Changing tastes and the development of modern chemistry laid the foundations of perfumery as we know it today.  Advanced technology made it possible to create new extraction techniques. The most prominent of all technological advances was the ability to create synthetic ingredients to substitute for natural perfume ingredients that were hard to find or very expensive – bringing perfume prices down and making it accessible to the masses.

New chemicals, abundant fragrance crops, easier access to supplies, new markets because of better transportation, more sophisticated production of alcohol and glassware, and a growing middle-class clientele – added up to the explosion of the perfume industry during the final years of the century.  Perfumers began to venture past their conservative beginnings, to create fragrances that were conceived not as copies of scents that were found in nature but as beautiful in themselves. No longer confined to traditional formulas, they were free to use their materials liberally, like an artist with a palette of infinite colors.

Among the great perfumes of this time were Fougere Royale, created by Houbigant in 1882, the first perfume to utilize the synthetic, coumarin, which resembles the smell of newly mown hay. In 1889 the House of Guerlain produced Jicky, a true family collaboration. Jicky was created by Aime` Guerlain, named for the young Jacques Guerlain (his nickname was Jicky), and presented in a bottle designed by Gabriel Guerlain working with the glassmakers of Baccarat. The notes were orris, bergamot, and lavender, and the scent was created with men in mind, but Jicky quickly became fantastically popular with women.

The First Superstar Perfumer

The most celebrated phenomenon among the elegant perfume houses was Francois Coty, born in Corsica in 1876.  He gravitated to France and struck up a friendship with an apothecary who compounded fragrances, but sold them in unimaginative jars.  This craft was interesting enough to captivate the young Coty and he became obsessed with perfumes and presenting them in beautiful bottles.  He made a pilgrimage to Grasse to study perfumery, and he learned the nuances about each of the flowers and herbs grown there and the techniques to distill their scents.

When he returned to Paris, Coty borrowed money from his grandmother and built a perfume laboratory in his apartment. In 1904 he created his first perfume, La Rose Jacqueminot, and when it wasn’t selling as quickly as he hoped in the department store Le Louvre, he knocked a bottle onto the tile floor where it shattered and the scent was released.  Soon everyone flocked to see what the amazing scent was, and his career was launched.
His Origan from 1905 is considered the first 20th century famous perfume, and in 1917 he created Chypre, the perfume that was at the head of an entire perfume family with the same name, and that included oak moss, labdanum, patchouli, and bergamot married with the oriental scents of amber and soft spicy vanilla to evoke a sensual aroma.

Couturier Jean Patou, the creator of Joy, ‘the world’s costliest perfume’, agreed.  He thought ‘perfume was one of the most important accessories of a woman’s dress’.  At first, designers like Charles Worth, who created Je Reviens, would give their clients little bottles of perfume as gifts; then, like Jeanne Lanvin, creator of the iconic Arpege,  they began to sell them within the store. Soon they found they could make more money from the perfumes than from the dresses.

Chanel No. 5, created by Ernest Beaux for Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel in 1921, is a stellar example of an inspired use of synthetics. It was the first perfume to be built upon the ingredient of aldehydes, which gives a sparkling, effervescent, ‘bubbly’ quality to the fragrance and was a revelation for the time period.  Composed of rose, jasmine, ylang ylang, and animalic notes, Chanel No. 5