Lubin - Akkad

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The Lubin house was founded in 1798, shortly before the end of the French Revolution, by Pierre François Lubin. Located on Rue Sainte Anne in Paris, Lubin initially sold the city's rich and beautiful the ball masks, rice powder and perfumed ribbons that were customary at the time, but soon expanded his repertoire with his first own creation, Eau Vivifante, which later became known as Eau de Lubin. This fragrance won the hearts of high society and opened the doors to the French imperial court: Empress Joséphine, wife of Napoleon I, and Pauline Bonaparte, Princess Borghese, Napoleon's favourite sister, were enthusiastic customers. After Napoleon's fall in 1815, Lubin dedicated his latest creations to the new Bourbon queen, Marie-Amélie, and it wasn't long before his fragrances reached other European royal houses: his reputation was enormous and his name became increasingly well known, so that soon all the European royal houses were among his customers: the Russian imperial family and the English royal family. In 1830, Lubin even became the first French perfumer to deliver his fragrances to the New World, to America.

Lubin's fragrances captured the spirit of the times: in a Europe shaped by colonialism and facing cultural and social change, the fragrances embodied the scent of the wider world, of foreign lands, of the unknown and of adventure, of the longing for new shores. The heroes of the time, explorers, sailors, archaeologists, adventurers and noble characters, driven by a thirst for knowledge and a spirit of discovery, were the inspiration behind Lubin's fragrances and their target audience.

The Lubin house therefore looks back on a remarkable history and tradition: it is considered one of the oldest perfume manufacturers in France. Over time, however, the company was in danger of disappearing. Lubin launched fragrances for almost two hundred years until the 1970s, but was then sold in 1984 to the Mülhens company (a former German textile manufacturer), another long-established traditional firm, which in turn soon became part of the Wella Group. In 1999, Wella was inclined to close Lubin or stop investing in it – that would have been the end. Had it not been for someone who was convinced that such an old and venerable company should not be allowed to go under, and had it not been for someone who had the vision to make Lubin a star in the local perfume firmament once again, Gilles Thévenin, former Guerlain manager and then marketing director at Rochas, who also belonged to the Wella Group, would have learned of the plans. His reaction: he quit and put everything on one card. Using almost his entire private fortune, he bought Lubin, pursuing the ambitious plan of keeping the historic company alive and breathing new life into it.

Fortune comes to Thévenin's aid, or rather, the long tradition of Mülhens. As a venerable establishment like Lubin, Mülhens had preserved a large part of Lubin's archives, enabling Thévenin to acquire various documents and recipes. Thanks to this, some old Lubin classics have been reissued and will continue to be produced in the future.