Brit pour Femme

Burberry launched Brit pour Femme in 2003, in the midst of the turnaround led by Rose Marie Bravo. The eau de parfum became one of the house's commercial drivers, and the trade press credited it the following year with a share of its annual results.

The name is a clipped word: Brit shortens British. Nathalie Gracia-Cetto composed the fragrance around an icy pear and a green almond, over a base of vanilla, tonka bean, amber and mahogany.

An award given to a licensee that has since changed

On June 9, 2004, in New York, Brit won the FiFi for Women's Fragrance of the Year, Luxe category. The thirty-second edition of the ceremony crowned a juice released the previous year, ahead of three heavyweight competitors.

Its rivals that evening were Beyond Paradise by Estée Lauder, Ralph Lauren Blue and Sicily by Dolce & Gabbana. The award goes to the perfume and to whoever markets it, not to the perfumer, contrary to what several trade directories state.

The declared winner was named Cosmopolitan Cosmetics. The ingredient list on the bottle sold today bears a different address, that of Coty in Paris: the license changed hands in the meantime.

What Brit brought to the house

A month before the award ceremony, the group published annual profits up more than twenty percent, beyond one hundred forty million pounds. The trade press credited part of this growth to the launch of Brit.

Rose Marie Bravo, then chief executive, spoke of a fantastic year. Appointed in 1997 to modernize a house born of rainwear, she had made fragrance one of the levers of that transformation.

A pink flanker of the house's beige also weighed into those figures. Brit therefore shared credit for the year's results, without ceasing to be the most visible product in the fragrance department that year.

An address the house dates differently

Texts introducing the brand have a shop opening in 1891 at 30 Haymarket, in London. Burberry's own history page says something else: a presence in the city since 1891, and a later move to larger premises.

French chronologies place the move to number 30 in 1912, in a building designed by architect Walter Cave. The date 1891 applies to London, not necessarily to that specific address.

On Burberry's beginnings in perfumery, nothing solid circulates. The year 1995 recurs from one text to another without any source backing it, and the date therefore remains missing today.

The eau de toilette has its own formula

An eau de toilette Brit pour Femme was released in 2004. It is not a dilution of the eau de parfum: its pyramid differs, and the inventories describing it do not copy those of the 2003 version.

It adds a citronella top note, alongside green almond, lime and pear. Its base is limited to vanilla, mahogany and amber, without the tonka bean of the eau de parfum.

A name, a rectangular bottle and a checked pattern apply to both concentrations. The tartan of the eau de parfum is worn in black, white and red, that of the eau de toilette in white.

The nose Burberry called back the following year

Nathalie Gracia-Cetto trained at Givaudan's perfumery school, where she has worked since. Her portfolio spans luxury houses to mass-market brands, with a few quiet creations for rare labels.

Burberry commissioned from her as early as 2004 a red variant, Brit Red, released in limited edition. This second composition in turn won a FiFi the following year, in the New Niche category for women.

Two awards in two years for the Brit line, at a house that had only recently entered serious perfumery: the sequence sheds light on the place it still holds in the catalog today.