The evidence register · History & Masters

History & Masters: the evidence

The claims History & Masters makes, as it makes them today: 90 sourced, 18 labelled for what they are, 56 unsourced.

The whole register · the page itself

A History Written in Scent

  • sourced In 1882 Paul Parquet composed Fougère Royale for Houbigant from coumarin, which Perkin had synthesised in 1868, with oak moss, geranium and bergamot, and the fougère family took its name from it (the Osmothèque dates the launch to 1884). (from the record) · Stepanyuk A, Kirschning A
  • unsourced In Mesopotamia, a woman named Tapputi, often cited in histories of chemistry, distilled flowers, oils, and calamus more than 3,000 years ago.
  • unsourced A woman. A chemist. Millennia before modern chemistry.
  • house interpretation From sacred smoke in Egyptian temples to the synthetic molecules of the 1880s — the story of perfumery spans five thousand years, continents, and the full arc of human civilization.

The Complete Timeline of Perfumery

  • unsourced Founded his house in Cologne in 1709 and sold the citrus water named after the city — a name still used for a whole class of fragrance.
  • sourced Founded Houbigant in 1775, perfumer to Marie Antoinette. (from the record) · Wikidata (Wikimedia Foundation)
  • sourced Coumarin (1868), vanillin (1874), and the aldehydes enabled scents impossible in nature. (from the record) · Stepanyuk A, Kirschning A
  • sourced Created Chanel No. 5 (1921), No. 22, and the entire Chanel fragrance DNA. His use of aldehydes became a landmark of 20th-century perfumery. Previously perfumer to the Russian Imperial Court. (from the record) · Osmothèque, Conservatoire international des parfums
  • sourced Coumarin (1868) New-mown hay scent. (from the record) · Stepanyuk A, Kirschning A
  • sourced Ionones (1893) Violet-iris scent. (from the record) · Stepanyuk A, Kirschning A
  • unsourced Launched his niche line in 2000 after years at Shiseido.
  • unsourced Created Editions de Parfums in 2000, commissioning perfumers with full creative freedom and crediting them by name.
  • unsourced Hedione (1962) Jasmine radiance.
  • unsourced Calone (1966) Sea breeze, watermelon, ozone.
  • house interpretation Made France the arbiter of perfumed taste for the next 400 years
  • unsourced Rome imports frankincense and myrrh from Arabia on a vast scale; Nero is said to have spent a fortune on roses for a single banquet. Pliny the Elder complains that luxury imports drain Rome’s wealth to Arabia and India.
  • unsourced By 1900 Grasse grows jasmine on a large scale, every flower picked by hand.
  • unsourced Vanillin (1874) Far cheaper than natural vanilla. Made gourmand perfumery possible. Used very widely.
  • house interpretation Yves Saint Laurent’s Opium launches with spectacular controversy and a lavish launch.
  • unsourced Aldehydes (early twentieth century) Waxy, sparkling, diffusive molecules, used prominently in Chanel No. 5.

Perfumer Lineages

Reformulation Tracker

Vintage vs Modern

  • unsourced Christian Dior · 1947 vs 2024
  • house interpretation What exactly changed between the vintage and the modern bottle? Breakdowns of specific fragrances — batch hints, note changes and the house’s verdict, as opinion.
  • unsourced Founded in Lorraine by royal decree of Louis XV, Baccarat has crafted perfume flacons since the eighteenth century.
  • unsourced Full-lead crystal with a fire-polished surface
  • house interpretation Miss Dior (Chypre) Christian Dior · 1947 vs 2024

Failed Masterpieces

Master Perfumers

Landmark Fragrances

  • unsourced Art Deco minimalist design (1924)
  • unsourced Blue fan stopper (1925)
  • house interpretation Beaux’s use of synthetic aldehydes at a high dose for the time created an abstract, almost architectural floral that smelled like nothing in nature.

Ghost Perfumers

  • unsourced The specific cases Oppenheim’s reporting documents: Green Irish Tweed as Pierre Bourdon’s rejected brief for Lancôme’s Sagamore (1985).
  • unsourced Olivier Creed’s own 2013 statement: “When I was starting out — back in the 1960s — people were not always encouraging. When I entered with my creations exclusively in Le Soleil d’Or, in Lille, in 1963, it was a real challenge against the big brands.”
  • unsourced This statement — claiming to compete against big brands with his “creations” in 1963 — is incompatible with the house’s claim to have supplied fragrance to European royalty since 1760.
  • sourced In her 1985 autobiography Estée: A Success Story, Estée Lauder describes personally creating Youth Dew (1953) through her incomparable olfactory gift. · Osmothèque, Conservatoire international des parfums
  • sourced Some fragrance historians have argued that Moustache by Rochas (1949), attributed to Roudnitska, owes much to his wife Thérèse — a trained chemist who met him at De Laire (now part of Symrise) and worked alongside him throughout his career. · Osmothèque, Conservatoire international des parfums
  • unsourced It remains informed speculation rather than documented record — which is precisely the point: the industry’s attribution habits make such questions impossible to settle. [3] Thérèse’s name finally entered the canon in 2000, when Frédéric Malle released Le…
  • unsourced THE POIRET TEMPLATE (1911) — How It Began
  • unsourced Fashion designer Paul Poiret launched Les Parfums de Rosine in 1911, an early couturier’s perfume house.
  • unsourced The fragrances were created by Maurice Schaller and Henri Alméras.

House DNA Signatures

The Shalimar Dispute

  • sourced Shalimar (1925) is often presented as an original creation and as the model of the oriental family. (from the record) · Osmothèque, Conservatoire international des parfums
  • sourced The historical record shows it bears extraordinary resemblance to Coty’s Émeraude (1921), released four years earlier. · Osmothèque, Conservatoire international des parfums
  • unsourced This pattern — documented in Gabe Oppenheim’s reporting, in Nez Magazine’s investigations, and in the broader fragrance-history literature — runs from Poiret in 1911 through Creed in 2022.
  • house interpretation Guerlain’s own histories do not dwell on it.
  • house interpretation The Shalimar–Émeraude resemblance is often cited when priority in perfumery is discussed: the ideas of a successful formula can resurface at a more prestigious house under a new story, and the house that came first may lack the standing to claim them.…

Reformulation Secrets

  • sourced The IFRA Standards are industry self-regulation rather than law, but in practice most of the market follows them. · International Fragrance Association (IFRA)
  • house interpretation A perfumer reformulating to IFRA standards can lose much of the original formula’s character.
  • house interpretation Some fragrances died with their original formulas.

Formula Theft & Reverse Engineering

Perfumery Difficulty & Learning

  • house interpretation A basic evaluation kit costs a few hundred to a few thousand dollars.
  • house interpretation A professional organ costs far more.
  • house interpretation Premium naturals (orris butter, rose absolute, oud) are very costly.
  • house interpretation Minimum startup: a modest budget for a starter set of materials, scales, pipettes, alcohol, and mouillettes.

from the house’s claims register and the records, checked against the pages’ own words when the site was built