François Coty
François Coty (born Joseph Marie François Spoturno dit Coti; 3 May 1874, Ajaccio, Corsica – 25 July 1934, Louveciennes) was a French perfume manufacturer and the founder of the fascist league Solidarité Française, a paramilitary organization founded in 1933, during Edouard Daladier's government supported by the Cartel des gauches (Left-Wings' Coalition).
Early Life and Family
Joseph Marie François Spoturno dit Coti was born on 3 May 1874 in Ajaccio, Corsica. He was a descendant of Isabelle Bonaparte, an aunt of Napoleon [1] : 9 . His parents were Jean-Baptiste Spoturno and Marie-Adolphine-Françoise Coti, both descendants of Genoese settlers who founded Ajaccio in the 15th century. His parents died when he was a child and the young François was raised by his great-grandmother, Marie Josephe Spoturno, and after her death, by his grandmother, Anna Maria Belone Spoturno, who lived in Marseille[2]: 39 .
After spending some years in military service, François met a fellow Corsican named Emmanuel Arène. A politician, writer, and future senator, Arène became François's mentor, offering him a job in Paris as his secretary. In Paris François married Yvonne Alexandrine Le Baron and took the more French-looking name Coty, a variation on his mother's maiden name. He also met Raymond Goery, a pharmacist who made and sold perfume at his Paris shop. Coty began to learn about perfumery from Goery and created his first fragrance, Cologne Coty [2]: 49 .
Perfumer
Through Arène, Coty met Antoine Chiris, a senator and member of the Chiris family, longtime manufacturers and distributors of perfume. At the Chiris factories in Grasse, Coty studied perfumery and began work on a fragrance, La Rose Jacqueminot [2]: 61 . On his return to Paris in 1904, Coty set off to sell his scents to department stores, boutiques, and barbershops, but initially met with little success. His luck changed when he dropped a bottle of La Rose Jacqueminot on a countertop at the Grands Magasins du Louvre, the Parisian department store. Attracted by the scent, customers swarmed the area, demanding to buy the perfume. Coty's entire stock was gone in a few minutes and the store offered him a place on the selling floor for his products [1] : 14 . The success of La Rose established Coty as a millionaire and a major player in the perfume world.
Coty was both a talented perfumer and a brilliant marketer. He was the first to recognize that an attractive bottle was essential to a perfume's success. Though La Rose came in a Baccarat bottle, Coty's most famous collaboration was with the great ceramist and jeweler René Lalique. Lalique designed the bottles for Coty's early scents, such as Ambre Antique and L'Origan, which became bestsellers. He also designed the labels for Coty perfume, which were printed on a gold background with raised lettering.[3] Lalique's designs for Coty were in the Art Nouveau style that was prevalent in the period, and incorporated classic Art Nouveau themes such as nature, flowers, and female figures [4] : 261 .
Besides pioneering the concept of bottle design, Coty was responsible for making perfume available to a mass market. Before Coty, perfume was considered a luxury item, affordable only to the very rich. Coty was the first to offer perfumes at many price points. His expensive perfumes, in their Lalique and Baccarat bottles, were aimed at the luxury market, but he also sold perfume in smaller, plainer bottles affordable to middle and working-class women. [5]Coty perfume bottles, though mass produced, were carefully designed to convey an image of luxury and prestige[4]. Coty also invented the idea of a fragrance set, a gift box containing identically scented items, such as a perfume and matching powder, soap, cream, and cosmetics. [2]: 24
Coty summed up his approach to business when he said:
Give a woman the best product to be made, market it in the perfect flask, beautiful in its simplicity yet impeccable in its taste, ask a reasonable price for it, and you will witness the the birth of a business the size of which the world has never seen. [2]: 100
In 1908, Coty relocated his manufacturing headquarters to Suresnes, just outside Paris. He acquired property in the area and began to build what would become "La cité des Parfums", a large complex of laboratories and factories that manufactured his products. "La cité" had 9,000 employees and was able to manufacture up to 100,000 bottles a day [1]. This allowed Coty to meet the burgeoning demand for his products in France and abroad.
After World War I, demand for French perfume grew at a rapid pace. Many American soldiers had been stationed in France during the war. Once it was over, many brought back Coty perfumes to their wives and relatives and as a result, demand grew. Coty realized the importance of the lucrative American market and began to distribute his products in the United States. [4] : 260, 261
In 1922, Coty created an American subsidiary in New York to handle the assembly and distribution of its products in the American market. The American offices assembled their own Coty products from raw materials sent by the Parisian factories, thus avoiding the high tariffs on luxury products in the United States. This allowed Coty to offer more competitive prices on its products [4]: 261 . Later, additional subsidiaries were established in the United Kingdom and Romania [5]
Coty soon expanded his product line to include not just perfume, but cosmetics and skin care. His most popular product was his Air-spun face powder, launched in 1934. Coty collaborated with famous costume designer Léon Bakst to create the look of the Air-spun powder box. [2]: 83 It became so popular that soon afterwards Coty launched the Air-spun powder scented with his most popular perfumes, such as L'origan and Emeraude. [6]
Involvement in Politics
He was one of the wealthiest men in France; in 1929, his fortune was estimated at 34 million [7]. From the beginning, Coty was determined to use his wealth to gain a foothold in politics and to influence public opinion. In 1923, after a close race, he was elected senator of Corsica, but his victory proved short-lived. The French Senate annulled his election in 1924 after accusations of bribery surfaced. The loss of his senate seat galled Coty and turned him against the Third Republic [2] : 117 .
