Fragrance Aesthetics, The 8th Art and Baumgarten

Our vision of Art owes very much to the XVIII-th century and for this reason I believe that everything should be redefined today. We should forget some authors and rediscover hidden senses. In this context, the fragrance as a major (and not at all minor) form of Art sitting near Music or Painting appears as a fertile ground for new theories of Art.

With the development of art as a commercial enterprise linked to the rise of a nouveau riche class across Europe, the purchasing of art inevitably lead to the question, 'what is good art'. That's the XVIIIth century and the invention what we call today "The Modern System of the Arts". It is a school of thinking that is deeply rooted in our contemporary society.

Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten is the man who in 1750 invented Aesthetics (or was it 1738?). He actually appropriated the word aesthetics giving to it a new meaning - taste or "sense" of beauty (in stead of sensation). For the ancients, it meant something like "the ability to receive stimulation from one or more of the five bodily senses". Aesthetics started as a study of good and bad taste, of good and bad art and later the link good taste & beauty. From a theoretical point of view, what we do now in the fragrance universe is similar to what philosophers were trying to do 250 years ago when art and nouveaux riches flooded Europe. Of course, there is still a big difference concerning the works of art - some contemporary perfumers should not sell their soul to the Evil and should give their best through beautiful perfumes. L'Oréal might make you rich but definitely doesn't save your soul as an artist. But that's the choice we have to make in life - 50 GC formulae a year with a good salary or 5 perfumes that would redefine our notion of beauty in fragrance for the next 50 years.

Baumgarten claimed that there are three ways to know perfection and he said that "Beauty is the perfect (the absolute) perceived by the senses". He conceptualized aesthetic science as a study of "sensory knowledge". When he speaks about "confusion" and rehabilitates this notion he actually makes the perfect definition of a perfume. The artist has not the mission to make the experience "self-explanatory", clear or precise, this is the purpose of philosophers and scientists. An artist is somebody who can be confused, presents the confusion and perfects it. This confusion is opposed to the clarity expressed by science.

Baumgarten names the sensuously perceived realm a “field of confusion” (campus confusionis). Art, as science or philosophy, represents knowledge but a different one. An artist presents the Reality with the wholeness of its dimensions, one containing the other. He does not isolate an element like the scientist, he does not present it without a background.

Aesthetics is a science of sensitive knowing. The task of aesthetic knowing is the translation of an obscure sensuous manifold into a clear perceptual image. It touches the direct sensuous apprehension of its actuality.

Without being aware, Baumgarten presented the main characteristics of the fragrance art when he discussed beauty and the new science of aesthetics. He had no idea about fragrances, quite rare in his country in 1750. But this is possible because beauty and perfume were linked from the first days of Humanity. A beautiful perfume is just the reflection of Beauty perceived through a specific sense.

Poetic words have both an intensive and extensive clarity, they invoke a highly particular "object" and have a richness of poetic allusions. Isn't it the same for Diorissimo? It smells lily of the valley in an unquestionable way yet its poetic allusions to other olfactory sensations contribute to an unprecedented complexity. Without the richness and the power of the archetype it would be impossible to please so many generations. The same could not be said about the latest Belle d'Opium from YSL - l'Oréal, a product that lacks the richness of allusions and the depth of meaning without even speaking about its obvious technical errors (poor tenacity, poor volume, no diversity and poor contrast).

This idea of confusion as presented by Baumgarten has nothing to do with the chaotic perfume, nor with the "grisaille", a fragrance that smells of nothing precisely. A perfume can be both descriptive (static) and narrative (dynamic) and this "campus confusionis" of Baumgarten reflects the tension that characterizes several masterpieces - they both describe a recognizable scent and tell a story around it. It is the case of Paris (YSL) where the rose is in a dynamic equilibrium with contrasting facets - it can be the rose from a Parisian garden or the linden blossom scenting "l'air du temps". It is not the case of perfumes that are 100% "descriptive" like the artificial flavors or those where confusion means lack of ideas (le Bleu de Chanel) or bad construction (Escale aux Marquises, Dior).
Of course, the text of Baumgarten was in a very different context - in the 18th century the "taste" was downgraded as too sensual and bodily and the discussion of taste (like "taste in art" before the term aesthetics was coined) begins by distinguishing the dignified and elevated senses of light and seeing from the inferior bodily senses. After 250 years we know this theory was wrong and its purpose was only to "elevate" the Fine Arts through an opposition that today is outdated. The development of the "perfume as The 8th art" from the XIXth century to the present is the proof that the philosophic assumption was wrong and Art is stronger in its manifestations against the will of a theory.

We do not study design, music, or law for immediate application and profit, we study to acquire understanding and power. In fragrance art we may seek to define the principles governing shape, tonality and composition from a purely aesthetc point of view hoping to frame those principles which give vital, intimate, organic character. Perfume is dynamic contemplation.
Image:Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Oedipus and the Sphinx, 1808 

        

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

The perfume, the market and aesthetics

Many times, when I criticize contemporary launches, I receive usually 2 types of so-called arguments, expressed by people who share a different vision: personal taste and the marketing reason.

When I say "the last perfumes produced by l'Oréal team are unworthy to be sniffed" the common answer is "but they know what makes them rich". This is a very wrong answer and should never be said in public because it demonstrates you didn't go to the good college, where basics of aesthetics should be taught. Shakespeare wrote for an audience in a time when the success of a play was important for the daily living. But this has little to do with the Beauty of texts and the Greateness of meaning (form + content + meaning + intention). Bach and Mozart were commissioned for some of their works. They were paid and had a contract. Titian or Veronese were not lonely painters dreaming of Beauty. They had big ateliers that performed Art on an industrial scale. Did you see the huge Veronese painting in Louvre, in front of Mona Lisa and behind the crowd? Did you see the Rubens room in Le Louvre?  

This contemporary misunderstanding comes from a very old problem - how to define, recognize, identify, frame the Beauty? - and there is no answer to that. There is no set of rules that could be translated in a software that would set apart a beautiful drawing or a beautiful perfume.

