François Coty
Encyclopedia
François Coty was a French perfume
manufacturer, newspaper publisher, and founder of the fascist league Solidarité Française
. The company he founded in 1904 is now Coty, Inc.
, based in New York City.
settlers who founded Ajaccio in the 15th century. His parents died when he was a child and the young François was raised by his great-grandmother, Marie Josephe Spoturno, and after her death, by his grandmother, Anna Maria Belone Spoturno, who lived in Marseille
.
After spending some years in military service, François met a fellow Corsican named Emmanuel Arène. A politician, writer, and future senator, Arène became François's mentor, offering him a job in Paris as his secretary. In Paris, François married Yvonne Alexandrine Le Baron and took the more French-looking name Coty, a variation on his mother's maiden name. He also met Raymond Goery, a pharmacist who made and sold perfume at his Paris shop. Coty began to learn about perfumery from Goery and created his first fragrance, Cologne Coty.
, Coty studied perfumery and began work on a fragrance, La Rose Jacqueminot. On his return to Paris in 1904, Coty set off to sell his scents to department stores, boutiques, and barbershops, but initially met with little success. His luck changed when he dropped a bottle of La Rose Jacqueminot on a countertop at the Grands Magasins du Louvre
, the Parisian department store. Attracted by the scent, customers swarmed the area, demanding to buy the perfume. Coty's entire stock was gone in a few minutes and the store offered him a place on the selling floor for his products. The success of La Rose made Coty a millionaire and established him as a major player in the perfume world.
Coty was both a talented perfumer and a brilliant marketer. He was the first to recognize that an attractive bottle was essential to a perfume's success. Though La Rose came in a Baccarat
bottle, Coty's most famous collaboration was with the great ceramist and jeweler René Lalique
. Lalique designed the bottles for Coty's early scents, such as Ambre Antique and L'Origan, which became bestsellers. He also designed the labels for Coty perfume, which were printed on a gold background with raised lettering. Lalique's designs for Coty were in the Art Nouveau
style that was prevalent in the period, and incorporated classic Art Nouveau themes such as nature, flowers, and female figures.
Besides pioneering the concept of bottle design, Coty was responsible for making perfume available to a mass market. Before Coty, perfume was considered a luxury item, affordable only to the very rich. Coty was the first to offer perfumes at many price points. His expensive perfumes, in their Lalique and Baccarat bottles, were aimed at the luxury market, but he also sold perfume in smaller, plainer bottles affordable to middle and working-class women. Coty perfume bottles, though mass produced, were carefully designed to convey an image of luxury and prestige. Coty also invented the idea of a fragrance set, a gift box containing identically scented items, such as a perfume and matching powder, soap, cream, and cosmetics.
Coty summed up his approach to business when he said:
In 1908, Coty relocated his manufacturing headquarters to Suresnes
, just outside Paris. He acquired property in the area and began to build what would become "La cité des Parfums", a large complex of laboratories and factories that manufactured his products. "La cité" had 9,000 employees and was able to manufacture up to 100,000 bottles a day. This allowed Coty to meet the burgeoning demand for his products in France and abroad.
After World War I, demand for French perfume grew at a rapid pace. Many American soldiers had been stationed in France during the war and they brought back Coty perfumes to their wives and relatives. Coty realized the importance of the lucrative American market and began to distribute his products in the United States.
In 1921, with the help of executive Jean Despres
, Coty created an American subsidiary in New York to handle the assembly and distribution of its products in the American market. The American offices assembled their own Coty products from raw materials sent by the Parisian factories, thus avoiding the high tariffs on luxury products in the United States. This allowed Coty to offer more competitive prices on its products. Later, additional subsidiaries were established in the United Kingdom and Romania
.
Coty soon expanded his product line to include cosmetics and skin care, and expanded his distribution network to Europe, Asia, and Latin America. By 1925, 36 million women worldwide used Coty face powders. His most popular product was his Air-spun face powder, launched in 1934. Coty collaborated with famous costume designer Léon Bakst
to create the look of the Air-spun powder box. It became so popular that soon afterwards Coty launched the Air-spun powder scented with his most popular perfumes, such as L'origan and Emeraude.
.
