1881 Homme

Cerruti entered perfumery in 1978 with Nino Cerruti pour Homme. Twelve years passed before the house gave itself a second masculine. This one would last: 1881 Homme appeared in 1990, composed by Martin Gras, and became the brand's best-seller.

A date taken from a textile mill

The name does not designate the fragrance but a year. In 1881, Antonio Cerruti, two of his brothers and a cousin bought an establishment on the banks of the Cervo, in Biella, and launched a wool spinning and weaving mill there.

The Lanificio Fratelli Cerruti stayed in the family. Silvio, Antonio's son, ran it from 1915 to 1950 with his uncle Quintino. Upon his premature death, his son Nino took over its management: he was twenty and abandoned his philosophy studies.

From textile to clothing, and to perfume

Nino Cerruti modernized the workshops before turning to clothing: first men's collection in 1957, boutique and headquarters at Place de la Madeleine in Paris in 1967, women's line in 1976. Giorgio Armani had designed for him for six years.

When he commissioned 1881, the couturier had more than a century of workshop history behind him. The four digits engraved on the bottle do not tell the story of a fragrance: they designate the wool mill that made everything else possible.

A frosted glass bottle signed by Serge Mansau

The bottle was designed by Serge Mansau and became a reference in the brand's design, revisited in the anniversary editions. The glass is frosted, unpolished, and the digits appear carved into it as if into stone.

A feminine version appeared in 1995, named identically, and flankers followed one after another up to the Édition Blanche of 2015, embodied by Thomas Dutronc. The masculine, for its part, was sold up to a size of two hundred milliliters.

A fougère the trade also places near the chypre

The fougère reading imposes itself naturally: lavender, coumarin, moss. Yet the trade just as readily places it near the chypre, because of a base where evernyl weighs heavily enough to pull the fragrance in that direction.