Beauty and meaning are fundamental in any creation - from a painting to perfume or a movie, artistic expression that share many characteristics and functions. We can describe or explain beauty but cannot define it in exact words. It is only the artist who is able to define Beauty and to give new definitions to it.

First comes an idea arising from a desire to make an "object" of "utility" or "luxury" possessing some claims to beauty. In our case, utility stands for a specific function / purpose (from a perfume for a washing powder to the function of a "money maker" for shareholders). Luxury stands for rare, unique, precious, special but also reflects the Latin etymology - luxury is enlightenment, and revelation, beyond the sparkle of money. In our world the latest perfume produced by L'Oréal (let's say Armani) and the latest cleaning product from Ajax have the same value - their quest for beauty is an accessory to their utility or function and sometime it is an accident. A perfume from Dolce & Gabanna might be pretty, pleasant but its beauty is an accident, not an intention, nor a quest. It's like having a plastic container for your roses and a Gallé vase. One does something more. The perfumes of Serge Lutens perform all these basic notions, from the original idea to the permanent quest of beauty. Their "luxury" translates a form of "enlightenment". They open the appetite for knowledge and the desire to explore the senses. The "juice" of a l'Oréal perfume is just an accessory to a label inside bottle but doesn't make you richer as human nor hungrier for beauty. A work of art is fertile and inspiring while pure "utility" is not. When you smell the latest O d'Azur by Lancôme (a reproduction of a shampoo scent combined with a deodorant) you do not feel the desire to smell more from Lancôme, nor to explore other scents. Serge Lutens is the opposite and the Beauty he captured is not the uniqueness of a particular perfume but the way it acts upon your soul, no matter if you buy it or not.

The idea, the use, the environment, all this will lead the perfumer to a determination of the general "olfactory form". Practical considerations (like production, price) will lead also to a choice of materials. But with all these factors entering into the problem we may achieve nothing more than a merely adequate expression of the idea. To give Beauty we must seek a refinement of the construction through an adjustment of the relative proportions of the parts to each other and to the whole. Then comes the enrichment on the basis of all that has preceded and the finishing touch who contributes to the beauty of the whole.

That's only the first step and it refers just to aesthetic elements and not yet to meaning. This formula is useless and means nothing until it becomes a habit through practice. Perfumes produced by L'Oréal or Procter & Gamble are sterile because those who work on them have not the habit to see, breathe, even recognize beauty, and worse, they repeat processes and theories that are exhausted. These points furnish only a clew in the development of a product because there are many crossroads between the idea and a beautiful expression. Mere adequacy is not beauty. Our world is abundantly endowed with practical sense leading to remarkable inventions. To pursue an idea through the practical phase alone may lead to a "machine", to the highest degree of efficiency. Complete efficiency may excite our admiration, but beauty springs from an impulse that craves more than efficient service. But adequate service is not incompatible with beauty and here we have some examples of very important olfactory creations like the first Nivea cream.

"The assumption that art is luxury and inaccessible is the logical argument of an age that looks upon art as something apart from daily life, to be donned on occasions like a Sunday coat." This idea, already discussed at the end of XIXth century is more contemporary than ever because, after a century of modern art and democracy, the elite has replaced the old idols with newer ones. In Paris, one of the few places on earth where things are both advanced and very old fashioned, this is still the credo in the XXIth century. The question "can perfume be an art?" can be asked in a conservative academic milieu only because ART today is still considered something like a Sunday coat. This vision of Art is wrapped with incomprehensible texts much like the use of Latin in catholic churches centuries ago.

There was a time when Art was everyday life - people went to lavishly painted churches while the divine music was accompanying their prayers. They did not know what Art is because this notion was not yet framed, also many were illiterate. Few of them were aware of what we visit today in Italy or France and call Art. The assumption today that fragrance is less than an Art because it is something of daily use, is the ridicule argument of those who did not study art, nor culture. It is not the perfume that has to be "demonstrated" but people who have to be taught, like those centuries ago listening the Bible in Latin with a french accent. Reading French newspapers I notice that we still live in the XIXth century - the orchestra became an i-Pod, the content is the same.

Photo: Les Amours de Pâris et d’Hélène, Jacques-Louis David, Louvre Museum

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

Fragrance - the essence of life and some archetypes

Once upon a time, in the garden of Eden, between the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge there was another plant, but few were able to see. It was green and often took the appearance of a climbing snake above the water of life. Her name was Divinia fragrans and she was an epiphytic orchid, shaped in the purest "Art Nouveau" style, sitting very high above the ground, between the trees almost like a heart (it was actually only one tree). This unusual plant "spoke" only at dawn when her highly scented petals were whispering an invitation to birds to taste the fruits of the tree and spread the seeds in the garden. Sometime Divinia was protecting the tree with the most frightening odor.

This unknown flower was the origin of all fragrances and when the first inhabitants of the Paradise were sent away, it was the scent of the garden they missed the most - The Divinia - the "invisible" plant hidden in the tree. Scent is the essence of life and, under its most sublime form, the fragrance, it is the vague souvenir of the Lost Paradise.

In tropical areas, scent is everywhere and under every form, from the most beautiful to the most repulsive. The life breathes like Sahara did thousands of years ago, before it became a desert. But in other parts of the planet the scents of life are not everywhere everytime. In the North, the cycle of 4 seasons is constantly offering the presence and the absence of strong scents, from the blooming flowers, several weeks in spring, to the winter with its rare scents and few survivors. Caves and deserts are also deprived of the heavy tropical scents. They are like modern buildings.

The Mesopotamians built ziggurats and believed that these pyramid temples connected heaven and earth. The most impressive had 7 steps and the 8th was the air, the sky, the heaven or in other words the paradise where all scents return from their ephemeral life on earth. The first mention of a perfumer is also in Mesopotamia. Tapputi Belatekallim is considered to be the world’s first chemist and she was a perfumer. Her name was mentioned in a cuneiform tablet from the second millennium BC (actually there were 2 women). The Egyptian perfume records, much older, didn't reveal any creator yet. Perfume is the 8th ART and the only one that was not accessible to all, nor for experience, nor for understanding.