In 1922, Coty bought Le Figaro
, a prestigious conservative newspaper with an upper-class readership. Against the will of its staff, Coty changed the newspaper's name to Figaro and moved its headquarters to the Rond-Point des Champs-Elysées. Under Coty's ownership, the journal, once moderately conservative, adopted an extreme right-wing stance on politics and the economy. Figaro printed many fierce anti-Communist articles, and was notorious for its strong opposition to the government. Coty's extreme opinions soon alienated his readers and Figaros circulation went into free fall.
In 1926, Coty worked with Prime Minister Raymond Poincaré
to create a fund to stabilize the French currency. He lent 100 million francs to the French government, but never collected on the debt. Despite his largesse, Coty was left out of the group appointed to oversee the fund, possibly because of his controversial political views. Disappointed once again by the French government, Coty pursued its downfall.
In 1928, Coty launched L'Ami du peuple, a newspaper aimed at the working class. Priced much lower than other competing newspapers, it soon gained a huge readership. In L'Ami du peuple, Coty, an admirer of Benito Mussolini
, argued for the overthrow of the French Republic and the establishment of a Bonapartist
or fascist government in its place.
Coty was also a fierce anti-Semite. In a long series of articles in L'Ami du peuple, he accused Jewish bankers and financiers of enacting "bloody, rapacious, inhuman, tyrannical policies" that had ruined the world. He blamed Jews for establishing communism, for robbing France of its pre-war wealth and glory, and for creating a worldwide economic depression. According to Coty, Jews had allied themselves with Germany and were responsible for its increasing militarization. His incendiary writings did not go unnoticed; on 1 July 1933, he was found guilty in court for libel against Jewish war veterans' groups in France.
Coty gave financial support to numerous far-right organizations, such as the Faisceau
, the French fascist party, and Croix-de-Feu
, a World War I veterans organization; however, he ended his support after a few years. In 1933, he founded Solidarité Française, a fascist, paramilitary organization headed by himself and his friend Maurice d'Hartoy
. The group peaked during the 6 February 1934 rally in front of the Palais Bourbon
, when it attempted, in alliance with other far right leagues, to topple the Third Republic
. The group was outlawed in 1936, through a decision taken by the Popular Front
government.
The Stade François Coty
in Ajaccio was named after him.
Coty had a penchant for acquiring and remodeling property. His first major purchase was the Château de Longchamp in 1906, near the Bois de Boulogne
, once the property of the famous French civic planner, Georges Haussmann. Coty used it as a laboratory in which to design his fragrances, bottles, packaging, and advertisements. The renovated Longchamp included a glass dome by Lalique and a stone tower designed by Gustave Eiffel
.
In 1912, he bought the Château d'Artigny near Tours
and set out to rebuild it. Over a period of 20 years, Coty rebuilt d'Artigny in a grandiose fashion, installing custom-built kitchens, ballrooms, and a large fresco depicting himself, his family, friends, and even his mistresses. During the 1920s, he resided with his family in a mansion at Avenue Raphael in the Bois de Boulogne, which Coty had rebuilt with etched-glass panels, a stair rail, and a glass ceiling designed by Lalique.
Coty's most famous acquisition was the hunting pavilion of Louveciennes
near Saint-Germain-en-Laye
, designed by Claude Nicholas Ledoux for Madame du Barry
, mistress of Louis XV. Coty had Louveciennes rebuilt to match Ledoux's original plan, but englarged it to include a perfume laboratory and a third story. He also bought the Château Saint-Hélène in Nice
, the Villa Namouna in Beaulieu-sur-Mer, and Le Scudo in Ajaccio, Corsica. Though he owned multiple large residences, Coty often lived in a hotel on the Champs-Élysées
. He was something of a recluse, disliking crowds of any kind, and hiding behind his public image.
After 1929, Coty's fortunes began to diminish considerably. Both Figaro and L'Ami du peuple had been losing money for years and his perfume business had been affected by the 1929 Wall Street crash. But it was his divorce that most contributed to his financial ruin.
In 1929, Yvonne divorced Coty and married Leon Cotnareanu. Their divorce settlement stipulated that Coty would pay his ex-wife several millions of francs in three installments, but in 1931 Coty defaulted on the last payment, citing financial hardship. Over the next few years, divorce courts ruled in favor of Yvonne, and granted her ownership of most of Coty's fortune and his newspapers.
