Visit Grasse: the picturesque fragrance capital of France

The picturesque town of Grasse in Alpes-Maritimes, long regarded as the perfume capital of the world, received its official stamp of approval in 2018 when it was awarded Unesco’s coveted Intangible Heritage status. 

How Grasse became a centre of perfume production and was able to earn this prize involves a trip back through the centuries to a time when its streets and people were not quite so fragrant.

Sweet-smelling gloves

From the 12th Century, the town’s thriving tanning industry produced leather for both home and export markets, a practice which went on to develop hand in hand with glove making. 

In the modern era our noses would wrinkle at the foul stenches emitted during the tanning process; faeces and urine were applied liberally to the leather, producing smells that the workers just had to roll with, but which offended the olfactory organs of the elites. 

In fact, smell was a social marker. Perfume was a substitute for soap and water, and a luxury that only the wealthiest could afford to apply to their malodorous bodies.

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The gloves made for society’s richest also stank to high heaven, as treating the leather with faeces was essential to obtain a smooth, supple finish. 

Legend has it that when Catherine de’ Medici arrived in France from Italy to marry Henry II in 1533, she brought her personal perfumer with her, and a selection of perfumes. 

She is said to have introduced to the French court perfumed gloves, or ‘sweet gloves’, that masked the whiff of dung. The fashion for sweet gloves spread throughout the kingdom, and the perfuming process required to transform them into desirable accessories was duly exploited by the glove-making industry in Grasse.

To perfume gloves for the wealthy, flowers were grown as crops to be harvested and distilled into essences. 

The leather used to make gloves was scented not just with extracts of flowers such as iris, jasmine and orange blossom, but also with musky scents derived from animals, including the glands of civet cats. 

The sweet-smelling ingredients would be mixed with animal fat, then boiled to create a liquid used to impregnate the gloves.

Leaving leather behind

During the 18th Century, elevated taxes and competition from nearby Nice brought the tanning industry in Grasse to its knees. Ever-resourceful, the town shifted its focus and labour to grow the flowers needed for perfume making. 

The waterways which had been used to clean leather hides now irrigated fields of jasmine, mimosa and tuberose for the nascent perfume industry.

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In 1724, the perfumers of Grasse gained official independence from the corporation of tanners, which until then had controlled the town’s production of aromatics. 

From the middle of the century, Grasse glove-making and perfumer companies such as Galimard began to build perfume factories around the old town, exploiting new industrial technologies to create luxury fragrances for the great and the good. 

What had begun as small-scale, local production quickly developed into an industry with international markets and clients, among them Queen Victoria, who made a detour to purchase perfume while on holiday in Nice.

The birthplace of Chanel No. 5

Grasse enjoyed its heyday in the late 19th Century, when around 65 companies made perfume for the elite classes there. At this time, demand was so great that raw materials were imported from abroad, taking advantage of the rich resources to be exploited in France’s colonies.

The town’s reputation as a perfume capital went global in the early twentieth century when Coco Chanel drew upon the expertise of a local perfumer to create her signature scent, Chanel No. 5. 

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Thereafter, the jasmine and roses of Grasse were cultivated in large quantities to supply the fashion house with the floral base notes of its iconic fragrance.

The 1960s and 70s saw the rapid introduction of synthetic ingredients into the global perfume-making industry, bringing down the price and making perfume affordable to all, not just to the privileged few.

Flower fields may no longer scent the air as they once did, but the Unesco rating of 2018 acknowledges the instrumental part Grasse played in the development of perfume. 

For a fully sensory experience of the town’s fragrant history, visitors can head to the Musée International de la Parfumerie, the only museum of its kind in the world, or take a tour around the factories of the iconic perfume houses Fragonard, Molinard and Galimard.