Courrèges makes fresh foray into fragrances

In September 2020, Parisian label Courrèges opened a new chapter in its fashion story by naming Nicolas Di Felice its new creative director. A year later, the label founded by André and Coqueline Courrèges in 1961 has given fresh impetus to its perfume range.

“It's a revival that goes hand in hand with our new fashion collections,” said Matthieu Boissonnet, general manager of fragrances at Courrèges. Boissonnet, who has worked at LVMH, where he was in charge of France for Kenzo Parfums and Acqua Di Parma, emphasised how designing fashion and fragrance collections under the same roof is extremely unusual in the world of perfumes, whose creation fashion houses usually license to third parties.

Di Felice himself is said to have sparked the new project, having been involved from the scent design phase to that of the bottles. On 18 October, 50 years almost to the day after Courrèges launched its first perfume, Empreinte, the label will drop five new fragrances, most prominent among them the Slogan perfume, whose woody, musky scent is the brainchild of master perfumer Annick Menardo, and will take centre stage in the ad campaign.

Four other fragrances will be dropped simultaneously, two of them entirely new, Seconde Peau and C (for Courrèges). Alongside them, Courrèges is launching a new, improved (i.e. EU regulation-compliant) version of La fille de l’air, a best-seller first introduced in 2015, and an entirely revamped version of Empreinte, having only the name in common with Courrèges’s long-established fragrance.

The French label, which is showing at Paris Fashion Week on Wednesday September 29, is also introducing new perfume bottles. The label’s iconic bottle designed by André Courrèges in 1970 has been entirely reinterpreted by Di Felice with new dimensions, and is now opaque, shiny and smooth, featuring the label’s AC monogram at its centre.

To underscore its sustainability efforts, Courrèges is using a bottle that is made in France with 90% recycled glass, and is itself wholly recyclable. The bottle is equipped with a cap made in lacquered mountain beech, fitted with a screw-on pump that can be recycled and allows the bottle to be refilled. The perfumes are priced €65 for the 30 ml bottles and €115 for the 100 ml ones.

Courrèges was bought by Artemis, the Pinault family’s investment firm, at the end of 2017. The new fragrances will be available at the label's two Parisian stores, at leading department stores and selective perfumery chains like Marionnaud.

Courrèges makes fresh foray into fragrances

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