you communicate somehow withthe gods by having these scents.
That's actually fascinatingif you think about it.
It's a whole new dimension thatwe clearly understand as humans.
I think dogs smell even better than we do.
But the thing is, dogs like to puttheir nose into things, which we don't.
(16:15):
Exactly.
But if you walk into a house andit smells like nice food, it's
very pleasant, and yeah, scentis a big part of our perception.
It's a very big part of our perception.
And what happened was the, I thinkthat the Romans and the Greeks when
they went and basically conqueredEgypt, they discovered, I'm not sure
(16:36):
about the ceremonies in Syria andplaces like that, but the Egyptians,
when they did the embalming, theyperfumed the cloth that was used for
the embalming so that the people goingto the next life would smell nice.
And it was partly for preservationbecause obviously they used certain
things, certain fragrances and certainoils that were helpful in keeping
(16:58):
the body intact, and also the linenthat they used to wrap the bodies.
But it was very important that everythingsmell good even for the next life in
the next world, wherever that was.
And so a lot of these practices weretaken back to Europe, and also over the
centuries with the, and the discoveryof the Silk Route going to China,
(17:19):
going to the Asian countries, a lotof things were taken back to Europe
to be used for making fragrances.
And of course, the Romans rubbedperfumed oil on their bodies and
they bathed literally every day.
I mean, it was just anobsession with the Romans.
So the whole idea of something perfumedthat you put on your body, that you
(17:41):
keep on your clothes in this lifeor in another really goes back as
far as our notion of civilization.
It's really fascinating, you know?
Yeah, and a lot of these scents youcan also buy them as a hand cream
or as a body lotion, you know?
So if you want to do it that way,you could smell nice that way.
(18:01):
I would bet that's what alot of people do, really.
Oh, I think that that is what alot of people do, and ironically,
it's kind of going back to itsorigins because for centuries
that wasn't really what was done.
There were lots of oils that weremade, you know, like essential oils
that were burned and things like that.
But it is true that now we have sucha wide range of products that have
(18:21):
perfumed or scented parts to them,I love my lavender soap, you know?
I mean, I just, you know?
Yeah.
Yeah.
But lavender soap doesn't smell that long.
It doesn't linger.
No.
It doesn't linger, and that's thebig magic of what really is perfume.
So, of course, the Italians... What'sinteresting to know, and I didn't know,
was that until the middle of the MiddleAges, let's in vague we're large chunks
(18:45):
of time here, it was Venice that was thecenter of anything connected to perfume.
And for the simple reason that they hadmastered all of the trade routes going
to Asia and the Middle East, and theywere at the forefront of all of this
with their ships, and you know, the MarcoPolo, and the Silk Route, and all of that.
So, for a very long time, they were reallyconsidered to be the center of all of
(19:08):
this, because the word perfume was notsynonymous with but very much associated
with the Orient, which is of course theold word for talking about the Asian,
and Middle Eastern parts of the world.
And they used incense, they used myrrh,they used all these things that had
not been available to the Europeans.
And so what happened was that thesecond group of people that started
(19:30):
using perfume and discovering newspices and scents was the Spanish.
As they navigated around the worldand they went to the Americas and
all these places, they brought backvanilla, and they brought back all
these things that, of course, havealso now started... Certainly now, I
mean, my mom, my dear mom was someonewho loved perfumes that had vanilla.
(19:51):
I can't ... I lovevanilla in my ice cream.
I can't stand vanilla in my perfume.
I know it's just- ... you know, weeach have our scents that we really
could deal with and the ones we can't.
But this was a new thing to bring back allof these spices that could be added into.
And so, the second group of peoplebasically was the Spanish, and then...
then lo and behold, we get to the endof the Middle Ages in terms of perfume,
(20:17):
and civilization, and sophistication,and this is where the French come in.
Okay.
So like 1500s?
Yeah.
We're talking about the very end of the1400s and the beginning of the 1500s.
And basically what happens is thatthe Italians, who were basically the
first to create this period of timethat we like to call the Renaissance.
(20:39):
They, of course, were extremelysophisticated, they had inherited
all of these notions of bathing andperfuming and being very well-dressed
and all of this is... this is not today.
I mean, this has been for centuriesthat it's the Italians that have
known for doing all of this beforeit was actually a united Italy.
And what happens is you haveat the same time two things.
