Eau de Rochas, the quintessential Rochas fragrance The story of the house of Rochas began in 1925 when Marcel Rochas, aged 23, founded his couture house. He envisioned a fashion inspired by audacity, joie de vivre and elegance. His vision of femininity, at once comfortable and highly elegant, quickly won over the whole world.
Eau de Rochas was born in 1970 and was composed by Nicolas Mamounas for the house of Rochas. While this fresh, light fragrance with a rather “gutsy” character is now known throughout the world, its origin, far more distant than it seems, is less well known. For the one that inspired it was born in 1948 and was named Eau de Roche… The beautiful Eau de Rochas indeed has a thrilling history and a future that remains just as bright.
When Eau de Roche by Edmond Roudnitska became Eau de Rochas by Nicolas Mamounas…
In order to explore Nicolas Mamounas’s creative inspirations for the creation of Eau de Rochas, one cannot simply stop at the magnificent landscapes of Greece that the perfumer visited shortly before starting his work on the Rochas perfume. The story of this extraordinary Eau is in fact much more distant and dates back to the postwar period, a time when the house of Rochas was in full expansion.
In 1948, Marcel Rochas had already offered a captivated public his elixir of freedom, Femme, which he created with Edmond Roudnitska in tribute to his magnificent wife Hélène. They were also working on their first men’s fragrance, which would be released in 1949, the very famous Moustache. Yet Marcel Rochas asked his friend to compose for him a fresh perfume, sparkling with joy, that would modernize the very classic eau de Cologne. Edmond Roudnitska set to work to compose Eau de Roche for the great couturier. Despite the beauty of this work, Marcel Rochas preferred to put the project on hold, and it was only much later that this composition would be brought back into the spotlight.
While in the 1960s the house of Rochas and its director Hélène Rochas struggled to maintain its former prestige despite two magnificent creations, the house chose to secure the talents of a dedicated in-house perfumer. He was named Nicolas Mamounas. This perfumer took an interest in the now old composition that Roudnitska, by then very well known for his creations for Dior, had created. Greatly inspired by this fresh, lively juice, he reworked it and, in 1970, gave birth to Eau de Roche, which would become Eau de Rochas in 1983. Success was immediate.
The Eau de Rochas fragrance and its powerful freshness
If Eau de Rochas became legendary, it is of course thanks to its particularly original scent, especially in the 1970s, when perfumes tended to be much more woody with patchouli than fresh.
Indeed, Eau de Rochas, or Eau de Roche to be precise, exudes the scents of an eau de Cologne that had already long fallen out of fashion. Yet, modernized with precious flowers of rose, jasmine and narcissus, as well as with very sensual depths of oakmoss, vetiver and sandalwood, Eau de Rochas demonstrates that it is possible to compose a modern eau de Cologne, and above all, one with personality!
Knowing its close kinship with Eau de Roche, composed in 1948 by Edmond Roudnitska for Rochas, we should hardly be surprised that Eau de Rochas displays the same kind of innovation as its male counterpart of the time, Eau Sauvage, signed by… Edmond Roudnitska!