“In those days fragrance composition was almost exclusively French, and France, despite its strenuous efforts to assert the contrary and raise its flag among those of the allies, had in reality lost the war and was a broken country. The tail end of German chemistry on the Rhine lay in neutral Switzerland and was untouched, which is why today two of the biggest perfumery houses in the world, Firmenich and Givaudan, are Swiss. The Second World War destroyed Germany, the great engine of European chemistry. François Coty built factories all over the world and the largest personal fortune in France, before he went into right-wing politics and died, a recluse, in 1934. Many factors then conspired to make the period 1918 to 1939 the golden age of mass perfumery: working women vying for the remaining men, cheap aromachemicals, cheap labor to harvest the naturals, flourishing visual arts and music, the obsolescence of pre-war bourgeois dignity, replaced by irreverence and optimism. The Great War left industry and cities largely intact and killed countless males. “European perfumery had started in earnest around the turn of the twentieth century, and developed apace with the discovery of aromachemicals: coumarin, vanillin, cyclamen aldehyde, the great nitro musks. LUCA TURIN The shifting shape of fragrance 1918-2018 Perfumes the Guide by Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez
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