(21:02):
The first is that you have the FrenchKing François I who winds up being
taken prisoner in Northern Italy.
We'll just for the sake of this tocall it Northern Italy, near Milan.
And he discovers everything Renaissance,you know, he discovers the architecture,
he discovers the painting, andamong other things he discovers the
(21:22):
way of living using a fork to eatfood, the clothing that they wore,
hm, and the perfumes, all of this.
And he thought that they were,and probably was right, the most
civilized people in the world.
Mm-hmm.
And he discovered allthat while a prisoner?
While a prisoner, yes.
Okay.
You know, a king being a prisoner in theearly 1500s was basically it was like,
(21:44):
"Okay, you stay in this city where youcan't leave," but he could do whatever
he wanted to do inside, you know.
I mean, he...
Ah, okay.
You know, this is not likebeing in a little cell in the
Tower of London, you know.
Poor old Mary Queen of Scots.
And when he was finally liberatedand went back to France, he
decided that it would be a goodidea to marry off his second son.
(22:06):
It was not his first son because hisfirst son had to marry someone who
was destined to be a queen, that is adaughter of a queen, of a king or queen.
But he decided to marry offhis second son Henry II to the
daughter of one of the Medicis.
And of course, the Medicis were oneof the most important, noble, wealthy,
powerful families in Northern Italy.
(22:28):
Catherine de' Medici was the daughter ofthe Duke of Urbino, and of Florence, and
of course, was extremely wealthy and camefrom this long line of prestigious people.
And she was actually, I didn't knowthis, but she was actually half French.
Her mother was from Auvergne.
She was a member of thenobility from Auvergne.
But she was, of course, broughtup in Italy and was extremely
(22:50):
well-educated and extremely refined.
Now, if you look at portraits ofCatherine de Medici in the Louvre,
oh my God, she looks like the worstsevere high school teacher you would
ever have in your life, you know.
She doesn't look like fun.
No.
No.
No fun.
No.
Really.
No.
But she was really an interesting womanand she got married off at the age of 14,
(23:12):
which was the norm for the day, you know.
So she arrived in Francein 1533 at the age of 14.
And one of the people that she broughtwith her in her entourage because this
is before Marie Antoinette who was forcedto leave everybody from her home country
behind when she arrived in France.
She brought with her a man namedRenato Bianco, who was her perfumer.
(23:37):
How nice.
Her personal perfumer.
Yeah.
And so his name very quickly inFrance became René Le Florentin.
Nice.
I approve.
Yep.
He made perfumes.
He made concoctions.
I mean, at this time, we're still talkingabout basically concentrations in oils
and different things not in the formthat we actually know them today, but
(23:59):
from pure elements, from concentrationsof plants and from flowers and things.
He was also a poisoner.
It's very interesting.
Uh-oh.
Because just like chemists were alsopoisoners, they could make their
mixes that were poisons, he was knownfor making wonderful perfumes and
poisons as well, so you had to stayon the good side of him, you know?
(24:21):
A bit of belladonna for you.
A bit of belladonna, exactly.
Anyway, Catherine, who was horrifiedby the manners and the level of
cleanliness of the royal court in France.
Poor Catherine.
She brought with her the fork.
She brought with her perfume.
(24:41):
She brought with her all these things,and of course, very quickly other people
wanted to do like she did, which meansthat in the court, in the royal court
in Fontainebleau, in Versailles andin Louvre, wherever they were, other
young women wanted also to have theselovely perfumes, so it started to
be something in great, great demand.
(25:03):
And the other thing that happened inrelation to Catherine de' Medici was that
she loved to wear gloves, and I thinkit was very much the fashion, and you
know, very nice, soft kid leather gloves.
I mean, I even have a couple, a pair.
I don't wear them anymore.
I don't know why, butthey, they are very lovely.
But there was a problem, and the problemwas that at least in France, I don't
(25:26):
know if any other country, but theleather makers who made these very soft,
beautiful leather gloves did not know howto make them without the gloves stinking.
Oh.
Because if you've everbeen to a tannery...
Oh, yeah.
It smells.
I mean, they smell like you can't imagine.
(25:47):
I've gone to the ones in Morocco, notjust the ones here, and you know, it's
famous for the fact that the smellof it is just horrific because part
of the, what they use to treat thegloves is urine, among other things.
And so she had brought with her somegloves, but she wanted more gloves,
and it turns out that the center ofglove-making was Grasse, the city
(26:09):
near Nice in the south of France.