Beyond the 4 major functions of fragrance, there is another one, much deeper and maybe older. The scent is the essence of life and the perfume is its sublimed expression. It is the "sublimated" essence, having passed from the solid to the gaseous state (or vice versa) without becoming liquid. From a physical point of view this is not correct today when most of ingredients are liquids. But thousands of years ago it was true for the men in front of Divinia flower - the archetype - who saw the plant, the tropical mist and felt the presence of the perfume without "seeing" it.

Fragrance represents life beyond the separation between subject and world, it is a symbol for the permanent possibility of experiencing fusion.

This first function - fragrance as a repository of life and a gate to a different universe without imposing a total disconnection with the current one - can be understood today if you think about the meaning of iPod to the youngest generation. The "sound machine" is small enough and performs something similar - an answer to the experience of alienation in the contemporary world, a similar function to imagination. Unlike "gramophone" i-pod is almost a magical device and it will become even smaller.

Perfume did that thousands of years before for those who could afford it and was an unconscious expression of the lost paradise. Its presence in any type of magical ritual was not only to attract /repel but also to ensure that the experience is real and not imaginary. The illusion should be perfect, like candies today shaped and flavored like fruits. Are dreams scented? That's a question I cannot answer for the moment.

Why do I wear a fragrance for so many years? Why do I feel the need to smell again and again some perfumes and I'm not bothered if I forget others?

It is not seduction, nor celebrity! I doubt that any woman wearing the same perfume 15 years did a list of her conquests, a "performance" test and a marketing research in Cupid's land.

We wear fragrances for many years because we love to contemplate them and we feel transported in our unconscious Paradise. A great perfumer is the most accomplished artist (but not recognized by the society). Wearing a masterpiece perfume is pure contemplation, hours and hours of pure admiration. Unless you are a Beaux Art student you don't spend more than 5 minutes in front of Raphael!
Some perfumes appeal to us because they have something very deep and because they are able to "touch" some scent archetypes.Scent archetypes are not metaphors/concepts, they are the most mysterious side of us, a link between the physical world and our inside. They are both molecules and a fraction of the olfactory space. They are more relevant to us than other scents and are not concepts. Scents were here before us but they do not have equal meaning. When those archetypes are present in a fragrance in their most sublimed form that transcends their crude reality through ART, that creation will be a long time around us.

There are 2 types of scent archetypes: those very old that go back to our origins as if they were a part of our collective "DNA" and those "circumstantial" that reflect a short period of time and have a strong causality factor. Those archetypes are both universal and specific. We are sensible to green odors but not all green molecules / naturals have the same impact on us, some go deeper. Though perfumers work with molecules, this is where the science stops and the art starts. The subject can be explored only by artists, sometime centuries before science is able to give a rational explanation. From the entire olfactory space (the "good scents") we feel attracted and moved only by several areas. Curiously, some great floral perfumes of the XXth century, though unrelated, point to a specific area from this space. They do not smell the same but the effect (the "activated" zones) is almost the same.

It is said that who discovers the Divinia flower in the jungle, will find the key to the lost Paradise.
PS:The flower depicted in Sumer is very similar to the honeysuckle, later adopted as an ornament by Greeks, a flower that is similar in shape with some tropical orchids.

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

Fundamentals of fragrance design

In 1801 Jean Nicolas Louis Durand published a fundamental book for the architectural thinking that shaped our world for the next century - his work was actually a collection of drawings. They represented the Models, the best examples of old and modern buildings, from basic elements to the spatial complex configuration - doors, temples, churches, etc. It was a system of design using simple modular elements combined after several rules. The model, the element and the rule is still today an important tool with endless possibilities from graphic design to architecture and it is highly efficient. That's how a software works, from Photoshop to Archicad, but keep in mind that the machine is just a tool and creative thinking is different (the Odorshop is another story)

A new original fragrance, like any other type of art work, rewrites / rearranges the olfactory space. It represents both a new shape or olfactory configuration and a new meaning given to its elements. The rose in a perfume like Chanel No5 (but it can be Paris or Kenzo Flower, too) is not just the rose oil/absolute, but a new rose representing a fraction of the "ideal rose" and most important of all, a rose specific to No5. Here we have 2 main concepts inherent to any artwork - the intention and the result as it is perceived by a different person. We have the rose (or rosy note) as it was intended by Ernest Beaux and clearly expressed by the formula, and the rose that we can "extract" or cut from the original perfume. For this reason I could show you 10 roses from 1900 to 2000 like the lines in fashion. Knowing them is as fundamental for a perfumer as fashion history is for a designer. If the audience is aware or not has little value - do you think that an average person today could make the difference between Louis XVI and Louis Philippe styles in decoration?

For this reason we can build a database of accords representing ideas from masterpieces, as Durand did for the buildings of Antiquity to his age. Those ideas are as fundamental as the ingredient alone (read the rose oil or the molecules) and their formula is short and essential. Those ideas, taken from old perfumes (1900's) to modern creations (2000's) can be recombined in an unprecedented way that transcends the aesthetics of a given period. Why not combining the lilac of Olivia Giacobetti with the rose-violet note of Voilette de Madame (Jacques Guerlain) or taking Iris Silver Mist in a 1906 Après l'ondée storm? Putting together ideas that were never in the same place or same time will be the next step in fragrance creation, after the rediscovery of basic ingredients. Beauty in fragrance is universal and timeless and a powerful idea transcends time, space and ideology. Ideas are here, the perfumer has to "extract" the best "artistic essence" like the chemists did for the natural ingredients. Understanding the beauty of Paris (YSL) is quite different than duplicates the perfume because it sells. This is the fragile line between ART and non-Art, between work/replica/kitsch.

Bringing in the same "place" a 1920's rose and a 2010's jasmine is not enough. When you do not smell rose near jasmine and their link but something else, greater and more powerful you are in the kingdom of shapes - an aesthetic configuration, a fundamental pattern, a structure. And there are many from Après l'ondée to Terre d'Hermès! Understanding the olfactory shape of a perfume is similar to the process of understanding the composition of a painting - you slice it until you find its fundamental truth and uniqueness.

Without entering too much technical details, this is actually a method of composition / creation where artistic experiment, knowledge and theory are fundamental.

