Elisabeth de Feydeau: “To licentious women, heady perfumes; to proper women, Marseille soap”

What if perfume also created women? This is the question posed in her new book, Les Voluptueuses: A Scented History of Legendary Women, by Élisabeth de Feydeau. From Cleopatra's kyphi to Marilyn Monroe's No. 5 , by way of the Marquise de Montespan's tuberose and Queen Victoria's myrtle and orange blossom, the historian delves into the heart of their intimacy to recount a certain relationship with love and seduction, freedom, and sometimes even dissidence. "Especially since, according to the traditional codes of femininity, perfume was a formidable weapon of seduction. It defined women, gave them an olfactory form, refined their facial features, and also defined them within society," she writes. Drawing on rich documentation and numerous anecdotes, the specialist paints 19 portraits spanning two thousand years of perfumery history. Interview.

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LE FIGARO. - What unites these women whose destinies you tell through their perfumes?

ÉLISABETH DE FEYDEAU. - While they all represent different eras and different femininities, they nevertheless share a certain voluptuousness, that is, this euphoria of the senses and the spirit. For these women, perfume is seen as much as a force of seduction as of emancipation. We see this as early as Antiquity with Cleopatra, where its use allows both a social existence and the expression of power, something we will later find with the Garçonnes of the 1920s and with the punchy perfumes of working girls. Moreover, in the Middle Ages, with the spread of Christianity, the secular use of perfumes diminished, the Church seeing it as nothing more than a futility contrary to morality. The famous eau de la reine de Hongrie, the oldest Western alcohol-based perfume known to date, is presented as a powerful remedy against illnesses. An elixir that we drink and rub on our bodies, and which embodies, rather, a form of mystical voluptuousness.

You say that it was Catherine de Medici who introduced the sensory and elegant dimension of perfume in France during the Renaissance.

French perfumery had existed since 1190, when perfumers organized themselves into a guild. But it still had this apothecary, sanitary, and anti-pestilential vocation. Once Queen of France, Catherine de Medici would impose the fashion for Italian citrus and aromatics, scented gloves, and small odor-filled bottles that were slipped into clothing pockets. Her perfumer and astrologer, Renato Bianco, known as René the Florentine, even opened a boutique on the Pont au Change, where Parisians flocked to find their violet and chamomile scented waters, and their iris, rose, and hyacinth powders.

On a societal level, perfume is not only an outrageous artifice but can also become a garment of virtue.

Elisabeth de Feydeau, author of The Voluptueuses, A Fragrant History of Legendary Women.

Empress Eugenie also symbolizes a turning point in the evolution of the industry.

During the Second Empire, Napoleon III's economic policy favored the development of industrial luxury. But what is even more interesting about Eugénie's figure is her patchouli. She was crazy about it. However, when she became Empress, she abandoned this heady perfume associated with courtesans to drape herself in a form of dignity with floral scents and cologne. Especially since she would become the muse of Pierre-François-Pascal Guerlain, who dedicated his Eau de Cologne Impériale to her. Eugénie embodies both these dynasties of industrial perfumers that were beginning to emerge and the very significant olfactory divide that was established, at the same time, between the high society, which avoided indecent patchouli or sultry tuberose, and the demi-monde, which overdid it. This is what Émile Zola describes very well through the character of Nana, who covers herself in violets to mask the smell of prostitution. For licentious women, heady perfumes; for decent women, the scent of delicate flowers or Marseille soap. On a societal level, perfume is not only an outrageous artifice, it can also become a garment of virtue.

You write that the art of perfume is a silent language that allows us to express what cannot be said with words. How does a scent shape our identity?

A well-chosen perfume always reflects who you are, like an olfactory double. We see this clearly with Marilyn Monroe and Chanel ^No. 5. She certainly didn't choose it at random. At the time, it was the archetype of French perfume, the assurance of chic and elegance. The certainty, too, of not making a mistake in taste. For a still-aspiring actress, it represented the transformative power that would give her the aura and mystery of a femme fatale. She said, "I always thought I was nobody. And the only way for me to become someone... well, it's to be someone else." And that's also what made ^No. 5 so successful: women wanted to be Marilyn Monroe. It's not just a perfume they buy, but a certain idea they have of themselves, what they think or would like to be.

Colette is an olfactory writer, like Zola, Huysmans, Baudelaire

Elisabeth de Feydeau, perfume historian

You wrote some chapters using scented touches. What did you use them for?

Through perfume, we enter the intimacy of these women, and it is very moving. It tells us their invisible story. For Sarah Bernhardt, who knew all the first modern perfumes, from Fougère Royale by Houbigant to Tabac Blond by Caron, I had under my nose this forgotten fragrance with the funny name, Voilà pourquoi j'aimait Rosine, which Jacques Guerlain dedicated to her - and which, according to several testimonies, corresponds perfectly to what the Divine's salon smelled like. This coppery chypre immediately transported me to her apartments! The same thing with George Sand, who cultivated a scented garden in Nohant and produced potpourris and soaps for her guests. We also know that she asked Musset to send her the "patchouli of the perfumer Leblanc", whose oriental notes, the freshness of bergamot and lemon delighted her. To write about Colette, I brought with me, alongside her many photographs, a reconstruction of the opulent Jasmin de Corse by Coty, which she wore until it was discontinued in the 1930s.

Like George Sand, Colette also sprinkles her novels with fragrant reminiscences.

Colette is an olfactory writer, like Zola, Huysmans, Baudelaire. But what sets her apart is that she was the first writer to work for the perfume industry, since she wrote press kits for Lanvin and others. She was also very close to the Maubert family, who already owned the Robertet factory in Grasse and which she visited in 1948. She writes an entire chapter about this stay in her last novel, Le Fanal bleu, where she describes these "Grass waters which raise at night, in the pure, breezeless air, an elusive mist which captures the scent of jasmine and immobilizes it." And then, above all, she had opened a beauty salon in 1932, whose inscription on the pediment I really like: "My name is Colette and I sell perfumes."

The Voluptueuses. A Fragrant History of Legendary Women , Flammarion, 417 pages, 23.90 euros.