Okay.
It's not anymore.
But it was for several centuries.
And one of the reasons why theyhad established a lot of the
glove-making there was because itwas very close to Genoa, in Italy.
Genoa's a huge port, and so they weredoing commerce by exporting them from
the coast, from very close to the coast.
(26:32):
Of course, Grasse isn't in the hills,but it's very close to the coast,
through Genoa to other parts of Europe.
And so a huge commerce ofglove-making developed in Grasse.
Okay.
Somebody, it was a man named Molinard,a tanner in Grasse, who offered a
pair of gloves to her, and he puta mix of lavender fleur d'oranger,
(26:59):
mimosa, and rose in the waterthat they soaked the leather in.
Okay, yeah, that wouldmake it better, I think.
That would make it a whole lotbetter, wouldn't you think?
I would love to havethose gloves, you know?
And she loved them.
She absolutely loved them.
And so what happened was, she tookthem, showed them to the people
at the court, and of course,everybody wanted perfumed gloves.
(27:24):
Sure.
And this began the rage for perfume notjust to put on your body, but perfumed
clothing and perfumed leather, and thisstarted two things, one, that it became
more important as a perfume industrybasically, and the idea that you have
perfume for all kinds of things, clothand everything, but it put Grasse in
the center of making perfumes in France.
(27:47):
Okay, so at least it caught on.
I mean, they didn't have thebest hygiene in the world, but
at least this bit caught on.
Yes.
Well, we're going to talk aboutthe hygiene in a second here, but
what's really fascinating to knowis that this led to what was called
the Maître-Gantier-Parfumeur.
Ah.
(28:07):
And this was a huge, incrediblywealthy corporation in the sense of the
Middle Ages of a guild or corporation.
They were given, Catherine de'Medici's son, Louis XIII, gave the
Maître-Gantier-Parfumeur of Grasse alicense to be the sole and only ones
in all of France to make perfumedleather, and particularly leather gloves,
(28:33):
which meant that the whole perfumeindustry, which had a little bit been
in Montpellier, completely died out.
And the other reason why it startedto center around Grasse is because in
the region around Grasse, there arehuge, huge, huge areas filled with
wild roses, tubular roses, violets,mimosa, lavender, irises, all of these
(28:57):
flowers that even at that time, wereused for making perfumed substances.
Yeah, this is a greatclimate for growing flowers.
So Grasse became extremely wealthy, andit became the center of perfume, and that
led to France being known as the countrythat produced these wonderful perfumes.
(29:21):
Now, Catherine de' Medici is, beforeeverybody went to live in Versailles,
but unfortunately, the history of notusing water and not bathing in France
started a little bit earlier than that.
It actually started in the 14th century.
Why?
Because of the plague.
I see.
Because they thought that the water...
(29:43):
Because in spite of the fact thatthe heritage of the Romans and
all through the Middle Ages wasthat people washed, basically.
I mean, very poor people, I'm sure,did not wash as often as people who
had the luxury of having a way ofhaving water, fresh water all the time.
But washing was considered to be a norm.
I mean, people washed theirbodies, and they washed their
(30:04):
clothes, and things like that.
Yeah, even if you washed in theriver or in the, you know, in the...
Exactly.
You washed.
You washed.
But what happened was the word spread.
It's interesting how rumors, andwe know about that today, even
with things like other substancesand other controversial subjects.
But the word spread that the waypeople caught the plague was by being
(30:29):
exposed to having their pores, thepores of their skin opened up by water.
That is insane.
People believed that water was the mostimportant vector of disease in the world.
Well, it's true of cholera,but that's a different issue.
It's a different issue, right?
So little by little, believe it ornot, especially among the middle class
(30:53):
and the upper middle class and thearistocracy, people stopped bathing.
Okay, that's not good.
Seriously stopped bathing.
Seriously, seriously stopped bathing.
In fact, there are texts that explain,that you can find from that time period,
where they say when a baby is born, youwash it and then swaddle it in these,
(31:14):
what amounts to almost a mile of linen.
I mean, they... And then you leave him,and you don't wash him, and they had
to have an opening, of course, for-
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
... other things coming out.
But otherwise, you lefthim for two years...
Ohh.
... without being washed.
How did that not kill them?
I don't know, but I thinkit made a lot of them crazy.
(31:37):
I think it had to have.