All truths may be expressed as appropriate combinations of concepts, which can in turn be decomposed into simple ideas, rendering the analysis much easier - that's Leibniz in 1666 in Dissertatio de arte combinatoria.
The artistic experiment in fragrance creation is the process of examining a form, material or process in a methodical yet open-ended way. To perform a fragrance experiment is to isolate elements of an operation limiting some variables in order to better study others. An experiment asks a question or tests an aesthetic hypothesis whose answer is not known in advance. And what is more exciting than exploring the uncharted territories of the scent map!

New bones, new structures, new aesthetic theories - that's the future of the 8th ART and this art belongs to creators and not to brands.

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

Who invented the scented gloves? Was it Egypt?

Were the scented gloves the invention of Maître Gantiers et Parfumeurs during the early Renaissance? I am not so sure today after I noticed something special among the many things from the royal tomb of Tutankhamen. Several pairs of fine gloves were found! This picture belongs to the 1923 original album containing the 500 photographs of the extraordinary discovery (the inventory). If Egyptians used fragrances & oils almost everywhere, why wouldn't they scent the gloves of the pharaoh? I do not remember any representation of gloves in Egyptian art (they would have probably ruined the composition) and their presence in the tomb is indeed unusual, combined with their climate. If I'm not wrong, one of the earliest representation of gloves (boxing type) was in a Minoan fresco. Testing the theory is quite easy because the use of a perfume, as it was prepared in Egypt, would leave some traces on the textile. Unfortunately, I cannot tell you if the pharaoh liked to use scented gloves in the after life and I'd rather not speculate without a scientific confirmation.
Click for a better image.

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

My Viennese Lady

Because today every fragrance house in Paris has what they call "égérie", something between a muse and a star, I decided to have my own. In my native town there are many Sezession sculptures on every old house (sometimes replaced by angels or peacocks). My Lady is anonymous, comes from Wien and she was born from the pencil of an illustrator the same year Le Parfum Idéal (Houbigant) was created in Paris. I put her up to protect my bottle but I still have to "clean" the dust and create the ornaments for her new house. Unlike A. Loos, I do not believe that "Ornament is Crime".

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

Wikipedia smells Funtastic

Many take Wikipedia as a real encyclopedia but sometime the sum of errors is greater than the facts presented as history. I was not aware that people take Wiki as Knowledge until last year when my students copied some articles with their infamous errors. Today I landed by accident on several pages about perfumes. It was for the first time for me and I was horrified.

On the first page about perfumes I found this: 

"Fougère: Meaning Fern in French, built on a base of lavender,onion,coumarin and oakmoss." I could not believe my eyes when I saw onions (with the link to onions, of course. Onions in a fougère? That's perfume, not french cuisine!

and then this

"Flowers whose scents cannot be extracted, such as gardenia or hyacinth" - here I could understand

"Floral Bouquet: Is a combination of fragrance of several flowers in a perfume compound e.g. Attar Majmua & Fancy Boquet" - where did they take those examples ???

"In the east, the Hungarians produced in 1370 a perfume made of scented oils blended in an alcohol solution at the command of Queen Elizabeth of Hungary best known as Hungary Water." - 3 errors inside this single phrase.

The list of famous perfumes is another curious page - I hardly imagine how it was written because the names found inside don't follow any rule. In some cases (Piver, Dana) they are not the most famous, the masterpieces, nor the bestsellers. In other cases I smell a hidden advertising. Of course there are a lot of Creed as if Creed creations were important perfumes in history. They were not at all!

Another BIG problem are the references. For general presentations, I hardly understand why people do not quote the french or british universal encyclopedias where good historical articles were written, thery are  perfect for an introduction. Why inventing something that was done better before?

Than I landed on the page about Ernest Beaux and I was even more horrified. "Information recycling" without being able to understand and chose the right references is the worst thing in the academic world. The page about Ernest Beaux is "popular science" at its best where rumors and legends are transformed in facts. What was a possible origin (a perfume created for Rallet before Rallet No1) is presented as a fact as if the author found that pre WWI bottle, sniffed the perfume and concluded the true history of the perfume. But how can you write history when you are not able to write correctly the names (ie the former designers from Chanel) ? There is also a perfume that Ernest Beaux did not authored and I do not know how it pop up everywhere. Again, the english page about No5 looks like an in depth study but in fact is a compilation of several errors and some contradictions inside the text (the author doesn't make the crucial difference between the No5 and the No22 aldehydes and uses a synonym that is rarely used by perfumers).

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

Cosmétiques Guerlain au XIXème siècle

Au XIXème siècle la cosmétique était un domaine aussi fascinant qu'aujourd'hui avec des produits magiques, des promesses anti âge, des noms qui font rêver, des innovations scientifiques mais aussi avec communication et publicité, aspect qui sont assez méconnus aujourd'hui. En 1845 Guerlain venait de lancer un produit très recherché pour la chevelure - La Pommade Romaine, à base de graisse d'oie. Je viens de retrouver le "texte de lancement" ou plutôt la présentation du produit dans un journal littéraire de 1845.

"J'entends déjà plus d'un lecteur se demander avec effroi si les oies deviendraient à la mode; et si nous lui disions que Guerlain revient de Russie avec les plus belles oies qu'on puisse imaginer, il tomberait de plus en plus dars une stupéfaction profonde. "Voici ce dont il s'agit. Le célèbre parfumeur, non content d'extraire des fleurs les sucs et les essences les plus rares, a cherché, dans les produits de la nature, une graisse, qui conservât à la chevelure toute sa beauté et qui la fortifiât, en empêchant de petits vers microscopiques de pénétrer dans le tube capillaire, et d'arriver jusqu'à la racine du cheveu. Après de consciencieuses études, après avoir consulté les Mémoires de la célèbre Papeïa (sic!), maîtresse de Néron, de l'Italienne Catherine de Médicis, et de maître Rine, ainsi que les documents si précieux de l'immortelle Ninon de l'Enclos, Guerlain a reconnu que la graisse d'oie avait des propriétés particulières et régénératrices, et, sous le nom de Pommade romaine, il a créé, pour la chevelure, la pâte la plus onctueuse et la plus parfaite dont toute femme un peu coquette voudra se servir. Ainsi, la graisse d'ours a été détrônée par la graisse d'oie, de même que les parapluies Gazai, à cause de leur extrême élégance, ont renversé complètement les robinsons, en dépit d'Arnal et du Vaudeville."

