Fraçois Coty – Wikipedia

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François COTY (1926)

Joseph Marie François Spizurn said François COTY (Ajaccio, 3 May 1874 – Louveciennes, 25 July 1934) was a French entrepreneur, perfume and politician (“artist, industrial, technical, economist, financial, sociologist” according to his business card).
Become an orphan from very young, François Coty soon leaves his studies and is raised by the great -grandmother. In 1900, he married Yvonne Alexandrine Le Baron and went to live in Paris, where he adopts the surname Coty – easier to pronounce and undoubtedly more socially acceptable than his original surname.

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The story has it that at that time, he had the habit of playing the picket (cards of cards spread in France) with a pharmacist, who had to postpone their game to prepare, in his laboratory, medicines in his laboratory. Coty accompanied him and showed himself fascinated by chemistry equipment. The pharmacist then gave him the recipe of Cologne water, which he experienced. The result was judged satisfactory, the pharmacist advised him to learn art and Coty then moved to Grasse for a year to study the techniques of cosmetics at Georges Chiris (1872-1953). Returning to Paris, he begins by selling essences that acts as a fat to the barbers of the capital.

The company he founded in 1904 is the current Coty, based in New York.

Coty is not just a talented “nose”; It is the first to understand that the perfume, until then reserved for a restricted elite, can and is about to become a mass product.

Thus has the idea of ​​associating natural essences and synthesis products that the progress of organic chemistry now allow to produce cheaply, thus allowing the perfumery to enter the industrial era. Since 1905, he has created his factory on the Senna shore (Seine) in Suresnes. It will be followed by numerous others: on the island of Puteaux for the metal packs, in Neuilly for leather and cardboard boxes, in Pantin a Alle Lilas for the bottles.

Lalique – perfume bottle Ancient amber .

Coty senses the importance of marketing , of the packaging (addressing the famous window René Lalique who creates the bottle of The efflert then that of Ancient amber , but also in Baccarat and the decorator Léon Bakst) and advertising and thus summarizes his commercial philosophy: “give a woman the best product you can prepare, present it in a perfect bottle of beautiful simplicity, but of impeccable taste, make it pay a reasonable price, and all this will be the birth of a great trade as the world has seen. ” Gets great commercial successes with La Rose Jacqueminot (1904), Oregano (1905), Ancient amber (1908), LWGUET (1910), White lilac (1910), Iris (1913, first scent soliflore) and above all Chypre , launched in 1917, the first perfume for the large audience and whose success will last decades. The “Otan” dust, in its famous orange and white box, is sold to 16 million specimens every year in France. [first]

While the perfumers market their creations only in their boutiques, Coty (which has a shop opened in 1905 in Rue La Boétie in Paris), decides to sell its perfumes in the department stores, hitting at first against the skepticism of these . The anecdote has it that Coty, after an appointment with the director of the Louvre warehouses that had denied him the opportunity to market his new perfume in their departments La Rose Jacqueminot , he threw a bottle in the middle of the crowded shop, causing an almost riot when dozens of customers rushed to ask where they could buy. The Louvre warehouses accepted the perfume and more than 500 bottles were sold in a few days. The other department stores made the same. After four months, Coty had earned his first million. On the eve of the 1914 war, the Coty perfumes were number one in the world, with Succursali in Moscow, New York, London and Buenos Aires, [2] And Coty was already very rich.

In 1918, to relaunch sales, Coty has the brilliant idea of ​​packaging its perfumes in small bottles that become the ideal gift that American soldiers returned from the front lead to their wife or friend. The success is colossal.

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In 1920, Coty’s heritage was estimated at hundreds of millions of francs. It is also considered one of the richest men in the world.

Lover of the arts and patric mecenas finances numerous exhibitions, but also the crossing of the Atlantic Paris – New York of Costes and Bellonte or the new laboratory of the physical Édouard Branly, at the Catholique de Paris institute.

Coty acquires George Kessler’s palace, located in Avenue Raphaël 24 and 26 at the Ranelagh (now destroyed), but uses it only as a postal and warehouse address for its furniture and paintings collections, preferring to reside the Hôtel Claridge in Avenue des Champs-Elysées. [3]

On July 30, 1912, Coty acquired the Artigny Castle for 600,000 francs [3] In Montbazon, near Tours, built during the hundred year old war around the medieval male. Sended by the landscape and its magnificent view of the Valle dell’Are, it is less from the building. Like Edmond de Fels in Voisins, this very heterocyled whole rave to the ground to build, between 1912 and 1929, a magnificent eighteenth -century style castle, inspired by Champlâtreux Castle. Coty and his family reside in Artigny for the middle of the year, the owner working on the first floor, and this explains the choice – Descrasueta- of building the kitchens in the attic so that the smell of food does not disturb the elaboration of perfumes . The internal decoration is sumptuous. Magnificent greenhouses are built in the gardens.