He died in 1934 at his home in Louveciennes, of pneumonia and complications after an aneurysm.
In 1963, Yvonne sold Coty Inc. to pharmaceutical giant Pfizer
, with the stipulation that no member of the Coty family would be involved in the company. Under Pfizer, the company began to distribute its perfumes almost exclusively through drugstores, instead of in department stores as it had previously done. In 1992, Pfizer sold Coty to the German company Joh. A. Benckiser GmbH
, which owns it today.
Perfume
Perfume is a mixture of fragrant essential oils and/or aroma compounds, fixatives, and solvents used to give the human body, animals, objects, and living spaces "a pleasant scent"...
manufacturer, newspaper publisher, and founder of the fascist league Solidarité Française
Solidarité Française
Solidarité Française was a French far right league founded in 1933 by perfume manufacturer François Coty and commanded by Major Jean Renaud, they dressed in blue shirts, black berets, and jackboots, and shouted the slogan "France for the French"...
. The company he founded in 1904 is now Coty, Inc.
Coty, Inc.
Coty, Inc. is the world's largest fragrance company, founded in 1904. It is also a beauty products manufacturer whose main businesses are fragrances , followed by color cosmetics , toiletries and skin care...
, based in New York City.
Early life and family
Joseph Marie François Spoturno was born on 3 May 1874 in Ajaccio, Corsica. He was a descendant of Isabelle Bonaparte, an aunt of Napoleon Bonaparte. His parents were Jean-Baptiste Spoturno and Marie-Adolphine-Françoise Coti, both descendants of GenoeseGenoa
Genoa |Ligurian]] Zena ; Latin and, archaically, English Genua) is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria....
settlers who founded Ajaccio in the 15th century. His parents died when he was a child and the young François was raised by his great-grandmother, Marie Josephe Spoturno, and after her death, by his grandmother, Anna Maria Belone Spoturno, who lived in Marseille
Marseille
Marseille , known in antiquity as Massalia , is the second largest city in France, after Paris, with a population of 852,395 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Marseille extends beyond the city limits with a population of over 1,420,000 on an area of...
.
After spending some years in military service, François met a fellow Corsican named Emmanuel Arène. A politician, writer, and future senator, Arène became François's mentor, offering him a job in Paris as his secretary. In Paris, François married Yvonne Alexandrine Le Baron and took the more French-looking name Coty, a variation on his mother's maiden name. He also met Raymond Goery, a pharmacist who made and sold perfume at his Paris shop. Coty began to learn about perfumery from Goery and created his first fragrance, Cologne Coty.
Perfumer
Through Arène, Coty met Antoine Chiris, a senator and member of the Chiris family, longtime manufacturers and distributors of perfume. At the Chiris factories in GrasseGrasse
-See also:*Route Napoléon*Ancient Diocese of Grasse*Communes of the Alpes-Maritimes department-External links:*...
, Coty studied perfumery and began work on a fragrance, La Rose Jacqueminot. On his return to Paris in 1904, Coty set off to sell his scents to department stores, boutiques, and barbershops, but initially met with little success. His luck changed when he dropped a bottle of La Rose Jacqueminot on a countertop at the Grands Magasins du Louvre
Grands Magasins du Louvre
Les Grands Magasins du Louvre, initially Les Galeries du Louvre, a department store in Paris, France, was founded in 1855, three years after its competitor, Le Bon Marché. Under new management as the Société du Louvre, it closed definitively in 1974. At present, the building houses the Louvre des...
, the Parisian department store. Attracted by the scent, customers swarmed the area, demanding to buy the perfume. Coty's entire stock was gone in a few minutes and the store offered him a place on the selling floor for his products. The success of La Rose made Coty a millionaire and established him as a major player in the perfume world.
