When you visit Grasse, you have to deal with the subject of perfume. Not just because of the subject itself, but because otherwise you will not understand the place you are passing through. As always, everything is connected here, and the development of the city is inextricably linked with the development of the fragrances. After a while, I had the feeling that the history, the past of the city and the region, extends continuously and without breaks into the present and is simply there as a matter of course.
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00:00Class is well known for perfume nowadays, but since the Middle Ages, these people working
00:28here were producing leather.
00:35So here you can see the laboratory because we receive already the pure essence.
00:58We are here in this old distillery, photos show how it was worked until 1960, but the
01:16building itself has been here since 1782.
01:20Here you can see the map, which shows roughly the different possibilities of fragrances,
01:27or plants where the fragrances have to be extracted first and then the perfumes from it.
01:36And always in a cold state you have to treat these flowers to get essence.
01:45What you can see here is the method, which for a very long time was the only way to get
01:54fat as a base.
01:56Animal fat, usually mixed with pork and beef fat.
02:01And here on this glass plate, spread, thin, a very thin layer, the flowers you see here
02:08are jasmine flowers.
02:10These jasmine flowers were picked by hand, that still remains today.
02:15On average, one ton of flowers give one liter of essence, so a huge amount.
02:22The flowers were put on this layer of fat by hand for 24 hours.
02:29Every day, for four weeks, you had to exchange the flowers.
02:35It took this time to transfer the whole essence, the molecules, into the fat and then keep it.
02:49What you can also experience here is a long tradition of perfumery in general.
02:55Here in the Gegen you have had this tradition since the 17th, 16th century.
03:01This tradition started with the processing of leather.
03:06So the tanning was the main activity.
03:08Gradually they used the perfume, the essence they won to make perfume out of it,
03:14to make the leather smell better.
03:17This perfumery has developed further through Catherine de' Medici.
03:21This is a princess from Florence, or Firenze, who married a French king
03:27and created this fashion, perfumed leather gloves,
03:30which her personal perfumer, René Le Florentin, created for her.
03:35Gradually, all noble courtyards, men and women, wore perfumed leather gloves.
03:43They thought, not only to be fashionable and elegant,
03:46but that it was a protection against epidemics and disease spread.
03:49A second skin, and then perfume, would be a natural barrier,
03:54a scent barrier, to prevent the disease from spreading.
03:59Then it spread further.
04:02This Gontier perfumery was officially named in the 17th century, here in Grasse.
04:09And then the perfumers slowly established themselves,
04:12and no longer associated with leather, but only with perfume.
04:15And industrialization began in the 20th century.
04:19The perfumers of Grasse stayed in the old town for centuries.
04:24But at the end of the 19th century, they improved the technique of distillation,
04:28for example, and so they needed more space.
04:31So that's why, in 1890, the most big factories were built outside the city,
04:39outside the wall, in order to have better production.
04:43And they are also next to the fields of Jasmine and Rose.
04:50The Gontier Perfumery
05:02This factory, the Perfumery in the region, is the most recent and popular.
05:11It's the oldest perfumery since 1926.
05:16And we have the same family since 1926.
05:20And this one, Grasse, is the world's capital of perfume.
05:29So here you can see, on this map, you can see the raw materials from all over the world.
05:37So here you can see the laboratory, because we receive already the pure essence,
05:43and then we check, we control the quality of the essence.
05:47We can compose each composition, each base,
05:51because we make here eau de toilette, eau de parfum, and perfume.
05:57The difference between eau de toilette, eau de parfum, and perfume,
06:00is the concentration of the essence.
06:03Eau de toilette is very light.
06:05There is just 10% of the essence with water and alcohol.
06:09Eau de toilette stays only two or three hours on the skin.
06:13Eau de parfum, 15%.
06:15And the perfume, the best quality, there are 25% of the essence with alcohol, no water.
06:23The perfume stays all day on your skin.
06:26So here, we make, in this laboratory, we make eau de toilette, eau de parfum, and perfume.
06:32And we use between 50 scents and 250 scents for each perfume, yes.
06:40We have a lot of raw materials. It's very important.
06:43Because each perfume is created by famous noses.
07:05A nose is a talent.
07:07It's very difficult to become a nose.
07:11Because there are just three schools in the world.
07:18Two in Paris and one in Grasse.
07:21And there are 10 years of school, of training to become 10 years of school.
07:27So, here you can see the conditioning, the packaging.
07:41There are just two machines, semi-automatic. It's very manual.
07:45You can see there are different ladies.
07:49And 10, 10, yes, 15, 15 persons, you work here.
07:56And just two machines, semi-automatic.
07:58The first machine, refill of the bottle with eau de toilette, eau de parfum, and perfume.
08:04Here is for just a small size.
08:07And here you can see the refill.
08:09It's a big bottle.
08:11Very important because you can open each spray and you can refill by yourself the bottle with this refill.
08:20Six Harman Mil, the factory sizes, the big bottle, six Harman Mil.
08:26All is done by hand.
08:28It's a traditional method of Fragonard.
08:49It's a traditional method of Fragonard.