Même si à présent la cosmétique est un peu cachée derrière la renommé des parfums mais surtout devant les grands groupes, au XIXème siècle Guerlain était un novateur au niveau de la conception des produits mais surtout de la communication. C'est un aspect assez méconnu de son histoire car les cosmétique ont une vie plus éphémère que les parfums. Voilà un autre texte de la même année qui parlait toujours des produits de soin qui devraient séduire les femmes du monde entier en visite à Paris:

"Les élégantes revenues à Paris font chaque jour des excursions bien longues dans les premières maisons de Paris. L'une va demander à Guerlain, le parfumeur des jolies femmes, une essence qui ne soit qu'à elle, et qui surpasse encore son ambroisie, si cela était possible; et en même temps elle fait un choix de sa pâte aux quatre semences, pour conserver à ses mains leur blancheur aristocrate ; de son lily de Judée pour donner à son teint une fraîcheur toute virginale; et de son eau lustrale, pour rendre à ses cheveux le noir d'ébène que le soleil des champs a un peu altéré."

Grâce à un parfum contemporain j'ai redécouvert l'essence de myrte qui s'allie parfaitement à l'ylang et aux notes ambrées irisées comme Prada ou Cachet Jaune. Pour finir cette petite introduction en beauté dans le grand siècle romantique je vous propose le parfum dont Paris était fou en 1841:

"En passant, elle répandait autour d'elle un parfum doux et fin ; c'était l'essence du myrte que Guerlain a mise à la mode cet hiver. Il n'y a pas de femme nerveuse qui ne puisse parfaitement adopter cette odeur délicate, fraîche et balsamique, inoffensive comme l'iris. "

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

Nivea cream, the white scent and Helena Rubinstein

Nivea is one of the most important cultural artifacts of the XXth century and it fully reflects the ideas and the contradictions of Central / Eastern Europe before WWII and the complicate relations between social class, race and economics. It means "snow white" (in Latin nix/nivis = snow) and it was not the porcelain white of French rococo, nor the white skin from the fairy tale. Nivea represented a more complex shade of white under the effect of a very bright cream. 

During my studies, when I worked in several pharmacies in my country, I had unusual requests almost every day. It was a time when we were not selling yet branded products and some products had to be prepared like in a Victorian apothecary. Many poor gipsy women were asking for creams that would make their skin whiter. It was the 1990's! I had to prepare inexpensive lotions and creams and the smallest change in skin shade would make people come back and ask for more. Eastern Europe was during 1900's a sophisticated Babel Tower with a great diversity of skin types each with complicate social meanings. Nivea was launched in a world with blond, black or red and curly hair, with pure Nordic white baby skin, white with freckles or very dark almost brown skin, with blue eyes, green, or very black.

Budapest, Krakow, Wien, Prague have nothing to do with Paris or London. It was a world that collapsed and where people spoke and understood the same languages. The obsession with a perfect skin that wouldn't betray the race and will hide the small defects was there. The creators of Nivea (1911) understood better than any other this complex social construction - they were Jews living in Prussia coming from Poland, a country with a great and tragic history. They were intellectual, cultivated and respected for their work but maybe there was something else in the air before WWI when Prussia went to war.

Prof. Paul Gerson Unna, one of the most prominent German dermatologists brought Dr. Oscar Troplowitz’s attention to a new type of emulsifying agent - Eucerit (lit. “beautiful wax”) created by the chemist Isaac Lifschütz. It is hard to known today why did they choose a formula based on lanolin (sheep) and not a different animal fat. It is true that lanolin was used in pharmacy for many years but why didn't they choose pork, cheaper and easier to get? Maybe there is a symbolism too in the yellow and scented lanolin from a lamb that is purified and becomes white as snow, with a beautiful and sophisticated perfume smelling the Christian rose. In Nazi concentration camps Jews were given a yellow star and people are still speaking about the Jewish nose, while many anti-Semite expression are related to the sense of smell (languages from Eastern Europe).

The first Nivea creme in 1911 before the cobalt blue jar. Notice that the green "petals" are in fact the rounded facets of the Star of David. It was a religious symbol set in a plant shape, a stylisation as we would say today. Mystikum, produced by Scherk (another german jewish cosmetic producer) fully expressed this symbol on the label. I wrote about it when I analyzed the "perfumes of the nazi era" (with picture).

The original Nivea formula contained also citric acid, the active whitening ingredient in lemons, and this basic ingredient is still used today in cosmetics. Nivea was not an ordinary skin food - it was very white, made your skin softer and whiter and had a tenacious and exquisite perfume. If the first Nivea cream, very white and very scented, expressed those contradictions and desires, something different happened in the late 20's. A new logo and a new jar - blue like the ideal German eyes. It was a new brand and its creator perfectly understood the success key for Beiersdorf in the new Germany. Somehow the cream was aryanized (the company too) and Nivea became a cultural symbol of the country. It was sent to war all around the world because German soldiers were officially using it. Today, the ethnic origin of Nivea's creators is still "whitened" on the official Beiersdorf website.

This original cinema advertising from the 1920's shows perfectly what exactly Nivea was - the skin of a maid becomes whiter, it is beautiful, attractive.

There is strong and possible direct connection between the formula of Nivea cream and the first cream of Helena Rubinstein that made her rich in Australia. Both contained a product obtained from sheep's wool (an extract of lanolin, not quite similar) and an extract from pine (rather unusual for creams). There was also lavender and rose, but these are rather common ingredients. Both creams had something new - the concept of perfume. But the surprising connection is another one. The inventors and founders of Nivea were Jewish polish living in Prussia (Berlin, then Hamburg) - the pharmacist Oscar Troplowitz, the chemist Isaac Lifschütz (the inventor of Eucerin) and dermatologist Paul Unna. The first formula of Helena Rubinstein was given to her by Jacob Lykusky, a chemist from Krakow who left no trace in history. Lifschütz was grated the patent for Eucerit (the cosmetic "secret" of Nivea) in 1900. Helena Rubinstein went to Australia in 1896 and in 1903 she opened the business selling Valaze by Dr Lykusky.

