A day in the perfume capital of France

 Do you like makeup and perfume? 

That's probably a silly question. Of course you do or you wouldn't be here!

Last week I went to the small hilltop town of Grasse in south-east Provence. It's a pretty place with some nice little shops, and a fine view over the surrounding countryside.

Grasse is also the perfume centre of France where traditional plants such as lavender and rose were grown and transformed into perfume. Nowadays, the perfume industry gets natural fragrances more cheaply from exotic locations or in chemistry labs so although it's still the home of companies like Fragonard, the industry is no longer what it was.

They've set up the International Perfume Museum to record that history and the human use of fragrances and makeup. It's a huge, rambling yet well laid out museum and you need a couple of hours to see the thousands of beautiful artifacts. Of course, they have a lot of perfume making machinery, too, but I confess I'm not much into industrial heritage. I was, however, mesmerised by the thousands of perfume bottles and makeup items, and not just modern ones either but lovely Roman glass bottles and beautiful Greek sculptured and painted earthenware ones. I felt there were a few omissions but the topic of posh pongs is so vast they have to be selective.  

Maybe it's simplest just to post a basic commentary with my favourite photos (click to enlarge) ...

... like this stunning ancient Greek perfume bottle in the shape of a warrior's head that you could hold in your clasped hand and would have contained scented oil.

 

Below, kohl pots and applicators from ancient Egypt (top) and mid-late first millennium Byzantium and Syria (bottom). 

I like to use kohl myself, although I appreciate the modern formula is different from the traditional ones. Lead-free is good! Perhaps the best known kohl wearer was Jezebel in the Bible who painted her eyes with it just before her assassination she knew was coming. This is the sort of pot she'd have had on her dressing table. (Another famous queen whose makeup set was her undoing is mentioned below).

The eighteenth-century has the best artifacts, though. Like this box containing beauty spots and an applicator brush. 

Everything in the eighteenth century was not merely functional but beautifully decorative. Like, below, this lady's beauty kit (top) and gentleman's grooming kit (bottom). Obviously, these items were for the very wealthy, but decoration was deemed an essential part of life. I can't help feeling we've lost a lot now that things are functional but 'design' has replaced decoration.

Below, exquisite perfume bottles (top) and steel and gold grooming kit in a column (bottom).

 

 

 

Early nineteenth-century blusher sets. Not so handy as today's plastic ones which fit in your handbag. But that's why you have a maid!

This one belonging to Hortense de Beauharnais, married to Napoleon's brother Louis, who was King of Holland from 1806-10 until his big brother took the kingdom off him. Napoleon was first married to Hortense's mother, the famous Joséphine. Keep it in the family, eh. 

Perfume bottles from the same era. Just wow!

Pomanders from (left) Austria and (right) India. We don't use these any more but you would carry them and sniff them if you came across any bad smells, like undrained streets, people with the plague ... or the lower castes. 

And now for the thousands of perfumes of the last century in case after case arranged by year (left) or style (right: 1920s spray bottles and modern miniatures). 

 

Just a handful of favourite bottles below. Of course, the designer bottle can be as much part of the allure as the contents. Having worked for one well-known fragrance company, I can tell you that the bottle and packaging can represent more of the cost to the customer than the liquid within. The glass and packaging, although machine made now, is often finished by hand.

I'd not heard of Shocking before, but I like the whole look. It's a very expensive fragrance launched in 1937.

 

Calèche by Hermès, as was. Love the chunky bottle, love the colour. Like dousing yourself in absinthe! 

Below, the upper bottles from the 1920s are shaped like cicadas. I couldn't help thinking of the line from Silence of the Lambs with its symbolic moths, "You use Evyan skin cream, and sometimes you wear L'Air du Temps, but not today." 

Love Guerlain's La Petite Robe Noire (Little Black Dress)

Perfumes from Vietnam in national dress bottles.

Beautiful blackberry shaped bottle and case. Good enough to eat.

Two of the items took me back. One was Brut for Men! Advertised in the UK by boxer Henry Cooper with the slogan in his rough, manly voice, "Splash it all over! It freshens you up and makes you smell nice," in a series of adverts in the 1970s with other sportsmen in changing rooms that all the celebrities involved insisted were totally not homoerotic! Some claim the original formula was a chemical hazard!

 

And girls, there's Charlie too (4th from left), which was always something of the female equivalent.

Brut and Charlie together: like Brotherhood of Man in bottled form!

Anyway, the museum has given a special case to the ultimate classic, Chanel no 5, rendered iconic by Marilyn Monroe and Andy Warhol.

As far as the history of local perfume making goes, I was moved and enthralled by these photos of Grasse perfume workers, the first showing women knee and elbow deep in rose petals in the late nineteenth century, the second sorting flowers in the inter-war years. Can you imagine the heady scent of fresh flowers, the delicate petals between your fingers and those wonderful Victorian dresses or the cute hairstyles of the 1920-30s. I can think of worse factory jobs and workwear than these.

 

The most significant item of historic interest there is Marie Antoinette's travelling case, with tea, coffee and chocolate pots as well as necessities for her hair, face and general toilette.

The item is not just a beautiful and precious product; it was her tragic undoing. They made two of these sets and she was dithering which one to send to her sister whilst preparing to flee France as the monarchy lost control over the pace of reform. This was the second set, not quite complete at the time, hence her dithering over which to use herself and which to give away. A maid became suspicious of the queen's motives for sorting her travelling cases, reported her to the revolutionaries and she and the king were intercepted during their escape. They both lost their heads. There's an alternative history to be considered if Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette had successfully made it out of France. As it was, her vanity was their undoing, and here is the awful if elegant proof.

The museum has a pleasant garden with roses, oranges and other fragrant plants in. 

They also maintain a large working fragrance garden you can visit a few miles down the road at Mouans-Sartoux.

In the basement there are rooms dedicated to temporary exhibitions of modern artists. There was a pleasant enough exhibition of local landscapes in watercolour by Ferdinand Springer.

Here's a link to the museum website in English: MIP

Well, it's a beautiful facility full of stunning stuff and the entry fee of only €6.00 is exceptional value. And, as I said, the little town of Grasse itself is worth visiting, with its quirky cathedral in many styles, its walls and old towers, its shops and cafés and other museums. Here's the view from the top over the countryside that was once largely given over to plants for perfume.

 

More on things to see in this area of the Maritime Alps and the Côte d'Azur in my post this time next week.

Smell you later. 

Sue x