When Coty died alone at the age of sixty, he was in many ways a broken man.
His ex-wives wanted nothing to do with him. He was shunned by his peers, and his perfume business – which spanned continents – had been broken by the Wall Street Crash. To make things worse he had squandered his fortune on real estate and far right politics.
Coty was a caustic character, a hard driven businessman who got to the top through hard work and his appetite for competition; and of course his awesome talent for perfumery, which took him from obscurity in Corsica to being ranked as one of the richest men in France.
At the end of his life he was living as a recluse in his town house, where he found consolation by working on a perfume not even his company director knew about. It was a secret endeavour, carried out in a home laboratory.
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The formula was just some lines on a piece of paper. To the accountants who were called in to deal with Coty's affairs, the names and numbers would have meant little. So, along with his other papers, the document was filed away and put into storage, where it became the property of the corporation that rose from the ruins of his business empire.
Eventually, an archivist at Coty Inc dusted the paper off and saw it was the man’s last work. Thankfully, when the directors heard about it, they thought it might be interesting to smell what Coty had been doing, and they got it made up in the lab.
When the trial came back they might have liked it, but they would have realised there were problems to be dealt with. The formula was not complete, there may have been gaps to be filled in, or accords to be finished off.
Another issue they faced was some materials Coty had been using were no longer made in the 1970’s, which meant the formula would have to be adjusted to suit the new aroma chemicals and essential oils that were now in use.
This wasn’t a case of rewriting the formula, more like translating an old Corsican dialect into modern Parisian. This was a specialised task that needed someone who could speak both tongues as it were; enter Jean-Pierre Weil.
Weil came from a family of perfumers who had been active in the 1930’s. He would have been familiar with Coty’s style and may have analysed some of his works when they first came out, a practice which is routine today.
When the formula had been worked into shape it was given the go ahead and put into production.
It turned out to be an aldehydic floral powdery-amber, with an opening of aloof aldehydes, citrus and faint fruity notes, which contrast with a sweet – and floral – but light oriental.
The two ends of the profile have opposing characters but somehow – thanks to the skill of the perfumer(s) – they blend together seamlessly; with the panache of an acrobat the profile walks a tightrope between haughty and sensual.
Once the formula had been settled on, the next stage was to compound it; create a bottle to put it in, and design the packaging to go round it.
After a string of mediocre releases like Wild Musk, Success by Day and Bacchus, Coty Inc knew they had something special on their hands with this legacy perfume, and to give them the credit they deserve they treated it as such. They released it in a Parfum concentration as well as the usual Eau de Toilette, and they called it Complice de François Coty.
Both versions were housed in rectangular bottles that drew on the style of the day
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The rather masculine style of bottle was standard in the early 70’s, even for feminine releases
It could be called the Paco Rabanne style
Coty Inc used the current style of bottles for their reconstructed formula, but it was not just a vintage perfume dressed up in a modern outfit, there were classical elements to the packaging as well.
The stopper for the Parfum is clearly an extravagance from another era.
Cast in frosted glass, the bouchon has the air of a Lalique fantasia. A fiery, furry Napoleonic hat; Coty was nicknamed the Napoleon of Perfume for his Corsican roots and so the stopper design has historic resonances too.
The presentation of Complice Parfum spells luxury, it indicates the contents are out of the ordinary. This kind of extravagance was especially notable in 1973, it was the year of the Yom Kippur war, and the oil shock that followed caused inflation world wide as the price of petrol soared and people began to feel the pinch. Not the best time to release a luxury edition perfume.
Its lalique style crown was a folly that had not been seen since Patou launched Joy into the teeth of the Great Depression, which they famously vaunted as the most expensive perfume in the world. Complice is not the most expensive-smelling perfume ever made, but it certainly doesn’t smell cheap.
Along with the ornate stopper, the Parfum flacon benefits from modern production techniques, having a rebated pedestal and well defined edges.
As well as the bottle and cap being a hybrid of archaic and modern, the label is also a mixture of styles, with antique bronzed patina and 1970’s bubble writing. It can be seen on the match book style sample sleeve, and was used on the Eau de Toilette as well.
The packaging used for Complice is a hybrid of styles from Coty’s heyday in the 1920’s and the designs that were current in the 1970’s. Taken as a whole, this mix of contemporary and Art Nouveau gives Complice a faux-antique appearance. Being neither genuine seventies, nor classic Coty, it doesn’t look completely at home with either style.
The lack of stylistic coherence displayed by the bottle is reflected in the timing of the perfume’s release.
Coty Inc had the chance to issue Complice on the centenary of Coty’s birth in 1874 but they released it in 1973, which suggests they may have been ambiguous about presenting it as an homage to François Coty, even though they weren’t shy about putting his name on the label. It was probably more a case of getting the product out there as quickly as possible and capitalising on their lucky find.
Despite the timing of it’s release, Complice was treated as a proper prestige perfume (in the Parfum at least) and Coty Inc went to special lengths to give it a luxury image.
But was the perfume good enough? Did it deserve the hype?
Great post!