In 1894, Paul Unna in Germany discovered the relationship between sun exposure and skin aging, by studying sailor's skin. Surprisingly, that was the first idea of Helena Rubinstein, who discovered in Australia the "perfect" climate to fit a product. The first ads of HL were about sunprotection as a main concern in a time when women were wearing big hats and umbrellas.

The picture I selected is the patent application for the Eucerit process (the base of Nivea). It starts in 1902, January 31. The next year in Melbourne, where German chemical inventions were quite not protected (like in Switzerland), Helena Rubinstein, backed by Frederick Sheppard Grimwade, chairman of Felton, Grimwade & Co, pharmaceutical manufacturers and distributors, began her industrial adventure (see WarPaint for the history of HR)

Was she producing in her Australian years the first version of Nivea cream, a "proto-formula" before it was perfected and launched in Germany? Was she using a revolutionary patent under the name of a "mysterious" dr Lykusky, a "Hungarian" in Krakow?

The history of Helena Rubinstein starts with her uncle Louis in Australia in 1890's and 12 pots of face cream that will become Valaze, her first brand, before she would move to Paris and then conquer the world. 100 years before, in Paris, a man called Valazé was appointed to head the commission of 24 - the famous trial of Louis Capet or Louis 16 King of France. "Valaze" was the most unusual brand name ever in the cosmetic industry, offering to all women an answer - "válasz" (answer in Hungarian) to their skin problems.

The Helena Rubinstein Valaze Salon in Paris in 1913 (255, rue Faubourg St. Honoré). Take a look at the rose pattern on the left wall - it  is the Lepape rose, also used by Paul Poiret, who dressed her in those years
(click to see it bigger, I uploaded a high res image)

The famous Hungarian dr Lykusky, inventor of the cream and relative to HR is another fictional character. First, the name reported in all "histories" of beauty doesn't sound at all Hungarian but polish, something that would be normal for Krakow. But I was not able to find any trace of somebody "famous" with this name or a similar one and while looking in Jewish databases, there were no such families in town. This would be rather strange for somebody with an established business and reputation. 

In fact, this is a mythological name and comes from a Greek legend. Lycus or Lykus was the oncle of Antiope, the daughter of the king Nyctaeus and she famous for her beauty. She was seduced by Zeus and her father punished her so she fled the country seeking refuge with King Epopeus. Nycteus killed himself in despair but persuaded his brother Lykos to avenge his dishonor. He slew Epopeus and dragged Antiope away but on her return she gave birth to twin sons (Amphion and Zethos) raised by shepherds and instructed by Hermès. Antiope was badly mistreated by Lykus' wife but escape from Thebes. With her sons they tied her to a bull to be torn apart and later slew King Lykos and seized the throne of Thebes. Inside this legend you have all the elements of Helena Rubinstein's real life - she fled from Krakow to Australia, possibly because of an love affair. She found refuge to an uncle and sheep was the secret of her early business - the lanolin for the cream. But Sheppard was also the real name of the Frederick Sheppard Grimwade, the chairman of the pharmaceutical manufacturer that helped her, like the shepherds who raised the twins of the beautiful Antiope in the legend. It was not Thebe, but the throne of the Beauty Industry she was seeking. I believe that this fictional Dr. Lykusky was invented by her first husband, Edward Titus, who supervised and imagined her first advertising campaigns. He was a cultivated man with a profound love for books, quite the opposite of Helena. All these references, so true to Helena's real life, could not have come from her head. He invented her and her story from the first moment and the next decades would be only embroidery. Many books were published on Helena Rubinstein but like Coco Chanel it is very hard to evaluate the line between facts and fiction, between products and advertising.

Did she ever come to Australia with a cream? Was there any European doctor? Was it all an invention of a copyright genius, a fascinating woman and a pharmaceutical manufacturer knowing the latest scientific advances in Europe including the new uses of wool fats patented by Lifschütz ? Was it all planned an afternoon under the hot Australian sky and then built step by step?

Maybe in that afternoon Helena had a strong sunburn and was complaining in a bad english, a men was speaking about a new german pharmaceutical invention of a man called Lifschütz in 1902 he was trying to "reproduce" in Melbourne and a third one put all the ingredients in a story giving "sense" to several authentic biographical records. In 1903 the adventure began.

We can imagine the first conversations of Helena Rubinstein in Australia, her difficulties in English, the strange mixture of polish and "Hungarian" and the contrast with the refined culture of Edward Titus, between "válasz" (answer in Hungarian) and Valazé (the prosecutor of King Louis pronounced in English), between sheep and luxury creams. Somehow the real Valazé, writing the reports on King Louis, was anticipating what Helena made all her life - writing and asking reports from all the people who worked with her.

12 years after, in 1914 Beiersdorf had a facility in Sydney, was producing and selling Nivea but Helena Rubinstein was already in Europe planning to conquer New York.

As in the greek legend, Helena had 2 boys, Roy and Horace.

Unfortunately, Helena Rubinstein is owned today by l'Oréal, a group that is unable to see and create Beauty. Stories, meanings and fragrances are not the strong points of l'Oréal but one day, as the legend says, this artificial kingdom will collapse.

If you want an excellent reading this summer I propose you War Paint: Madame Helena Rubinstein and Miss Elizabeth Arden, Their Lives, Their Times, Their Rivalry and next year a book about the scandals of l'Oréal - Ugly Beauty: Helena Rubinstein, L'Oréal, and the Blemished History of Looking Good.

There is a very interesting DVD called The Powder and the Glory about the story of two of the first highly successful women in american cosmetic industry, Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein, showing special footage from archives.