Yeah.
No, that's a terrible thing.
Yeah.
And it was mostly wealthy peoplewho followed this bad advice.
Yeah.
Peasants are always basically... I mean,their lives can be miserable in other
ways, but basically, the Middle Agesin relation to bread, the peasants ate
the bread with the whole bran in itand didn't suffer from malnutrition.
(31:57):
And the aristocracy wanted white breadand wound up having malnutrition.
So, too bad for them, you know?
So literally, what happened was thatthe upper classes stopped bathing, and
when we get to Louis XIII's son, LouisXIV, who starts to live in Versailles
(32:17):
and has this group of people of... We'retalking about several thousand people
living in Versailles at all times, youknow, hanger-on and all kinds of people.
They did not bathe.
And I was reading, I mean, I got sointo this, I was reading texts of people
who described what it was like to walkthrough parts of Versailles and the
(32:38):
smells of all of these unwashed bodies.
Well, of course, what did they do?
Well, to cover the smells,they started using perfume,
and they used it everywhere.
So they powdered, they madepowders that were perfumed, and
they dusted their wigs every day.
You were allowed to wash your faceand your hands and occasionally your
intimate parts, but with a little cloth.
(33:00):
You weren't supposed to putyour whole body into water.
You weren't supposed to submergeyour body into water at all.
And so they put perfume on theirbodies ... I'm looking at Annie's face.
I wish I had a picture of this right now.
They perfumed their wigs.
They tried to mask it.
There was one person who wrote about goingto Versailles and saying that he couldn't
(33:22):
decide which was worse, the body odorsor the overwhelming smell of all these
different perfumes that just got to thepoint where it was suffocating to walk
through the different reception roomsin Versailles because of all of this.
And this lasted for about 200 years.
Oh my God.
(33:43):
But the worst, the worst was LouisXIV and Louis XV, that time period.
So we're covering about 150 years therebetween the two of them, where basically
the clothing was gorgeous, they hadincredible jewelry, but everybody stank.
This is being very crude, but this isbasically what the story was, you know?
There is a rumor that the onlytime Louis XIV ever bathed was
(34:07):
when he jumped into a river.
Did he do that on purpose?
Well, that's a good question.
Who knows?
But apparently, he never specifically satdown in a bathtub that anyone ever saw.
So, they say that the only times in hislife that he actually ever washed his
body was by... And he did jump in water,in the rivers, when he went traveling,
(34:27):
but can you... I can't even imagine.
I cannot imagine, you know?
That sounds horrible.
That sounds like you donot want to be there.
These people were insane.
So, of course, the irony isthat this is what put perfume on
the map in relation to France.
Okay,
you know?
I mean, huh?
(34:48):
You know, there's always a good and badside of everything, but there you are.
Did the other courts, like in Englandand in Spain and Italy, did they do that?
They did not.
Interestingly enough, they didn't doit in Austria, which is where Marie
Antoinette, of course, came from.
They did not do it in Spain becauseit was one... The ironies of things
is that the Spanish, as much as theyhated the Arabs and chased them out,
(35:13):
they had many things that came from theArabs and one of the things that came
from the Arabs was the idea of havingfountains and water and cleansing.
Yeah, you have to wash yourselfbefore you pray, right?
That's right.
And so the idea of having freshrunning water and using it on your
body was not foreign to the Spanish.
It was just a strange, strange thing thatthis has became notorious that in France,
(35:37):
this is what it was like at the court.
Worse than every place else, you know?
It's really hard.
It's really...
It would be torture.
It would be torture.
Yeah.
Sometimes, I read stuff about astronauts,like their space station, whatever.
Yeah.
They can wash, but it's pretty limited.
They don't have a lot of water, so.
And to me, that would be torture.
(35:57):
Yeah.
I suspect that it would be, too, you know?
So, this is basically, we're talking aboutreally from the end of the 1400s into
the very, very beginning of the 1700s,this is what it's like in France, okay?
Grasse has become thisincredibly wealthy city.
It is one of the most importantcenters of perfume in the known
(36:20):
world at this time, you know?
And of course, the more exploration andthe more that people discover other parts
of the planet, the more they bring backspices and things, so it is fascinating
the evolution of how perfumes are made.
By the way, it's the Arabsthat introduced the alambic.
