NO MATTER HOW DRUNK YOU ARE, AS LONG AS YOU'VE GOT THE BOTTLE
Like olfactory trends, perfume caskets have continued to evolve over the decades. Since the Roaring Twenties, with Lalique and Baccarat, designers have imbued their era with their creativity. A talent that is still being reinvented today, in the midst of an ecological emergency.
It was at the beginning of the 20th century that the perfume bottle gained its letters of nobility, thanks in particular to glassmaker René Lalique. He designed bottles for Coty, Molinard and Houbigant in the Art Nouveau style, which was very much in vogue at the time. Guerlain also turned to Baccarat to dress its creations in sumptuous cases.
An art that was renewed in the post-war period by artists such as Pierre Dinand. In over sixty years of creation, he signed 700 bottle designs, including those for Dior'sEau Sauvage, Paco Rabanne's Calandre and Yves Saint Laurent'sOpium. Since 2015, his grandson, Jules, has been working alongside him, enriching the family know-how with 3D modeling. Together, they design bottles for confidential brands such as Maison Rebatchi or Eaux Primordiales.
If niche perfumeries are innovating on the olfactory front, they're also shaking up design codes... By favoring streamlined bottles, as Gabrielle Chanel did a century earlier, to strip the bottle of all ornament in order to sublimate the essential, the fragrance. The Matière Première brand's bottles, for example, are inspired by the ingredient flasks used by perfumers, whose molds were custom-made by glassmaker Waltersperger.
For over twenty years, the Centdegrés agency has surrounded itself with the best experts to design original bottles. Like the superb bottle for La Panthère de Cartier (2014), created in partnership with the Pochet group, whose innovative know-how was used to sculpt the bottle's interior. Paco Rabanne is creating a stir with the Pacollection in 2019, a range of six fragrances in a patented flexible bottle.
Last but not least, ecological concerns have led designers to favor the use of recycled glass, unscrewable pumps and refillable bottles. Chanel, for example, turned to Sulapac for the packaging of its Eaux, featuring very light glass and caps woven from plant materials. The brand also launched a limited edition of N°5 in recycled glass, thanks to the expertise of the Pochet group.
Other innovations are still to come, judging by the 2022 edition of Luxe Pack, where over 450 exhibitors have committed themselves to eco-design and sustainability.
Sophie Normand
