THE STORIES AROUND THE FIRST GRÈS' FRAGRANCES

Alix Grès was "Cabochard": Wear Cabochard and Madame Grès comes to life: her fragrance as shy and complex, as persistent and irresistible as personality she must have been. 

Guy Leyssène is credited with steering Madame Grès' first fragrance "Cabochard" to succèss. He first met the designer at a dinner party in 1957. He loved perfume, but he didn't much about the business of perfume at the time. "I asked Madame Grès, why she didn't have a perfume, most of the fashion houses have their own perfume, because it makes them money" She didn't say another word but, one month later, I received a letter from her asking to see me. "Do you want to join my company to launch a perfume?" It sounds very simple but it happened just like that !

When Leyssène started work he found that the perfume he had been hired to launch was not Cabochard, but Chouda, a different fragrance which had already been composed by Guy Robert. "I was a young perfumer at the time" says Robert. "My work had caught the attention of Andrée Castanié, who was then editor of the powerful magazine "L'Officiel de la Mode et de la Couture" She introduced me to Mme Grès in 1956, saying, "Guy should make a perfume for you."

It was when Mme was invited by the Ford Foundation to visit India, to assess the potential of Indian brocades. On her return, Mme Grès told Guy Robert that she had discovered a wonderful flower with a most marvelous scent. She described it as very flowery, as rich as the scent of tuberose but warmer, with the contrast of a fresh and slightly green first note. Water Hyacinth ! So Guy Robert made several trials for her and one day she said, "That's mine!" But it was a light note and the trend was to strong chypres and - convinced by another laboratory who was knocking at her door - Madame Grès decided to launch a second fragrance at the same time "Cabochard" by Bernard Chant of IFF. From the start, Leyssène recalls that Cabochard prompted a far more favourable reaction than Chouda and after a couple of months, they decided that they would no longer push Chouda. Only five litres of perfume have been delivered and Mme Grès probably wore most of it herself.

launched in 1959

The perfume is still admired by perfumers today. "Cabochard is a miracle of complexity" writes critic Luca Turin in "Parfum: le guide" The accord is dominated by the smoky, leathery notes of isobutyl quinoline, one of a group of aroma chemicals which were discovered around 1880, and used in such leather-chypre classics as Tabac Blond (1919), Cuir de Russie (1924), Scandal (1933) and, most importantly, Bandit (1944), the leather archetype created by Germaine Cellier for Robert Piguet. 

Madame Grès said, that Cabochard recalled for her a walk along a deserted Indian beach: the crispness of the early morning air, the warmth of sandalwood, a hint of far-off flowers, and the dry caress of sea breezes. 

It was Mme Grès who selected the name. Many names were tried and finally she had an idea. "Cabochard" she said, "let's try Cabochard". Cabochard is a funny word in French. Stubborn is probably the closest word in English. The Petit Robert dictionary states that the noun or adjective cabochard comes from the old French word caboche, meaning "headstrong" or "self-willed". By accident or design, the name perfectly captured the designer's independent spirit. 

In order to launch the two perfumes in the least expensive way, they decided to use a stock bottle from Guighard, a small glass manufacturer which was later acquired by Pochet. Five hundred bottles had been produced for a company which decided not to take up their order, so the glassmaker was very happy to find someone who was willing to buy his stock. To personalise the bottle, Jean Pérignon from the manufacturing plant selected a pharmaceutical bottle stopper, and arranged for the initial G to be embossed in the glass. Leyssène adds that the idea for the bow came from Grès:  "it was the link between the couture and the perfume" Cabochard wore a grey velvet bow, Chouda a green one. The two perfumes used the common bottle decorated with different coloured bows. 

One of the reasons for Cabochard's success, was that Grès had hired a commission salesman who had previously worked at Parfums Robert Piguet. Their biggest seller was Bandit, so he loved "Cabochard". He was so enthusiastic about the fragrance that he sold two hundred and fifty bottles in the first week alone, and asked for a thousand more. It took some months, however, for the bottle manufacturer to fulfil the back orders. It was so successful, that the only problem we faced was a problem of supply. For ten years we could not keep up with the demand. Sales were doubled every year, recalls Leyssène. 

By 1981, Grès no longer had sufficient capital to continue. Escalating costs, combined with the evergrowing popularity of ready-to-wear, meant that the market for haute couture had shrunk dramatically. When the couture business started to decline, the perfume profits were used to prop it up. Faced with the reality of changing times, the designer sold Parfums Grès to the British American Cosmetics division of British American Tobacco, which had already acquired Germaine Monteil and Yardley of London. The next decade saw a succession of owners. In 1984, Beecham Cosmetics acquired British American Cosmetics, and to celebrate Cabochard's twenty-fifth anniversary, translated the grey velvet bow into frosted glass. Three years later, Bernard Tapie bought the House, only to sell it in 1989 to retailer Gilles Pagnier who introduced Cabotine in 1990. In 1991, Pagnier's financial partner, investment house FMFI took control. 

