Femme (early Rosine version)(1919)

Created by Maurice Shaller for Rosine, the pioneering fragrance house founded by fashion designer Paul Poiret in 1911 and named for his daughter, this early Femme composition opens on bergamot and peach before a rose-and-jasmine heart, closing on vanilla, musk, and amber. Poiret is widely credited as the first major fashion designer to launch a dedicated perfume house as an extension of his couture business, a model that would become standard practice across the fashion industry decades later once houses like Chanel and Lanvin followed suit. Rosine's fragrances were conceived as accessories to Poiret's revolutionary, corset-free fashion designs, meant to complete the sensory experience of his clientele's dress rather than stand as fully independent creations. The rose-jasmine-vanilla-amber structure here follows a well-established warm floral-oriental template similar to contemporaneous work by Coty and Guerlain, reflecting shared raw-material fashions across the era's major houses regardless of their differing business models. As an early Rosine composition, it offers a window into one of fashion perfumery's true founding ventures, predating the far more commercially successful Chanel No. 5 by two years.