The spirit of a decade
The Belle Époque was a time of prosperity and refinement for perfumery in Paris and London. Ionones, discovered in 1893, gave access to violet, then highly fashionable, and to new powdery effects. François Coty, who arrived in Paris at the turn of the century, played a decisive role: L'Origan, launched in 1905, and his collaboration with glassmaker René Lalique from 1908 turned the bottle into an object of desire and established the idea of perfume that was both luxurious and widely distributed. At Guerlain, Après l'Ondée in 1906 explored a powdery melancholy of violet and heliotrope. In London, Penhaligon's launched Blenheim Bouquet in 1902, a citrus aromatic cologne built on lemon, lavender and pine that remains one of the oldest men's fragrances still on sale today.