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of Cabochard in 1999, an exceptional Baccarat cristal flask was created by Serge Mansau.

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A daughter for Cabochard ! Created with love and enthusiasm, but very little money, Cabotine demonstrated that even with limited resources, it was still possible to create a minor classic - and to take on the giants in the cutthroat fragrance market of the Nineties. When taken over by Gilles Pagnier, he brought to the House his experience as a retailer. His goal was to introduce an new fragrance which would tap the heritage of the past. "I wanted to bring back the world of Grès which millions of women had known thirty years ago", he says. 

One of the staff Pagnier inherited was a young marketing manager, Nicolle Taté, who had joined Parfums Grès in 1981. She suggested that Pagnier create a daughter for Cabochard.  Pagnier and Taté decided to create a fragrance for young women, priced lower than Cabochard. Finally, they had to find a name that was easy to remember and which had to link Cabochard with the new generation. The choice was narrowed down to Cabotin or Cabotine. "M. Pagnier liked Cabotin, but I thought Cabotine sounded better. Both names were tested in Japan and America. Cabotine was preferred, especially by Japanese Women" recalls Nicolle Taté. Cabotine is a word the French use to describe a woman who is playful and a little theatrical. The contrast between the light-hearted feel of Cabotine and the elegance of Cabochard was magnificent. 

Jean-Claude Delville from IFF was to create a floral, easy to wear and long-lasting. A difficult task. But he succeeded in finding the right formulation in a floral aldehyde structure, a family that no one else at the time was considering. He presented a transparent, yet very tenacious fragrance with natural green florals and sharp aldehiydic notes. It feld almost like a second skin and made the fragrance very easy to wear. This is why it was so successful in Japan (and still is!)

At IFF, Cabotine is considered as a case history of the power of a good fragrance. Its sales are still excellent, despite the light advertising and promotional support. Cabotine's innovative spicy-green floral accord became the inspiration for such fragrances as Touch, Fleur de Rocaille and Tendre Poison. "Every note is orchestrated around the ginger lily, but first, you have to create an introduction which will appeal to the imagination."A white, large-petalled flower, the ginger lily is native to the Himalayas. In the cold windswept mountain passes, it flowers for only a few weeks during spring. It had never been used in perfumery before, because each flower blooms and dies within a few hours, making it impossible to extract the oil. It was not until IFF's pioneering researcher, Dr. Braja Mookherjee, used his new "living-flower" technique to analyse the oil, that the flower yielded its secret. He enclosed the flowers in a little airtight bag, and forced the fragrant air through a small filter, designed to absorb the flowers' perfume oil. Even though the yield was microscopic, it was sufficient for Mookherjee to analyse the chemical construction of the "living"perfume. From this "perfume print", he was able to duplicate the fragrance, and produce its oil in commercial quantities. For its debut as a perfume, the ginger lily flowered in Cabotine. 

While Jean-Claude Delville was working on the fragrance, Thierry Lecoule accepted the brief to redecorate Cabochard's bottle for Cabotine. "It was an ideal collaboration between the marketing team and myself," he says. "The aim was to put new life into the venerable name of Grès. Cabochard is a beautiful fragrance with a beautiful heritage. Grès wanted to create a younger fragrance, more spirited and lighter, yet still retaining the special character that is Grès." Lecoule believes that Cabotine's success was due to the coherence of all the elements orchestrated by Nicolle Taté: "I think Cabotine found a way to combine the expectations of a perfume with the universe of dreams. Cabotine's flowery world inspires us, because its imagery is so universal. Cabotine is the bunch of lowers we love to give, and its bottle should represent the fascinating images it holds. It should be a bottle so full of flowers, it becomes a gift in itself." 

Thierry Lecoule remembers "to keep the link, we decided to use the same bottle, but change the frosted bow which represented Cabochard. It was my idea to translate the bow into a flower. It met Nicolle Taté's request for something very feminine, romantic and sensitive. My task was to make an amalgam of the old and the new: the original stopper and crystal bow translated into flowers. It was a simple idea, but attractive. I felt that the flowers of Cabotine should be a universal symbol: round shapes, more abstract than figurative, with five petals and a heart. I felt that people would instinctively recognise the shape of a flower, without having to tell them which flower it was. "

Lecoule designed Cabotine's carton "to make you feel as if you were in a field of wild flowers. " The name, the fragrance, the bottle and the packaging - everything fitted. 

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