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

The secret and the scent of NIVEA cream in 1911

Early this year, the Royal Mail delivered me a small box containing some documents I was searching for many years all across Europe. Several hundreds pages were detailing a secret report from British Intelligence. It was carefully type written right after the war in the occupied Germany detailing the manufacture processes of the chemical industry collected from the major producers, from molecules to finished goods like fragrances, creams, shampoos, hair dyes. From all the long formulae I have to study, some are of the outmost importance, revealing something I was not aware all these years.

The secret of Nivea, one of the most successful cosmetic brands marketed by Beiersdorf, was not the blue jar, the logo and the advertising. It was not what marketing textbooks have repeated like a mantra. The secret was inside the formula.

Early cosmetics from late XIXth century - early XXth century were not quite scented or, to be more precise, their scent was given by the raw materials (the "apothecary" odor of the vegetal extracts) or by several drops of rose, lavender oil, etc. At best, it was something pleasant but delicate, not a perfume. Nivea cosmetic line was very different from that, at least until 1945. Beiersdorf was using a very complex perfume (more than 25 ingredients, most natural including bases).I believe that this is actually the key of its success, at least in the early years.

In 1911 NIVEA Creme – the first stable water-in-oil emulsifier – is introduced, based on the emulsifying agent Eucerit (Eucerinum anhydricum) prepared from lanolin - sheep's wool. Since mid 20's when Nivea was rebranded (the cobalt blue) several other products were added, like suntan, depilatory, massage cream and several "skin foods".

Until modern times, the perfume of cosmetic products was considered as something with little importance - it has to be there to give a delicate scent but it has to be rather cheap. 100 years ago, Beiersdorf did the contrary and the manufacturing of the perfume used for the vanishing or nourishing cream was more complex than the cream itself. The cosmetic formula of the Nivea cream is very simple and was based on an extraction process of wool fats (from sheep). Lanolin and how it was treated was the invention of Nivea.

The inventors and founders of Nivea were several Jewish polish living in Prussia (Berlin, then Hamburg): the pharmacist Oscar Troplowitz, the chemist Isaac Lifschütz (the inventor of Eucerin) and dermatologist Paul Unna. Lifschütz was granted the patent in 1902. Nivea was marketed by Beiersdorf but already in 1890's the company from Hamburg was not very German. During WWII when German soldiers invaded Poland they were carrying with them Nivea (cream, soap, shaving foam, etc), products invented and marketed by a brand with polish origins. The company was "aryanised" in the 30's but before that, in 1933, its competitor, Queisser, producer of the Lovana Cream, placed several ads saying: "Use jewish skincream no longer!" (Aryanisation' In Hamburg)

Raw lanolin, a product used also by Helena Rubinstein in her Australian cream, has several special features and I became acquainted with it when I was in the Pharmacy school. It has a strong specific odor, a yellow-ivory color, it is greasy and absorbs water being used in water in oil emulsions. Nivea invented a cream that was:

- white (almost optic white)

- for daily use (high content of water opposed to night creams)

- very scented

- not expensive (a mass market concept)

The name came from latin meaning white like the snow. Like snowdrops (Galanthus Nivalis) it was a cream that spoke about purity. It was not the first time the name was used for cosmetics because Guerlain has already marketed before 1890 a product called "crème nivea".

The scent of lanolin, even when very purified, is strong, greasy, waxy with a herbal tonality. The perfumer applied a principle that was new and innovative in 1911 and many decades after it was not known to many specialists from the industry. While many fought almost a century with strong odors trying to "mask" them, the unknown perfumer who created the scent of Nivea "magnified" it. Instead of neutralizing an odor he used it as a part of the composition. The rosy ingredients and a particular citrus note were key ingredients.

It was the German chemists who identified at the end of XIXth century the fatty aldehydes in rose and some citrus notes, synthesized them (from fatty acids) and later prepared the synthetic version of the oil with the corresponding aldehydes. Fatty aldehydes have rosy, waxy, fatty, fresh citrusy notes among their main olfactory shades. Some aldehydes are the blooming secret of a rose while rose absolute already has a waxy honey note.

This science was in the first Nivea cream and it was not "perfume as an art" but pure engineering, the design at its best. There were no aldehydes, the lanolin note and the rose elements provided the bones of a strong perfume. Like any perfume, the Nivea composition had everything: from top notes to the strong drydown with crystalline notes and musk. This concept was also an innovation. When "fixatives" were used in a cream it means that the author intended to "preserve" the perfume and give long lasting properties. It was not something light, something to round off, but an olfactory sensation with an important tenacity. Nivea invented the concept of "cosmetic perfume". I also have the book with cosmetic formulas of Chanel from the 30's but Nivea was far more advanced and gave more importance to the scent of the cream.

The Nivea scent was a complex floral bouquet based on rose-lily of the valley-violet with an important fresh top note underlined by aromatic notes like lavender with hay and forest shades. The drydown was soft oriental, sweet and musky - chypre. Nivea Ultra was as complex as any floral perfume sold in Paris before WWI, with no compromise on the quality of ingredients, both modern and fresh, using several very new molecules of the day (inside bases).

The woman using Nivea cream, not marketed as a luxury product, was actually using a little perfume in an era when few could not afford a luxury fragrance. All these was subliminal because Nivea had never a "scentsorial" advertising. Women loved the complex scent that represented 0,5% of the formula and they kept buying the cobalt blue jar and not other products, much simpler. It is important to known that there was not only one formula for the fragrance. There were also Nivea Ultra and Nivea Vanishing and all were built on the same scent pattern with some notes emphasized.

But the secret of Nivea is not just the scent of those many ingredients. Almost all have cosmetic properties and they would be called today active ingredients. It was aromatherapy "avant la lettre" and all express the basic actions required by a cosmetic product, from tonic effects to calming actions. Everything worked in perfect harmony in the first Nivea cream and maybe, without being aware, they have created a global skincare (containing even AHA and strong antioxidants before the notion would appear in cosmetology).

Comeback tomorrow for the incredible story of Helena Rubinstein and Nivea

The last picture represents the Nivea products used by German soldiers during WWII as presented in the book DEUTSCHE SOLDATEN: The Uniforms, Equipment and Personal Effects of the German Soldier 1939-1945.