When you have an alambic, of course, youcan use it for alcohol, but you use it
also for creating vapor and therefore,you can make... they'd use concentrations
(36:45):
of essences and then they would capturethe vapor and then condense the vapor
and then they'd take the drops out, sothat added to a certain sophistication
in terms of the production of perfume.
How do you say alambic in English?
I think it's the same word.
I think.
Okay.
I think it is, but it may not be.
I don't know.
Let me check.
(37:05):
Apparently, it is alambic.
So alambic in French is A-L-A-M-B-I-C, andin English, it's A-L-E-M-B-I-C, alambic.
Oh, okay.
They had to change one letter.
it's a type of still used in distillationprocesses, and often associated with the
(37:28):
production of spirits and essential oils.
Okay, so this is what happens, loand behold, since there is always
an evolution and there's alwayssomebody who tries something new.
What happens is that in the very, very,very beginning of the 1700s, which thank
goodness is now what we call the Age ofEnlightenment and people are starting
(37:48):
to come out of this 'moyen age' MiddleAges kind of theory about water and
about disease, but also there's morescientific stuff that is being discovered.
Is interesting, there is an Italian,here we go back to Italy again, an
Italian man named Farina, that's hislast name, who was making perfumes.
(38:09):
And he winds up going to the City ofCologne in Germany, for whatever reason,
I don't know, but he opens up a shop.
Oh, I see where this is going.
But he uses an alambic and he discoversthat if you use citrus essences,
the essences of citrus fruits forthe beginning and you mix it with
(38:30):
distillation, alcohol and water,but at a very low concentration,
he used a concentration of 4%,which is really almost nothing, you
create this very lightly fragrancedrefreshing liquid, which is...
Eau de Cologne.
Et voila, Eau de Cologne.
(38:51):
And it came to be called that becauseit was in Cologne that he had his shop,
and this was taken back to France andit was like, "Woo, woo, we have this
new thing." Because what that meant wasthat the perfumers in France discovered
that they could do something lighterthan they had been doing before.
And so this became all the rage.
And they used the local flowers andthe other essences, and they used musk
(39:15):
by the way, which, you know, comesfrom animals, but it's very important
in a lot of perfumes in general.
And so what happened was that thisadded to the "gamme", if you want, of
the kinds of perfume you could have.
And so eau de cologne hasexisted actually since 1709.
(39:36):
Yeah, and it's lighter and,in many ways, nicer I think.
It's refreshing.
Yeah.
It's not like thishits-you-over-the-head scent.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it's interesting too that itinspired the perfume makers to change
the formulas for some of the perfumes,and also it was the first time
somebody used citrus in a perfume.
(39:59):
Which is very interesting, becauseI happen to love eau de cologne,
but I splash it on cushionsand things like that, you know.
Yeah, yeah.
It's really nice because ithas that light quality to it.
Why, who knows, but he got this ideathat he could use the essence of lemons
and oranges and things like that.
Now, of course, Germany is notthe place that grows these things.
Nope.
So he obviously brought them with him.
(40:19):
But then they soon came to bethe fashion also in France.
Fragonard, by the way, the Houseof Perfume, it's actually cousins
of the painter, Fragonard.
Oh, wow.
The first perfumers of the House ofFragonard were around in the 1700s
at the same time as the painter,which is really interesting.
(40:39):
I had... you know, I never reallythought about it one way or the other.
The association of perfume with thearistocracy was such that even with...
Oh, the... And that was the other thingthat I need to mention, is that the fact
that there was this new thing called Eaude Cologne, it was less expensive so it
was more accessible to a middle class.
(41:00):
We're not talking about poorpeople, in the real "bidon
villes"
and, and then the peasantsin the countryside.
But now, as there's a burgeoningand very, very, very important
middle class everywhere, eau decologne was a way for people to have
access to a lot of these things.
And it helped at the same time thatsuddenly everybody started bathing
again, so this was not necessaryto have oodles of this very thick,
(41:24):
heavy, perfume on you all the time.
The first two perfume shops thatwere not necessarily for the Court
of Versailles were opened in Paris.
The first one was in 1774, and itwas called A la Reine des Fleurs.
Nice.
On Rue Faubourg-Saint-Honoré.
(41:48):
Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré,where there still is a lot of
fashion and things like that.
And it was a man namedPivet who ran the shop.
And the second one, a year later, is1775, was called A la Corbeille de Fleurs.
Nice.
I like the names.
