In 1924 Paris, capital of the arts, of literature, of all that is elegant, dancing the Charleston, being introduced to jazz and succumbing to the charms of The Ballets Russes. The Casino de Paris, set alight by Mistinguett; the champagne that flowed every night; the sinuous swaying of Josephine Baker; these and all the other uninhibited celebrations of the ‘Roaring Twenties’ helped to draw a veil over the atrocities and the absurdities of the Great War, as Parisians set out to live life at a hundred miles an hour in order to make up for lost time. In response to the expectations of a new generation of writers, musicians and artists, André Breton scandalized Paris society with his Surrealist Manifesto. Women shrugged off the weight of nineteenth-century conventions to transform themselves into ‘flappers’, with modernity and sophistication as their new credo. Fashions and perfumes merged in a new aesthetic language aimed exclusively at seduction. The modern woman now bobbed her hair, smoked long cigarettes and exhaled clouds of Virginia tobacco, drove a car, swung her legs with ease as she walked, cast off her corsets and wore make-up with pride: an iconic vision perfectly embodied by the seductive actress Louise Brooks or the vampish painter Tamara de Lempicka. It is in this bubbling context that the Isabey perfumes saga was born which in their excellence and creativity were to leave their mark on French perfumery – a new perfumery that was now facing not only fresh aesthetic and industrial challenges, but was also raised to new heights by the olfactory palette available to perfumers who combined natural raw ingredients with synthetic oils.’
