Grasse & industry — the birth of the trade

Grasse: the world capital of perfume

The town of Grasse, in the Alpes-Maritimes, some fifteen kilometres from Cannes, is at the heart of the world history of perfumery: a tanners' town from the 15th century, it cultivates jasmine around 1560, and its glover-perfumers obtain their guild in 1614 (Fragonard museum). Its history perfectly illustrates how a region can become the centre of a worldwide industry thanks to the conjunction of natural, historical and economic factors.

Exceptional natural conditions

Grasse's microclimate is particularly favourable to growing perfume plants. The Grasse centifolia rose (Rosa centifolia) is considered one of the most precious in the world: its dense petals, loaded with aromatic molecules, produce an essence of great complexity. It is often called “the perfumers' rose”.

Grasse jasmine (Jasminum grandiflorum) is just as legendary. Harvested by hand, early in the morning, before heat destroys the aromatic molecules, it requires considerable labour and yields an infinitesimal quantity of raw material. One kilogram of jasmine absolute requires, according to producers, from several hundred kilos to nearly a tonne of flowers harvested by hand.

The great houses of Grasse

Several founding companies of modern perfumery were born in Grasse. Chiris, founded in 1768, was one of the largest suppliers of natural ingredients to perfumers around the world. Robertet, founded in 1850 and still active, is today one of the world's top ten aromatic ingredient groups.

Grasse supplied and trained many perfumers and producers of raw materials, on whom the great Parisian houses depended. The craft of the nose (perfumer) was learned there through a long apprenticeship: identifying hundreds of raw materials and combining them according to precise aesthetic rules.

Grasse's traditional extraction techniques

It was in Grasse that the two main techniques for extracting floral perfumes with fats were perfected: enfleurage, cold, and maceration, hot.

Enfleurage consists of laying flowers on layers of purified animal fat (lard or beef fat) spread on glass plates stretched in frames (the châssis). The fat gradually absorbs the aromatic molecules of the flowers. The flowers are renewed several times until saturation. This yields a “pomade” which is then washed with alcohol to obtain an absolute.

This long and costly technique has now practically disappeared from industrial production, replaced by solvent extraction. A few artisanal producers in Grasse keep it alive as a living heritage of traditional perfumery.

The Industrial Revolution and the chemistry of perfumes

The 19th century marks the shift from artisanal perfumery to industrial perfumery. The chemical revolution that transforms Europe between 1800 and 1900 would also radically transform the art of creating perfumes.

The first synthetic molecules

Before 1850, perfumes were composed essentially of natural materials: essential oils, resins, gums, floral absolutes. Organic chemistry, then booming, would offer perfumers a new palette: synthetic molecules.

In 1868, the British chemist William Henry Perkin synthesised coumarin, the molecule responsible for the smell of freshly cut hay and of tonka bean. It is among the very first synthetic molecules adopted by perfumery: Houbigant's Fougère Royale uses it as early as 1882.

In 1874, the German chemists Ferdinand Tiemann and Wilhelm Haarmann synthesised vanillin and founded a factory in Holzminden to produce it. In 1893, Tiemann and Paul Krüger synthesised ionone, with its violet smell.

Guerlain: the birth of the great houses

Pierre-François Pascal Guerlain (1798–1864) founded his perfume house in Paris in 1828. Supplier of perfumes to Queen Victoria, Napoleon III and the Empress Eugénie, he embodies the shift from perfumer-apothecary to luxury creator.

His son Aimé Guerlain signed Jicky (1889), often presented as one of the first modern perfumes thanks to its synthetic molecules. His grandson, Jacques Guerlain (1874–1963), then created some of the most iconic perfumes of the 20th century: L'Heure Bleue (1912); Mitsouko (1919); and above all Shalimar (1925), a masterpiece of oriental perfumery.

Shalimar is remarkable in more ways than one. Its creation is tied to a famous anecdote: Jacques Guerlain is said to have poured a large flask of synthetic vanillin into a bottle of Jicky, creating by accident the olfactive structure that would become Shalimar. True or legendary, this episode illustrates the role of chance and intuition in perfume creation.

Hygienism and 19th-century perfume

The Victorian era and France of the Second Empire are marked by an olfactive paradox. On one side, the industrial revolution creates overcrowded, foul-smelling cities. On the other, the bourgeois classes develop an obsession with cleanliness and delicate perfumes.

The historian Alain Corbin, in his book The Foul and the Fragrant (1982), analysed how 19th-century French society gradually changed its olfactive codes: the heavy, animalic and musky perfumes of the 18th century gave way to lighter, floral and plant fragrances, perceived as more “hygienic”.