In 1922, Coty bought Le Figaro, a prestigious conservative newspaper with an upper-class readership. Against the will of its staff, Coty changed the newspaper's name to Figaro and moved its headquarters to the Rond-Point des Champs-Elysées [2] : 147 . Under Coty's ownership, the journal, once moderately conservative, adopted an extreme right-wing stance on politics and the economy. Le Figaro printed many fierce anti-Communist articles, and was notorious for its strong opposition to the government. Coty's extreme opinions soon alienated his readers and Le Figaro's circulation went into free fall : 148 .
In 1928, Coty launched L'Ami du peuple, a newspaper aimed at the working class. L'Ami du peuple, priced much lower than other competing newspapers, soon gained a huge readership [5] .
He also bought the hunting pavilion of Louveciennes near Saint-Germain-en-Laye, once the property of Madame du Barry. He built multiple large residences, but lived in a hotel on the Champs-Élysées.
Coty was something of a recluse, disliking crowds of any kind, and hiding behind his public image. The company he founded in 1904 is now Coty, Inc., based in New York City.
The movement he founded drew on the previous Coty-backed far-right leagues the Faisceau and the Croix-de-Feu World War I veterans organization. While Marcel Bucard's Francisme imitated Fascism and Benito Mussolini, Solidarité Française looked more towards the Nazi party and Adolf Hitler. On July 1, 1933, François Coty was found guilty in court for libel against Jewish war veterans' groups in France.[citation needed] Never anything but marginal, the group peaked during the February 6, 1934 rally in front of the Palais Bourbon, when it attempted, in alliance with other far right leagues, to topple the Third Republic (Coty had the ambition of having it replaced with a monarchy]). The group was outlawed in 1936, through a decision taken by the Popular Front government.
The Stade François Coty in Ajaccio was named after him.
Personal Life
Coty and Yvonne had two children, Roland and Christiane. Despite his marriage, Coty was well-known for his numerous mistresses and illegitimate children [1] : 23 . He was known to house his lovers in Paris' Hotel Astoria, and to lavish money and gifts on them. His premier mistress was Henriette Daude, a former Coty shopgirl who bore him five children. Coty's love life was widely publicized in the French liberal newspapers. [2]
In 1929, Yvonne divorced Coty and married Leon Cotnareanu. Over the next few years, divorce courts ruled in favor of Yvonne, and granted her ownership of most of Coty's fortune and his newspapers. [2] : 207
List of creations
François Coty was a pioneer in the field of perfumery, creating many notable masterpieces, including: [8]
- La Rose Jacqueminot 1904: a floral perfume based on the Jacqueminot Rose
- L'Origan 1905: (The Golden One) a floral oriental fragrance
- Ambre Antique 1905: a soft amber fragrance
- L'Ambréine 1906
- Jasmin de Corsé 1906
- La Violette Pourpre 1906
- L'Effleurt 1907
- Cologne Cordon Rouge 1909
- Cologne Cordon Vert 1909
- Muguet 1910: (Lily of the Valley)
- Lilas Blanc 1910
- Styx 1911
- Au Coeur des Calices 1912
- L'Or 1912
- Cyclamen 1913
- L'Entraînement 1913
- Iris 1913
- Héliotrope 1913
- Jacinthe 1914
- Lilas Pourpre 1914
- La Violette Ambrée 1914
- L’Oeillet France 1914
- Chypre 1917: named after the island of Cyprus, Chypre is based on a combination of bergamot, oakmoss, and labdanum. Chypre was one of Coty's greatest successes and gave its name to an entire fragrance family. Its novel structure spawned many variations, such as Guerlain Mitsouko, Robert Piguet Bandit, and Chanel Pour Monsieur
- La Feuillaison 1920
- Émeraude 1921: (Emerald) an oriental fragrance, Émeraude is similar in composition to Guerlain Shalimar, which was released in 1925
- Idylle 1922
- Paris 1922: a floral fragrance
- Le Nouveau Cyclamen 1922
- L'Aimant 1927 (The Magnet) a floral aldehyde perfume, said to be Coty's reply to Chanel No. 5
See also
References
- ^ a b c d Healy, Orla (2004-09-15). Coty: the Brand of Visionary. New York, New York: Assouline. ISBN 2843236223.
{{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=(help) - ^ a b c d e f g h i j Toledano, Roulhac B. (2009). François Coty: Fragrance, Power, Money. Gretna, Louisiana: Pelican. ISBN 978-1-58980-639-9.
{{cite book}}: Unknown parameter|coauthors=ignored (|author=suggested) (help) - ^ "L'origan the golden (advertisement)" (JPEG). Ad*Access On-Line Project - Ad #BH1654. John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History, Duke University Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library. 1950. Retrieved 2009-11-09.
- ^ a b c d Caldwell, Helen (1988), "1920-1929: The Decade of the French Mystique in the American Perfume Market" (PDF), Proceedings of the Fourth Conference on Historical Research in Marketing and Marketing Thought, pp. 259–272, retrieved 2009-11-09
{{citation}}:|format=requires|url=(help); Cite has empty unknown parameters:|coeditors=and|coauthors=(help) - ^ a b c Flanner, Janet (1930-05-03). "Perfume and Politics". The New Yorker. Retrieved 2009-10-20.
{{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=(help) - ^ "Coty Airspun powder: shade-matched for flattery (advertisement)" (JPEG). Ad*Access On-Line Project - Ad #BH1634. John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History, Duke University Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library. 1941. Retrieved 2009-11-09.
- ^ "Milestones, Aug.6, 1934". Time Magazine. 1934-08-06. Retrieved 2009-11-23.
{{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=(help) - ^ "Perfumers: Coty, François". Perfume Intelligence. The Encyclopaedia of Perfume. Retrieved 2009-11-09.
External links
- Coty, Inc.
- François Coty – the Corsican father of modern perfumiers
- Perfume Projects Coty page
- Tearing away the veils Coty's articles from L'ami du Peuple