Fragrances from Poland

Because of the French domination in the luxury scene today, we tend to forget or not to be aware that what today are called luxury items were produced in many places in Europe in the past centuries. There is of course the fascination for French perfumes and cosmetics, but what about Austrian, Hungarian, Russian and other countries in the XIXth century that were overshadowed first by Napoleon's wars and after by the opulence of Napoleon III's court?
One particular case, but also strange, is Poland, a country with such a particular history. Cosmetics history in XXth century is not well known to the public because brands had almost rewritten it in the past 20 years. But before brands there was cosmetic science, dermatologists and people unknown to the public that have created formulas and sold them. Before WWII those people lived in Wien, Budapest, several German cities but also in Poland. Two great names of the cosmetics were from Poland - Max Factor (the king of make up) and Helena Rubinstein (the queen of creams). It's not their birth certificate that matters but the people they brought back from Poland
During the Iron Curtain, Poland, after all the WWII damages, became leader in the field of cosmetics among former CAER countries (but not in fragrances). Leader in terms of cosmetic science, innovation but also opening to the West. If the fragrance industry before WWII depended mostly on imported products (composition) this changed very much after 1956. In the 70's there were around 16 industrial plants producing detergents, cosmetics fragrances. In fact, during the hard 80's Poland knew everything that was done in the West. Maybe less for the consumer but more on the side of specialists - organic chemists working in the field of aroma chemicals analysis / synthesis / production (at Lodz University) but also cosmetic chemists. Several international congresses took place in Poland and the literature from the time is quite rich in examples. Also there were fragrance seminars organized by H&R, Dragoco, Drom, etc. Most amazing are the fragrance articles published abroad (USA) by people working at the most known fragrance factory - Pollena. I have a big collection of those papers - creation methods, learning and testing perfumes, fragrance contests. They show something important - what we call creation today was not mystery at all for polish perfumers.
What about their creations? The language barrier made me almost impossible to dig very deep. I still do not know how many of the perfumes produced before 1989 (hard to find bottles) were polish by creation or polish by fabrication (concentrate bought in western Europe). And how many different perfumes were created.
Here you have some well known Polish perfumes, already produced in 1975
Condella
Egzotyka
Market
Narcilla
Prastara Eau de Cologne
Premier
Sako
Sawa
Wirtu
Maybe the most known polish perfume is Pani Walewska in its blue bottle. Another very known fragrance was BYĆ MOŻE, created in the late 70's or early 80's - a green chypre animalic very sweet and close to Miss Dior and Timeless (Avon).
It is not a surprise that after the fall of Iron Court almost all great producers in Europe moved to Poland and opened (and continues to open) factories for creams, shampoos, make up, and many other products that bear the "made in EU" stamp. It would have been impossible on a virgin land.
(But that's another story - how the West conquered the East after 1989)

Did you enjoy my article? Sign up for updates about new fragrances, reviews of artistic perfumes and exceptional vintage masterpieces. I would be very happy if you would consider joining 1000 Fragrances, throughRSS feed,GoogleFriend connect, Facebook (more personal), or any other way that appeals to you.

Fragrance is the 8th Art - Octavian Coifan - Le Parfum est le 8ème Art