Legend has it that after the French Revolution, taking advantage of the new era following the fall of the Ancien Régime, a perfumer from Provence settled in Paris’s Place Vendôme. He opened his atelier with a striking sign that read: “The Best Perfumer in France.” Such audacity left the local perfumers bewildered and deeply concerned — if the best perfumer in France was already established, what space was left for them?
After much thought, a daring perfumer from Rue de Rivoli decided to move to Place Vendôme, just a few doors down from the self-proclaimed best perfumer in France. He chose a shop with large windows and placed a carefully designed sign that read: “The Best Perfumer in Paris.” The rest of the competitors watched as their reputation sank further — how could they compete with the best in Paris, who even surpassed the best in France?
Meanwhile, Brochez Saavedra — the son of a French mother and a Spanish father, born in Faubourg du Temple on the outskirts of Paris in 1772 — had learned the art of perfume alchemy as a child in his uncle’s laboratory. Eager to be independent, to create his own path and his own fragrances — what we would today call an entrepreneur — he rented a shop in that very same Place Vendôme, between the establishments of the best perfumers of France and of Paris. There, he inaugurated his business with a grand sign that read: “The Best Perfumer in This Square.”