Right next door on the same street,and that was created by a man
(42:11):
whose name was François Houbigant.
But I'm going to say it the way a Americanwould say it, which is "Who" because it
starts with an H. Like "Hoo." Houbigant.
And that House of Perfume still exists.
Really?
Wow.
Amazing.
So spell it.
H-O-U-B-I-G-A-N-T.
(42:33):
Okay.
Don't remember noticing it, butof course there's so many shops
along that street that it's hard.
Because I did all this research,so now I keep getting ads from him
popping up on my computer all the time.
We have a revolution in the historyof perfume, and that is in the
1700s, it is democratized so thatthe middle classes have access.
(42:54):
And you can go into a shop, andfor the very first time in history,
you have ready-made perfumes.
Which is, you know... I mean,this is what we imagine.
Now, of course you still have littleboutique places I've seen in the Marais
where you can go in and ask them tomake you one, but oh my God, I can't
imagine how expensive that would be.
So these two men revolutionizedthe world of perfume forever.
(43:15):
So this is prêt-à-porter but for
perfume.
For perfume, exactly.
And this is the neighborhood,because this is of course where
a lot of the aristocracy andthe middle class people lived.
So all through the 1700s, perfumeis more and more important, and
it's a huge economy because it'snow open to the middle classes.
(43:35):
But we get to the revolution.
Uh-oh.
Yeah, they had other fish to fry.
They hated perfume.
Really?
Oh, it's weird.
Well, because it was a sign of wealth.
It was sign of wealth.
It was a sign of the aristocracy.
So, would you believe this?
But what happened was that they created alaw, and the law was... I'm trying to find
(44:00):
it, I had it somewhere, I can't find it.
Oh yes, here it is.
The Loi Chapelier.
Okay.
And this is a law that meantthat the corporations of
perfume makers had to stop.
All right.
Literally.
They shut down all the perfumemakers in Grasse and in Paris.
(44:21):
They literally forbid themto make perfume anymore.
Right.
So it's leveling by the, you know,the lowest common denominator is
what they were looking for here.
It's not good.
It's not good.
It's not good.
It's not good.
Well, you know, like with lots of otherthings, repression is not something
that lasts very long, and it didn't takemore than a few years and the advent
(44:42):
of a man named Napoleon Bonaparte...
Aha!
... for this to change.
Because Napoleon was someonewho used eau de cologne and
perfume every day of his life.
Yeah, see, that's the image ofthe well-put-together guy...
Yeah.
... that probably subsides.
(45:02):
So he said, "No, no, no, no," and herevoked this law that had been put into
place and allowed the perfume makersto create their own corporation again.
Of course, it was not quite thesame since this is already at the
beginning of the 1800s, and afterthe Middle Ages and all of this.
It is said that he personally consumed120 liters of Eau de Cologne a month.
(45:25):
Oh-ho-ho-ho.
He drank it.
No!
He diluted it and drank it.
He soaked everything.
He took baths every day, and hesoaked himself in Eau de Cologne.
He was such a fan of this kind of stuffthat everywhere he went, everybody
was supposed to be sprinkled withEau de Cologne and with perfume.
(45:46):
So, we can thank Napoleon forputting perfume back into France.
I wonder if he perfumed his horses,because he also liked horses.
Probably.
The poor horses.
And Josephine Bonaparte useda perfume with vanilla because
she came from the Antilles.
She came from the French Antilles.
She came from Martinique,I believe, right?
(46:06):
So she used a specialperfume that had vanilla.
So we're back after this littlehiatus because of the revolution
into, "Ooh, perfume is cool."
Okay.
So at least it was a short hiatus.
It was very short.
And that's Napoleon.
Okay, so unfortunately for poorNapoleon, you know, he apparently,
(46:27):
when he was sent to, which isthe island he was sent to second?
I can't remember because he was sentto Elba and then he was sent to anoth-
I can't remember which is the firstone and which was the second one.
But he apparently wanted to havea perfume maker be sent with him,
and they said, "No. We're sorry."
I don't remember the name ofit, but that was the one in the
middle of the Atlantic, right?
Yeah, yeah.
However, keeping up with theJoneses, we have a little bit later
(46:50):
on in the 1820s, we have a familyof perfume makers named Guerlain.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
And they create lots of perfumes.
They open up their big boutiqueand they become the official
perfumers for Napoleon III...
(47:10):
Right.