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

Formulae books and perfumes from the XIXth century

Today perfumery has little "secrets" when chemistry can reveal what's inside a bottle but, despite the "evidence", no formula of any masterpiece was revealed. Neither Edmond Roudnitska, nor Jean Claude Ellena did not give "examples" of their own work and perfumers usually keep silence on details though complete information on a commercial perfume would not make you instantly rich. We cannot compare what Jean Carles was preaching to his students with the perfumes he authored.

The "history of perfumery" is not actually history compared to other academic fields. We have only a glimpse of the past and not even a reflection of it when it comes to the scent and not the bottle. It is surprising to see how several books from XIXth or early XXth century are still quoted and very few ask themselves what was their purpose and what did their authors reveal in a "treaty about perfumes and their preparation". You might have heard or read about the books written by G.W. Septimus Piesse, Eugene Rimmel, G.W. Askinson and much later W.Poucher, with their formulae repeated again and again without being questioned on their true nature.

The truth is that we know very little about the scent of perfumes sold in the XIXth century and even less about the successes of the Victorian era. With no original formulae or preserved perfumes to be analyzed, our knowledge about their art is a vague illusion.

There is a scene in the "Perfume", the movie set in the XVIII-th century, where the perfumer is trying to copy a bestseller and hardly gets the major ingredients. Actually he fails to detect the special notes of "Amor & Psyché". Less than 100 years later, leading British perfumers "revealed" the famous handkerchief perfumes of the day in several very popular books, reprinted many decades after. But why would they reveal the secrets of their creations in a very competitive world where chemical analysis did not start yet?

Today brands and manufactures have global power, something that did not exist in the XIXth century, a time with hundreds of names.

Imagine that today Givaudan, Firmenich and IFF would write books describing their best sellers with formulae. Still, having 1000 exceptional Givaudan formulae would not make you richer - you still have to purchase the ingredients from them. What today is quite impossible (when GC analysis already reveals) it was even more surprising in the XIXth century.

Many had taken those books for what they have never been and gave them too much historical meaning. They were not theoretical works on perfumes, not even manuals "revealing" the secrets of the trade and, surprisingly, written by those who actually controlled the trade of the Empire.

The formulae give only a rough idea about the main notes of a "nosegay" and the type of ingredients but not the combination of notes that actually made the "cachet" of a popular perfume. They were not production formulae and today thay seem more a description written to sound like a formula. In a world with no trademark protection where everybody could (and did) use names like Jockey Club or Ess Bouquet, it is hard to think that the perfumers would reveal the secret inside a bottle that made them rich. Those books were also an important advertising and self promotion tool for their authors giving them a different position than a producer. Those were times when fashion was more important than "fashion designers", when Worth "invented" himself as a couturier in Paris. It was the "intellectual" aura and the idea of being a specialist that is perhaps the secret behind those works (and why not, the money from the publisher).

Piesse and Rimmel were very famous British perfumers and their creations made them extremely popular. Today we don't have any idea about their fragrances. Piesse wrote his book in 1855, Rimmel 10 years later and all have started their business in the 1830's like Pierre-François-Pascal Guerlain (who did not write any book or article but was much advertised in 1850's and 1860's). Guerlain, contemporary with all those authors / fragrance houses has not revealed any of its historical perfumes today, 150 years after. Having the original formula with so many expensive naturals would not make anyone rich today. This is why, we can only dream about Victorian perfumes and cannot study them in a serious way. A "treaty about perfumes and their preparation" might reveal several things for us about those years but I do not think it revealed very much to Aimé and Pascal, contemporary with 3 of those authors. Pierre-François-Pascal Guerlain was probably smelling those famous creations asking himself what did they put inside. The idea of a perfumer as a thinker and author was more appealing and maybe that's the reason behind the books of Rimmel and much later Poucher (Yardley) establishing a tradition in the British perfumery. Rimmel and Piesse had a similar position  in London as Guerlain in Paris, composing perfumes for the royal/imperial courts in Europe. What they "said" was maybe less important than "saying", in a world with so many fragrance houses. Those were days when words like branding, marketing were not yet invented.

The history of perfumery (XIXth and XXth century) is very "prehistoric", based less on "evidence" and more on "stories" and the ability to reconstruct a world and its scents.

What is the first perfume from Guerlain using a synthetic?

Is Fougère Royale the first perfume with coumarine?

What is the first perfume with ionone alpha?

There are very few people in this world who actually saw the original formulae from Houbigant, Roger & Gallet, Guerlain, Lubin. Few were able to smell them and even less did analyze them. We take many things for granted because there is no possibility to verify them.
An example about the differences between history and history from books is Poucher. Imagine that we are in 2100 and we look back at the perfumes worn in the first part of the XXth (his book was first published in the 20's). The differences are huge and we can notice them today because popular vintage perfumes are still around. There are no perfume formulae similar No5, all the Guerlain, Caron, Houbigant, Roger & Gallet, etc. What was advertised in magazines has no connection with the scents presented in the book. It is a different world that has little to do with luxury perfumes, even less with the perfumes sold by Yardley where he was chier perfumer. The value of the work is somewhere else and that's why formulae books should not be considered "scientific studies" revealing the secret of scent.
One of the reason to explain why books like Piesse or Rimmel are reprinted and pop-up everywhere with their beautiful illustrations is not their value but something much simpler - copyright. Everybody can publish them (first edition 150 years ago) and perfumery usually lacks "technical" or "practical" books on "formulation". Because research is a time consuming intellectual task, modern authors rely on what they find on shelves assuming that the content is valuable. One of the reason to explain why there is no such thing as "indian perfumery" is because they had access only to several british books, some still reprinted in India with the name of the author erased. All of the perfumes I was able to smell from India (bases or creations) follow the same pattern. The "theoretical" basis was outdated and a GC machine will not help you if you are trained with concepts and formulas from another era and worse, not the best representatives.

It is easy to say today that perfumers before the 60's were often blenders knowing little about their art, composition, beauty, aesthetics. It is us who know little about them and there are few chances to change that.

In this picture you have 4 famous perfumes from Rimmel, XIXth century: White Rose, Carnation, Golden Fern, Parma Violet

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