Parfums de Rosine - Rose Absolument

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The boutique, with its wall paintings and subtle decorative objects, is tiny, decorated in shades of fuchsia, black, gold and cream white. ‘It's a tribute to the couturier Paul Poiret,’ explains owner and perfume expert Marie-Hélène Rogeon. She spent 15 years launching fragrances for major brands before setting up her own perfume boutique in Paris's Palais Royal. Her aim was to reintroduce Paul Poiret's forgotten perfumes in her own unique way.

Poiret, the son of a cloth merchant, was the most sought-after couturier in Paris at the beginning of the century. The most famous women of the time, such as Sarah Bernhardt and Isadora Duncan, were his clients. Poiret liberated women from corsets and was the first to use printed fabrics in haute couture. He is also considered the inventor of women's trousers, and is said to have been the first to advise his elegant female customers to wear their hair short. In 1913, he achieved record sales with his fashion and earned a fortune, but spent it all twice over.

He later tried his hand at painting and acting, even touring France with the French writer Colette, and finally died in 1944, completely impoverished. His once great name was already all but forgotten.

But a trace of his work has been preserved: in the perfume collection of Marie-Hélène Rogeon's family, a clan of perfumers. Marie-Hélène's grandparents had produced the perfumes for Paul Poiret. Poiret was the first fashion designer to launch his own perfumes in addition to accessories and decorative objects. His first perfume, ‘Rosine’, named after his daughter who died in childhood, came onto the market in 1911.

He had a total of over thirty fragrances produced. He had the bottles designed at his own design school. He wanted to use the proceeds to pay off tax debts that had accumulated during his heyday. However, by the 1930s, Poiret perfumes had almost completely disappeared from the market. ‘His fragrance creations were never known as Parfums de Paul Poiret, but always as Les Parfums de Rosine,’ reports Marie-Hélène Rogeon. That is why they are still sold under this name today, a piece of cultural history that has been saved from oblivion.