... and his wife, Eugenie.
Okay.
And for her, they created a perfumecalled Eau de l'Impératrice.
Oh-ho!
And it was all the rage.
Well, of course.
And this is in 1853.
Now the Guerlain family has beenmaking perfume since the very
beginning of the 19th century.
(47:32):
And of course, they still, youknow, it's one of the biggest
perfume makers in the world still.
I happen to love their perfumes.
I don't know what there is specialabout them, but I just love them.
Yeah, you like them, yeah.
Do they have a museum?
I don't think so, no.
Molinard has a museum in Grasse.
So the Molinard, of course,there's a Fragonard museum.
And we didn't say this, butthe one in Paris is very nice.
(47:54):
You know, if you have a chance, stop in.
It's interesting.
It's really fascinating.
Yeah.
It's well done, it's well done.
It really is.
And then what happens is that theson and the grandson of Guerlain, as
they move towards the end of the 19thcentury, become interested in a new
technique that enables the creationof synthetic aromas and fragrances.
(48:19):
Ah, yeah, yeah.
And this changes everything.
Literally changes everything.
In 1889 there is a perfumethat is created called Jicky.
Okay, never heard of him.
It's very, very famous because itwas the very first perfume ever that
combined natural and synthetic essences.
Okay.
(48:40):
And from this point on, so thisis the, okay, this is 1889.
From this point on, the world of perfumechanges because it becomes industrial.
Even though it's still wonderfulin terms of the perfumes, the
fragrances and everything, theability to create perfumes.
And I was reading about this and itsays that there are certain flowers,
(49:00):
for instance, doesn't matter what youdo to them, you can crush them, you
can boil them, you can whatever, youwon't be able to get the fragrance
out of it that, well, that you cansniff when you're smelling the flower.
And so there were chemists who weregeniuses, and I don't know exactly who
these people were, but they were ableto figure out how to reproduce these
fragrances that, in fact, resemble theseflowers and these plants synthetically.
(49:26):
It's true that in nature, yousometimes smell flowers that have a
very subtle, you know, and even ifyou crush the leaves on your fingers
or whatever, it smells different.
I mean, it's really interesting.
The whole world of perfumeis very subtle, I think.
It's very subtle.
And a real, a famous perfume, Imean, it doesn't matter which one you
(49:47):
name, there's 50 or 80 things in it.
There's not one thing, I mean, this isnot just squeezing a couple of grains of
lavender, you know, that kind of thing.
But, this is fascinating.
So the grandson of Guerlain, the familyGuerlain is incredible in the history
of all of this in France particularly.
The grandson, in 1904, created thevery first perfume for men, that is
(50:10):
since the Middle Ages when perfume wasfor everybody, using only synthetic
essences, and showed that it was possibleto make perfume without having to use
anything other than synthetic essences.
And, so this opened upa whole world of things.
This takes us to the 20thcentury, and this is incredible.
(50:30):
So perfume is still associated heavilywith France, and it is still a world
of invention of perfume, but nowbetween the Guerlain family and a man
named Francois Coty, and I rememberwhen I was a child that there were
ads in United States for products,cosmetics that were Coty, C-O-T-Y.
(50:51):
So, it turns out that there's thisman named Francois Coty who was an
independent perfume maker, and he wasthe ultimate great businessman, because
not only did he create a syntheticperfume called Le Chypre in 1917,
but he said and he decided that youneeded to make derivative products as
(51:13):
well, powder, cosmetics, boxes, andhe was the first person to decide that
it was important to make a bottle.
I was thinking about that when youwere talking about how you remember
the shape of the bottle of theperfume that you wore, because he was
the one that created the idea thateach perfume had to be identified
(51:36):
with a specific design of a bottle.
Yeah, that's the... Yeah, yeah.
And that is, of course,exactly what we have.
That's genius.
That's genius.
The only other person that is reallyimportant at the beginning of the 20th
century is a man who was a couturier,he made clothes, named Paul Poiret, who
I knew about as a designer actually.
(51:57):
And he was the first personto decide to associate a
perfume with high-end clothing.
Uh-huh.
And that was in 1911.
So this is just at the verybeginning of the 20th century.
Between the two of them, theyrevolutionized the world of perfume.
And then the next person to come along,only a few years later, is Coco Chanel.
(52:21):
Right.
And in 1921... Now, she was a womanwho was extremely interesting.