In Louveciennes, Coty acquired a property in 1923 including the pavilion built by Claude-Nicolas Ledoux for the Countess du Barry. The architect Charles Mewès, create five bedrooms. Tropical greenhouses are built, connected to the pavilion by underground passages. It is in this property that Coty died in 1934, a victim of cerebral vascular complication.

In the 1920s, he owned the Saint-Quelène Castle in Nice (purchased in 1922 and which hosts the Musée International of Art Naïf Anatole Jakovsky, the Nanouna Villa in Beaulieu-sur-Mer, the Castle of Filolie in Thiviers (Dordogna), today, A villa in Biarritz and two properties in Corsica of which the shield in Ajaccio. In 1926, Longchamp’s Castle, located in the Bois de Boulogne, rented to the city of Paris. that is still found there today.

François Coty launches himself in politics in the 1920s.
In February 1922, he assumed control of the newspaper Le Figaro , what renamed Figaro. The newspaper adopts an editorial line resolutely on the right. In 1928, Coty buy Gallic which merges with Figaro.

Founded the popular in 1928 The friend of the people , whose offices are installed in Rue de Bassano. Intended for popular classes. [3] In 1923, Coty was appointed Senator of Corsica but its election was disabled by the high chamber. [4] In 1931, he was elected mayor of Ajaccio (the city stadium, inaugurated in 1910, always bears his name).

In 1927, he supported the creation of the Croix-De-Feu Association founded by Count Maurice d’Holia, who settled at the beginning in the premises of Figaro. In 1933, he created his own political movement: Solidarité Française.

Coty died on July 25, 1934 in Louveciennes.

Coty’s political activities have not only blurred his memory: they brought him completely to ruin.

Upon his death, most of his assets have been seized on the request of his numerous creditors. His ex -wife, Yvonne Cotnaréanu, will come into possession of the Artigny Castle only in 1947, and will sell it in 1959. From 1934, however, he became the first shareholder of Figaro. It will give half of his actions, on May 15, 1950, to a group that revolves around Jean Prouvost. In 1964, he sold the other half of the Prouvost-Béghin group.

The Coty perfume society still exists. He holds brands such as Jennifer Lopez, Céline Dion, The Adidas perfumes, Rimmel, and Lancaster.

His great creations, such as “Le Chypre” who gave the name to the family of powdered perfumes, “Ambre Antique”, “L’Aun”, “Emeraude”, “L’Aimant”, “Le Jasmin de Corse” or his own First perfume “La Rose Jacqueminot”, they can always be heard at the Osmotèque – Conservaire International des Parfums de Versailles ( Osmothèque ).

The François Coty association, which perpetuates its memory, assigns a prize to a perfume every year, for the whole of his work.

Book [ change | Modifica Wikitesto ]

  • Against communism , Grasset, Paris, 1928

Perfume [ change | Modifica Wikitesto ]

La Rose Jacqueminot , Leonetto Cappiello.
1904
1905
  • Oregano
  • Ancient amber
  • The Judee
1906
  • Jasmin de la Corse
  • The Ambreine
  • Purple purple
1907
1909
  • Cologne Cordon Vert
  • Cologne Cordon Rouge
1910
1911
1912
  • At the heart of the chalices
  • L’Or
1913
  • Iris
  • Cyclamen
  • Héliotrope
  • training
1914
  • Purple lilacs
  • L’Olillet France
  • Hyacinth
  • Amber violet
1917
1920
  • The leaf
  • COTY WATER
1921
1922
  • idyll
  • Moia
  • Paris
  • The new cyclamen
1927
  • Roulhac Toledano, Elizabeth Z. Coty: Francois Coty. Fragrance, Power, Money , Pelican Publishing, Gretna/USA 2009, ISBN 978-1-58980-639-9 (online) (English)
  • Ghislaine Sicardiottino, François Coty: a Corsican industrialist under the Third Republic , Albiana, 2006, 313 w. Isbn 2846981736 (online) (fr)
  • Élisabeth Barillé, Keiichi Tahara, Coty, perfumer and visionary , Assouline, 1996, 180 p. ISBN 9782908228397 (online) (fr)
  • Alain duménil, Empire perfume, the extraordinary life of François Coty , PLON, 2009, 2009, 247 p. ISBN 2259210317 (online) (fr)
  • Orla Healy, Coty: The Brand of Visionary , Assouline, 2004, 240 p. ISBN 9782843236228 (online) (English)
  • Patrice de Sarran, François Coty, Emperor of Artigny – The perfume of glory , The new Republic of the Center-West, 1990, 95 p. ISBN 2868810853 (online) (fr)
  • Louis Latzarus, A friend of the people, Mr. Coty , Valois bookstore, Paris, 1929
  • Robert Soucy, French fascism? , ed. Otherwise, 2004
  • Michael de Fina – Randall Bruce Monsen: A Century of Perfume: The Perfumes of Francois Coty , 2000, Monsen and Baer, ​​Vienna (VA), ISBN 9781928655008.

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