The popular belief, now almost an urban legend, placed dirtiness and the lack of cleanliness hidden by perfumes at the heart of France, adding to Versailles a rather nasty scented environment . From this idea to the notion of French perversity opposed to the modesty of puritan moral there is only one step. But how much truth is here and where do the interpretations and the exaggerations added by each new generation really start?
Most of the texts dealing with this subject, where this idea was born and spread over the world, were written in three different periods, when the hygiene notions were dramatically changing and influencing the society, including the authors. It all started at the end of XIXth century when bathtubs became something new and available in every new Parisian apartment, later, in the 1930's the obsession of the body, through sports and the construction of public swimming pools, and, in the end, during the 60's and early 70's with mini skirts and sexual Revolution. Every author from all these 3 periods was adding a new layer to the heavy stereotype based on a historic truth - the hygienic conceptions in the XVIIth century were different than ours. However, the false conclusion embraced by popular culture was that French loved dirtiness, which is far from being true.
It is hard to explain to modern people, taking a shower 4 times a day, that this is not the only way to remove dirt. It was even harder for puritan people, not used with the heavy scents of the Catholic church (the incense or the flowers offered to Virgin Mary because they don't have such things) and wearing much simpler clothes, that a fragrance used by somebody wearing the highly decorative costume of the XVIIth century is not there to hide. People not used to scents, because they were not part of their native culture or because they did not use perfumes (quite expensive for an intellectual income) were actually putting hard labels to an entire century, misinterpreting the history.
But let's go back to dirt and see what is actually different in the "social chemistry" between our century and Versailles.
Our body is producing every day an entire spectrum of molecules and the skin would contain a mixture of sweat, water, urea, minerals, dead cells, fat, etc. The volatile ingredients will go on the air, if you do not wear polyester, while heavier elements, many of them not water soluble, would remain on the skin. It's not enough to bathe to be clean. The secret is called "soap", a tensioactive material allowing the hydrophobic fat to be removed from the skin. Makeup is not removed with water, but dissolved in an oily emulsion (W/O, mineral oil, etc) . When you put a cream on your face, the dirt and the makeup will pass in this emulsion and you'll be able to physically remove them. The alcoholic lotion will remove what is left, while the skin will absorb the trace of the moisturized fat. Removing the dirt involves also physical action - that's why you use the scrub and cotton for the face.
The bad smells on your T-shirt appears when bacteria can develop being well nourished. In other words, when it's not pure cotton, when you use the same clothes for a week without changing them, when your body "macerates" in its own excretions allowing the decomposition.
The fashion of the XVIIth century has several particular features. Men were wearing during that time very large shirts and the king of France was changing it at least 3 times a day. A piece of textile made of linen, cotton or silk, was not woven as tight as today because they hadn't yet the machines of the industrial revolution. Joseph Marie Jacquard, inventor of the Jacquard loom, was born only 100 years later. They were much softer, allowing a more natural circulation of the air around the body. A men wearing a tight modern T-shirt, showing his muscles through the dense network of cotton and synthetic elastan or polyester fibers, will produce more perspiration than a XVIIth century noblemen wearing a loose shirt with a lot of lace. When you wear lace made from natural fibers you actually allow your body to breathe. It's like being naked while without being a nude. At Versailles, they did not use the bath in the morning, but they used a huge amount of fresh white textiles, as it was believed they are able to remove the dirt. In fact, these linen shirts used in the morning were acting like a sponge absorbing what was on the skin. If you have a drop of oil on the soil you will not pour water over it, but remove it first with a dry blanket. The shirts of the XVIIth century were doing precisely this for the body. They were also acting as a "scrub" because they were wearing the heavy embroided brocade suit over the white shirt, much thinner and fragile.
But this was only a small part of the toilet, because the king was washing his hands and maybe even his face with "esprit de vin". This was even far more efficient than using water because "esprit de vin" is nothing else than alcohol distilled from wine, or more precisely, an alcoholic solution, the equivalent of a very concentrated face lotion used by any teenager to remove his strong sebum secretion. Wine has about 12 alcoholic degrees, this "esprit de vin" is the equivalent of a modern vodka. But isn't alcohol removing everything, including bacteria? Rub a piece of cotton with lemon vodka on your face, neck and hands and you'll see the amount of dirt left on it.
If your body is vigorously rubbed with textiles in the morning, you wear a white clean loose shirt, allowing the body to breathe, and you changed it at noon and once again in the afternoon, the question is …. how much dirt do you actually produce, how much dirt would remain on your body to produce a bad scent equivalent to a teenager with a polyester T-shirt and a pair of Nike's from synthetic fibers he's wearing every day since last year when he bought them ?
In fact the daily toilet of King Louis XIV, including even the small soaps scrubbed on the skin, was extremely efficient. The image we have today about a court macerating in its own dirtiness (and moral corruption) hidden with strong perfumes, might be far different from the real Versailles.
This was the time when fashion was invented as we understand it today. Everyday you had to be dressed different at Versailles, in other words, new clothes. New in style, but also "fresh" and good smelling, hiding small scented sachets. But isn't this the image of a court actually obsessed with hygiene and good scents, obtaining the same effect as us, but in a very different manner?
Most of the perfumes of that era were sold as "pommade", solid perfumes in grease. When you wash your face and hands everyday with alcohol (esprit de vin), the best thing you can do for your skin is to give it some skin food - a cream. That's why they used this type of perfume, not because they were not able to bottle alcoholic solutions. The court at Versailles didn't need more alcohol on their dry skins. Only when hygiene conceptions changed and they started to bathe in water using less "esprit de vin", liquid perfumes, as we know them today, were more efficient.
Most of the misconceptions about the scents of different eras came from fashion and the difficulty to understand it. What is cleaner, thus producing less odors? A tight polyester dress showing the body, like those worn in the 60's, or a very large Pompadour skirt that your body wouldn't even touch inside the huge amount of silk? A tight T-shirt or a very louse silk lace blouse?
However, there was Versailles and the rest of the world. It is not the intimate French space which was saturated with odors less pleasant today, but the public space, the streets, the growing cities and the lower classes which had no access to the expensive rituals.
In fact, King Louis XIV was obsessed with perfumes and good scents. The misconception that perfume was hiding dirtiness was the most brutal injustice done to a court obsessed with the senses, fragrances and flavors. The perfume was noble and the expression of the divine presence, an idea directly borrowed from Classic Antiquity. It was a crucial element in the new mythology of Versailles, much like in the Orphic mysteries. It was not meant to hide anything, but to reveal.
It is surprising that French were not able to remake the scents of their Sun King and the glorious atmosphere of Le Grand Siècle, but they did the fragrance of their Austrian queen, who preferred the rustic retreat of Le Petit Trianon to the splendor of Versailles. Recreating those scents is not a question of budget, but will be of the outmost importance in the future. When images are available all around the world, people will desire to "taste" a place or an historic period for a total experience. Only the perfume is able to give this dimension of authenticity.
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Fragrance is the 8th Art - Octavian Coifan - Le Parfum est le 8ème Art
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. Symrise has an important heritage of beautiful molecules and compositions created in the golden era of Dragoco and H&R, unfortunately many of them are not well known today, some were even forgotten. This year I discovered a very particular and old molecule from this house, with a bizarre chemistry, that I consider a "green quinoléine" because it allows something unusual, the creation of a potent green leather note.