We really should do a podcast about her.
She was a rebellious woman.
She was an independent woman.
She was a woman that was not easy,I'm sure, in any sense of the
term, but she was a genius as well.
So, she decided, having learnedabout this guy, Poiret, who was doing
(52:41):
clothing and perfume, that she wasgoing to have her first big fashion
show on her own, and this is in 1921.
And she asked a perfumer.
Now a lot of what has happened sincethen, and this, of course, existed
before, but there were two or three placesin the South of France, near Grasse,
where you have people who are makingperfumes on order for other companies.
(53:07):
And so she goes to one of them, I don'thave his name here, but they do know
who the person was who created it.
Sure.
And she said, "Make me a perfumethat is a perfume for women
that smells like a woman."
Hmm.
And it was apparently the fifth versionthat she liked, which is why it came
to be called Chanel Number Five.
(53:29):
There you go.
In 1921.
Isn't this fun?
I love all of this, yeah.
And the next person to comealong to revolutionize things
is Christian Dior in 1947.
We're talking about just after thewar when they need something to
make people happy again, basically.
I mean, this is the realityof what was going on.
(53:49):
And he decided that he was going toask for a perfume to be made that
would be the perfume for the new woman.
Uh-huh.
And so he went to a perfume maker andhe asked for that, and that is the
perfume Miss Dior, and it was introducedat the same time, on the same day
(54:10):
with the models who took his firstindependent showroom collection out.
Right, the runway.
The Runway and the collection.
And so Chanel and Dior basicallyrevolutionized the world of perfume
forever and ever in the 20th century.
Interesting.
So, the glory and the... the goldenage of French perfume basically, really
(54:33):
goes up to the end of the 20th century.
Now, the difference is that we have somany different companies, from other
places in the world making perfume,and making clothes, and associating
clothes and perfume, but these arethe people who really revolutionized
it for everybody, and these are theperfumes that, of course, are still the
ones that sell the most in the world.
(54:53):
Right, because if you want togive a gift, you get one that is
famous, you know, that you've heardof, that everybody's heard of.
I mean, you know, there are others.
There's Lanvin, there are,you know, all these others.
But let's face it, Chanel, Dior, Guerlain,two or three others, the only other one
outside of this group is Kenzo that Ithink of, you know, because I know he's
made a lot of perfumes, but we stillassociate them, and notice these are
(55:17):
associated with people who do clothing,do haute couture, and do fashion.
And they are conscious, and they wereconscious even in the 20th century.
Chanel was an astute businesswomanamong other things, and she said
one of the reasons for creating theperfume is because "I will make a lot
more money selling the perfume than Iwill ever selling my haute couture."
(55:39):
Ah, yeah, that... Well,that's probably true.
It's cheaper.
When you think about it, it's a loteasier to get a bottle of perfume
that's marked Lanvin, Patou, Givenchy,Lacroix, any of these others than to
go out and get a first edition dress.
Definitely.
So, basically the history of perfumehas come down through all these
centuries to be associated withFrance and with innovation, which is
(56:03):
what I thought is also interesting.
It's not just that it's in France, it'sthat each step of the way it was a French
person that in- created a new concept.
And of course now, it's amulti-multi-billion dollar industry
everywhere in the world, you know?
What an interesting conversation.
I'm surprised.
But we have to stop because you'vebeen talk... like, you've talked a lot.
(56:25):
I've talked a lot.
I know.
I know I did, but it waslike this was so much fun.
You can't even imagine.
I learned so many things.
And if you want to know more about thedifferent essences and things, write to
us and I'll add this as a little side,little note in a Facebook page, you know?
Yeah, yeah, if you have more putit on your Patreon page as well.
(56:46):
Oh, God I just thought about so manythings like, of course, you know,
what kind of perfume do you like?
I want to know.
Tell us, please, what kindof perfume do you like?
I would love to know as well.
And the great thing isperfume keeps forever.
Yes.
If you have a bottle, you know, thingsgo bad, but perfumes don't seem to.
Pull it out and try it again.
... and try it again.
(57:06):
Merci beaucoup, Elyse.
De rien.
Au revoir.
Au revoir.
The Join Us in France travelpodcast is written, hosted, and
produced by Annie Sargent, andCopyright 2025 by AddictedToFrance.
It is released under a CreativeCommons attribution, non-commercial,
(57:29):
no derivatives license.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!