Cabotine, playful yet so endearing With the real name Germaine Krebs, Madame Grès opened her first workshop under the name Alix Couture. It was 1934, and at that time, she did not know how to sew!
The lovely and very oriental Cabochard had managed to revolutionize the perfumery of the early 1960s by proposing the fragrant portrait of a woman confident in herself and her powers of seduction. In 1990, Madame Grès returned with the daughter of that Cabochard woman, Cabotine. Cabotine, or the playful fragrance for young ladies already very feminine.
Cabotine, the sparkling and daring daughter of the fragrance Cabochard
Cabochard, the very first fragrance by the great couturière and specialist in draping Madame Grès, was in 1959 a great success for the brand-new perfume house. Bernard Chant, the perfumer who composed Cabochard, had captured the spirit of the times by offering a green chypre with a bold character to women in search of a fragrance as exotic as it was feminine.
In 1990, while the house of Grès continued to sell Cabochard with just as much success, the venerable Madame Grès asked Jean-Claude Delville to create a fragrant descendant for her. The young perfumer, passionate about natural flowers as well as the finest synthetic notes, thus created Cabotine.
Jean-Claude Delville would offer the venerable house of Grès a Cabotine, playful and laughing, as sparkling as it is sensual, in order to depict a young woman of a thousand faces. When I compose, I try to create a sensation through the fragrance: of joy, of sensuality, of femininity or of elegance; an expression that stirs up moods and feelings, the perfumer confided about his work. It is clear that with Cabotine, Jean-Claude Delville managed to shake up the codes of perfumery for young women by offering them a fragrance of striking contrasts.
Himalayan lily and ginger lily for a rare and precious Cabotine fragrance
If Cabochard does exactly as she pleases in 1959, Cabotine declares with a touch of humor: I am as I am. And Cabotine will not hesitate to assert herself through precious scents to announce her presence!
Indeed, Jean-Claude Delville is passionate about the work of composing with floral raw materials, particularly when it comes to molecular research in synthetic notes. For Cabotine, he used the living flower technique, which consists of reproducing in precise detail the scent of a flower that cannot be distilled. Thus the Himalayan lily, a flower that lives only a few hours, would for the first time appear in a fragrance thanks to the talents of Jean-Claude Delville.
Furthermore, ginger lily, emblematic of Cabotine's fragrant composition as well as of its bottle, would also appear in an unprecedented way. Ginger lily is traditionally used in Haitian flower wreaths; in order not to alter its exquisite scent, the perfumer harvested its precious essence without cutting it. Once again, Cabotine presents an unprecedented flower that blends, to our great delight, with sparkling citrus and warm, sweet sensuality.
Since its launch in 1990, Cabotine has become a benchmark among fragrances for young women. Cabotine originally means show-off, or ham actress… A woman of multiple facets. Her favorite role? All of them, from elegance to gentle madness. Grès, on Cabotine.