Coty was both a talented perfumer and a brilliant marketer. He was the first to recognize that an attractive bottle was essential to a perfume's success. Though La Rose came in a Baccarat
Baccarat (company)
Baccarat Crystal is a manufacturer of fine crystal glassware located in Baccarat, France. The company owns two museums: the Musée Baccarat in Baccarat, Meurthe-et-Moselle and the Galerie-Musée Baccarat, on the Place des États-Unis in Paris...
bottle, Coty's most famous collaboration was with the great ceramist and jeweler René Lalique
René Lalique
René Jules Lalique was a French glass designer known for his creations of perfume bottles, vases, jewellery, chandeliers, clocks and automobile hood ornaments. He was born in the French village of Ay on 6 April 1860 and died 5 May 1945...
. Lalique designed the bottles for Coty's early scents, such as Ambre Antique and L'Origan, which became bestsellers. He also designed the labels for Coty perfume, which were printed on a gold background with raised lettering. Lalique's designs for Coty were in the Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau is an international philosophy and style of art, architecture and applied art—especially the decorative arts—that were most popular during 1890–1910. The name "Art Nouveau" is French for "new art"...
style that was prevalent in the period, and incorporated classic Art Nouveau themes such as nature, flowers, and female figures.
Besides pioneering the concept of bottle design, Coty was responsible for making perfume available to a mass market. Before Coty, perfume was considered a luxury item, affordable only to the very rich. Coty was the first to offer perfumes at many price points. His expensive perfumes, in their Lalique and Baccarat bottles, were aimed at the luxury market, but he also sold perfume in smaller, plainer bottles affordable to middle and working-class women. Coty perfume bottles, though mass produced, were carefully designed to convey an image of luxury and prestige. Coty also invented the idea of a fragrance set, a gift box containing identically scented items, such as a perfume and matching powder, soap, cream, and cosmetics.
Coty summed up his approach to business when he said:
Give a woman the best product to be made, market it in the perfect flask, beautiful in its simplicity yet impeccable in its taste, ask a reasonable price for it, and you will witness the birth of a business the size of which the world has never seen.
In 1908, Coty relocated his manufacturing headquarters to Suresnes
Suresnes
Suresnes is a commune in the western suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the center of Paris. The nearest communes are Neuilly-sur-Seine, Puteaux, Rueil-Malmaison, Saint-Cloud and Boulogne-Billancourt...
, just outside Paris. He acquired property in the area and began to build what would become "La cité des Parfums", a large complex of laboratories and factories that manufactured his products. "La cité" had 9,000 employees and was able to manufacture up to 100,000 bottles a day. This allowed Coty to meet the burgeoning demand for his products in France and abroad.
After World War I, demand for French perfume grew at a rapid pace. Many American soldiers had been stationed in France during the war and they brought back Coty perfumes to their wives and relatives. Coty realized the importance of the lucrative American market and began to distribute his products in the United States.
In 1921, with the help of executive Jean Despres
Jean Despres
Jean Despres was a perfume industry businessman, known for his work with Coty, Inc.The French-born Jean Despres came to New York in 1921 working for Coty Inc. Starting as a shipping clerk, he went on to become a travelling salesman, covering thousands of miles on the Santa Fe Railroad across...
, Coty created an American subsidiary in New York to handle the assembly and distribution of its products in the American market. The American offices assembled their own Coty products from raw materials sent by the Parisian factories, thus avoiding the high tariffs on luxury products in the United States. This allowed Coty to offer more competitive prices on its products. Later, additional subsidiaries were established in the United Kingdom and Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
.
Coty soon expanded his product line to include cosmetics and skin care, and expanded his distribution network to Europe, Asia, and Latin America. By 1925, 36 million women worldwide used Coty face powders. His most popular product was his Air-spun face powder, launched in 1934. Coty collaborated with famous costume designer Léon Bakst
Léon Bakst
Léon Samoilovitch Bakst was a Russian painter and scene- and costume designer. He was a member of the Sergei Diaghilev circle and the Ballets Russes, for which he designed exotic, richly coloured sets and costumes...
to create the look of the Air-spun powder box. It became so popular that soon afterwards Coty launched the Air-spun powder scented with his most popular perfumes, such as L'origan and Emeraude.
