While we were working on the Muguet Skirt our thoughts naturally turned to perfume. We remembered a long-ago trip to Grasse, that town in southern France that is the world’s capital of perfume.
Happily situated on the French Riviera close to the Italian border, Grasse is a center of industry—with beautiful scenery. But, of course. Where else would you expect to find the home of perfume?
It was no accident. From the 12th century, Grasse was a center of leather tanning. And while the leather produced in Grasse had a reputation for high quality, like any tanned hide it had an unpleasant odor. During the Renaissance an enterprising tanner, Galimard, came up with the idea of scented gloves. He gave a pair to Catherine de Medici as a gift. These caught on quickly with her court, influencers who created an instant trend. Scented handbags and belts followed.
To support this trade in scented leather products, growers began cultivating fragrant flowers in the countryside around Grasse. In 1614 the king recognized a new corporation of ‘glovers-perfumers.’ In 1747 France saw the opening of its first perfumerie, the House of Galimard.
While leather production eventually migrated away from Grasse for economic reasons, the area flourished as a center for the cultivation of fragrant flowers. Grasse’s climate is especially well suited to the conditions required by important fragrance plants such as lavender, myrtle, jasmine, rose, orange blossom, and mimosa.
Today in Grasse there are 60 companies associated with the perfume industry, including three perfumeries that have museums and give tours to the public. They are the houses of Galimard, Molinard, and Fragonard.
Back when we had a French class to travel with, we visited one of the perfumeries. We believe it was Molinard, but it may have been Galimard. Forgive the imprecision, but the trip was so long ago that it was financed with babysitting at a wage of 50 cents an hour.
In either case, however, the memory of the place is indelible. A stucco building under a blazing blue spring sky in the south of France. We toured this quiet, immaculately clean building where serious, white-coated workers handled liquids in sparkling glass. Other rooms were filled with shining copper cauldrons. An elegant tour guide, in a white coat and high heels, explained to us the importance of an expert known in French as ‘le Nez’ (luh Nay), or the Nose. These highly skilled workers can distinguish over 2000 different scents. Most of the Nez in France have trained in Grasse.
The tour ended in a sunlit salon that looked out onto rolling green hills. Many brands’ distinctive bottles were on display. We were intrigued to learn that so many brands came out of the same factory. As a souvenir we bought a boxed sampler— tiny bottles of famous perfumes, each containing a few ml of its brand. They fit beautifully into customized cutouts in a cardboard insert inside a long flat box.
Perhaps somewhere along the way we dabbed a few drops of one or the other on a wrist. But the little sampler was simply too beautiful to use up. This is a fact. Not too long ago we found it, with its still-filled tiny bottles, in the back of a linen closet. Yes, a souvenir.