Creation notebook #3 - An Air of Apogee
After tracing its origins with Sketch, and resuscitating its poetry with Pourpre d'Automne, it was natural to echo the glory and prosperity of the Violet house. What other universe than that of Apogée to pay homage to them?
The thirties were a period full of contrasts for France. So persuaded not to be affected, the global stock market crisis was not long in catching up with France. Despite the end of the war, tensions grew more and more in Europe. At the heart of this slump, the development of the Roaring Twenties propelled Violet to its Zenith. She was quickly elevated to the ranks of the biggest cosmetic industries and was among the first to understand that she lived in a society in search of freedom. The emancipated, free, boyish woman changed the codes and the house followed. It was during this turbulent period full of contradictions that the brand released the Apogée perfume.
It could be found, at the time, in a bottle in the shape of an inkwell, a means of showing that the house was writing its own history. The advertising posters and archives found, illustrated a peacock and its flamboyantly colored feathers. An undisguised nod to the pride we associate with animals. It also echoed, in a more induced way, the fashion of the time and the feathers that adorned the hair of ladies, its sources of inspiration. Time acting and thanks to the intervention of its actors, Apogée became Un Air d'Apogée.
The original perfume was, in the image of its time, a fight between shadow and light. The solar and sensual facets of white flowers such as ylang and jasmine contrasted with the dark animal and leathery facets of the composition.
We then decided to emphasize this leathery atmosphere, but also revisited and in keeping with the times. The perfumer Nathalie Lorson presented us with a surprising raw material from a leather headspace*. We therefore worked on a finer leather, less raw and less animal which, once associated with the iris, was transformed into a note of suede, soft and sensual.
We also added a radiant mimosa which brought this contrast and this dimension of luminous caress. Everything tied together perfectly with the notes of honey, hay and tobacco. A composition that takes us straight back to the 1930s and its enchanted cabarets.
A fragrance at the height of its time.
* Process to capture a smell, an atmosphere, using sensors in order to reproduce it and translate it with olfactory raw materials.
