The fragrance bottle is the perfect symbol of the mood and style of an era. Sadly, the perfume industry has changed considerably over the past 25 years. Once refined and luxurious, much perfume has since become common and throwaway, a mass market product. Quality has become harder to find and, with a few exceptions, this is reflected in the lack of good bottle design. As ever, society is dictating change and the hollow confections churned out by the dubious icons of our day — step forward, Paris Hilton — are now being spurned by the cognoscenti, prompting the perfume industry to reconsider its past in order to drive itself forward. To know where to take the art of perfume next, we need to know where it has been.
The bottles created at the dawn of modern perfumery were very plain affairs, reflecting the apothecary roots of the craft. They were big, heavy and often square, with a decorative label representing the style of the times. While every material has been used in the creation of bottles, including terracotta, glass, porcelain, silver and gold, crystal was settled on as the medium of choice in the early 20th century due to its brilliance and versatility. In 1906, François Coty commissioned his then-neighbour, René Lalique, the great jewellery designer, to design a bottle, box and label for one of his creations. The success of Lalique’s crystal bottle led to a semi-automated production method using the new demi-crystal, which allowed unprecedented detail in the designs.
A wave of ‘animalism’ ensued. Bottles were created for Guerlain in the shape of a snail in 1902, and in the shape of a tortoise in 1914 for its Parfum des Champs-Elysées. The moth was represented in a Coty flacon, delicately hovering over the stopper as if drawn magnetically to the scent. Around this time, a frenzy of archaeological activity at the Pyramids also started a craze for all things Egyptian; two of the most striking bottles to emerge from this period were Baccarat’s Le Secret du Sphinx for Ramses in 1917 and the magnificent Un Rêve sur le Nil in 1919. This new fad vied for favour with orientalism, which was all the rage as Japan opened up to the west. Scent was now being designed to make us dream and to take us away from the everyday to faraway places.
At the same time, a burgeoning middle class in Europe was starting to demand fresh designs. Bright young things viewed pre-war creations as old-fashioned. It was the couturier Paul Poiret who helped push the industry forward. Poiret loved perfume, and saw the possibility to link it with fashion, but he didn’t believe anyone would wear a fragrance bearing a couturier’s name so, in 1919, he launched a range named Rosine after his daughter. Drawing heavily on perfumery’s Arabic and oriental roots, we can see his influence today in the perfumes of Serge Lutens.
Other designers, like Coco Chanel and Jean Patou, were quick to follow suit. In 1921, Chanel commissioned a bottle to house Chanel No 5, rejecting what she saw as over-ornamented, sappy designs. Instead she chose a plain, rectangular bottle with a stopper inspired by a plan of Place Vendôme. Patou, with his usual aplomb, employed exclusive French interior design duo Süe et Mare to devise bottles, crafted from Baccarat crystal, for his fragrances Moment Supreme, Que Sais-Je? and Amour Amour.
The fragrance flacon had become an art form, and fashion designers were quickly hooked. Elsa Schiaparelli was heavily influenced by the Surrealists, in particular, her friend Salvador Dalí, and designed a bottle in the form of a voluptuous woman’s torso for her memorable 1937 fragrance Shocking. This creation would later become a direct influence for Jean-Paul Gaultier’s iconic Classique.
The 1925 Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts also spurred a frenzy of activity: Georges Chevalier, head of design at Baccarat and one of the leading exponents of the art deco movement, created L’Océan Bleu for Lubin, a double dolphin design that plays tricks with our eyes as it metamorphoses into an oriental face. He also created two of the best examples of the movement for Piver: Gao and Rêve d’Or.
Guerlain’s Coque d’Or, a sublime blue crystal flacon encased in a shell of gold, nodded towards the decadent androgyny of Berlin nightclubs, of the likes of Dietrich, and the sumptuous interiors of Bakst. The glamour of travel also inspired many designs. Caron launched En Avion in 1932 to commemorate Amelia Earhart crossing the Atlantic; and the following year Guerlain came up with a design evoking an airplane propeller for Vol de Nuit. The climax of this movement came with Patou’s Normandie, created for the maiden voyage of the Normandie steam ship and presented to every first class passenger. The packaging took the shape of the liner with the bottle inside its funnel.
With the Second World War, launches almost came to a halt, but in 1946, Baccarat roared back with Salvador Dalí’s creation for Schiaparelli’s Le Roy Soleil, a symbolic design depicting the sun rising again over a darkened world. Patriotism and luxury became the watchwords, a feeling captured by Nina Ricci in a bottle made by René Lalique’s son Marc and designed by artist Christian Bérard for the perfume Coeur Joie. The butterfly that surmounts the stopper expresses joy at a rediscovered sense of freedom, and a similar theme is reflected in Ricci’s now classic bottle, also designed by Marc Lalique, for L’Air du Temps, where two doves fly freely over a highly stylised world.
It was Christian Dior, however, who captured the mood of the moment best with a special trio of flacons, in patriotic red, white and blue, for Miss Dior, the scent Paul Vacher created for him in 1947. Each amphora was made from double-cased crystal, a highly sophisticated technique where coloured crystal is blown with a clear crystal interior, and was adorned with gold leaf.
Luxury and refinement were back and reaching new heights. Dior commissioned Baccarat to design a bottle for its new fragrance, Diorissimo, which tested the skill of the crystal maker even further. Created in 1956, it is considered to be one of the most sumptuous flacons ever made — symbolising a vase, its stopper is surmounted by a bouquet of gilded bronze flowers. However, this design marked the end of a golden age for perfume. There are still fine bottles produced, but they are rarefied and produced in small numbers.
Last year, Clive Christian commissioned what is maybe the most luxurious flacon ever for Clive Christian No 1, the world’s most expensive fragrance. With only ten produced, it is the smallest limited edition ever to be made by Baccarat, and it features a giant crystal flacon, with a five-carat diamond set in an 18-carat gold collar. It seems there is room again for true luxury and creativity in perfumery.
Roja Dove runs the Haute Parfumerie at Urban Retreat on the fifth floor at Harrods, London SW1
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