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| Fêtes de l'Hiver, Lancôme (1948) |
I was representing Citizen K
magazine in Barcelona this week on a press jaunt, and took the opportunity to
revisit the small museum of perfume at the back of the Regia perfumery store on
Passeig de Gracia 39. It isn’t a museum per se, just a collection of bottles in
display windows, but nevertheless an amazing collection. To read more about it,
click here for the post I wrote after my last visit, or
here for the museum website.
If you scroll all the way down on this page you can also see a slide show of
pictures I took previously.
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| Blue Grass (1934), Nuit Jour (?), Elizabeth Arden | | |
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| Hattie Carnegie (1925) |
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| Maharani, Jehan Bonnot (?) |
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| Tigress, Fabergé (1938) |
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Oooh - is that 1924 Habanita the first bottle after it was released as a perfume? Was it released just as lotion, do you know, or an alcohol based perfume? Very interesed in this ...
RépondreSupprimerThanks for the pix.
Annemarie, the "museum" doesn't have a catalogue, just bottles in display cabinets. I do know Habanita was initially a scent you added to cigarettes before becoming an alcohol-based perfume, so the first version wasn't a lotion.
RépondreSupprimerThere's something so wonderful about those antique bottles. They move me in a way that other antiques do not. I'm not sure if it's just because they are so rare, or because they represent something so ephemeral and intimate, and if one could open them (and they hadn't been destroyed by light), it would be like being there, back in time. SIGH!! ~~nozknoz
RépondreSupprimerThe Hattie Carnegie bottle is a bit creepy. I feel that if that were sitting on my dresser, it would give me nightmares.
RépondreSupprimerNozknoz, to be frank, my colleagues and I were joking about breaking through those display windows to get a good sniff. Alternatively, maybe one day I could convince the owners of taking out the ones that are unsealed, though I doubt anything could be preserved after so many years out in the light...
RépondreSupprimerSusan, it kind of reminds me of the robot Maria in Fritz Lang's Metropolis.
RépondreSupprimerhahaha! Just saw the french version and spotted THE creepiest bottle ever (the one with the Pharaoh's head stopper). I wonder about the contents...
RépondreSupprimerKostas, isn't it odd? I'm wondering whether that isn't a portrait of Mr Bichara himself. He was from Beirut and presented himself in Paris as "The Syrian perfumer".
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