Involvement in politics
He was one of the wealthiest men in France; in 1929, his fortune was estimated at US$34 million. From the beginning, Coty was determined to use his wealth to gain a foothold in politics and to influence public opinion. In 1923, after a close race, he was elected senator of Corsica, but his victory proved short-lived. The French Senate annulled his election in 1924 after accusations of bribery surfaced. The loss of his senate seat galled Coty and turned him against the Third RepublicFrench Third Republic
The French Third Republic was the republican government of France from 1870, when the Second French Empire collapsed due to the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, to 1940, when France was overrun by Nazi Germany during World War II, resulting in the German and Italian occupations of France...
.
In 1922, Coty bought Le Figaro
Le Figaro
Le Figaro is a French daily newspaper founded in 1826 and published in Paris. It is one of three French newspapers of record, with Le Monde and Libération, and is the oldest newspaper in France. It is also the second-largest national newspaper in France after Le Parisien and before Le Monde, but...
, a prestigious conservative newspaper with an upper-class readership. Against the will of its staff, Coty changed the newspaper's name to Figaro and moved its headquarters to the Rond-Point des Champs-Elysées. Under Coty's ownership, the journal, once moderately conservative, adopted an extreme right-wing stance on politics and the economy. Figaro printed many fierce anti-Communist articles, and was notorious for its strong opposition to the government. Coty's extreme opinions soon alienated his readers and Figaros circulation went into free fall.
In 1926, Coty worked with Prime Minister Raymond Poincaré
Raymond Poincaré
Raymond Poincaré was a French statesman who served as Prime Minister of France on five separate occasions and as President of France from 1913 to 1920. Poincaré was a conservative leader primarily committed to political and social stability...
to create a fund to stabilize the French currency. He lent 100 million francs to the French government, but never collected on the debt. Despite his largesse, Coty was left out of the group appointed to oversee the fund, possibly because of his controversial political views. Disappointed once again by the French government, Coty pursued its downfall.
In 1928, Coty launched L'Ami du peuple, a newspaper aimed at the working class. Priced much lower than other competing newspapers, it soon gained a huge readership. In L'Ami du peuple, Coty, an admirer of Benito Mussolini
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....
, argued for the overthrow of the French Republic and the establishment of a Bonapartist
Bonapartist
In French political history, Bonapartism has two meanings. In a strict sense, this term refers to people who aimed to restore the French Empire under the House of Bonaparte, the Corsican family of Napoleon Bonaparte and his nephew Louis...
or fascist government in its place.
Coty was also a fierce anti-Semite. In a long series of articles in L'Ami du peuple, he accused Jewish bankers and financiers of enacting "bloody, rapacious, inhuman, tyrannical policies" that had ruined the world. He blamed Jews for establishing communism, for robbing France of its pre-war wealth and glory, and for creating a worldwide economic depression. According to Coty, Jews had allied themselves with Germany and were responsible for its increasing militarization. His incendiary writings did not go unnoticed; on 1 July 1933, he was found guilty in court for libel against Jewish war veterans' groups in France.
Coty gave financial support to numerous far-right organizations, such as the Faisceau
Faisceau
Le Faisceau was a short-lived French Fascist political party. It was founded on November 11, 1925 as a far right league by Georges Valois. It was preceded by its newspaper, Le Nouveau Siècle - founded as a weekly on February 26, it became a daily after the party's creation.-Creation:Contributors...
, the French fascist party, and Croix-de-Feu
Croix-de-Feu
Croix-de-Feu was a French far right league of the Interwar period, led by Colonel François de la Rocque . After it was dissolved, as were all other far right leagues during the Popular Front period , de la Rocque replaced it with the Parti social français .- Beginnings :The Croix-de-Feu were...
, a World War I veterans organization; however, he ended his support after a few years. In 1933, he founded Solidarité Française, a fascist, paramilitary organization headed by himself and his friend Maurice d'Hartoy
Maurice d'Hartoy
Maurice d'Hartoy , whose real name was Mauritius-Lucien Hanot, also known as Lieutenant d’Hartoy, was a soldier, politician and French writer....
. The group peaked during the 6 February 1934 rally in front of the Palais Bourbon
Palais Bourbon
The Palais Bourbon, , a palace located on the left bank of the Seine, across from the Place de la Concorde, Paris , is the seat of the French National Assembly, the lower legislative chamber of the French government.-History:...
, when it attempted, in alliance with other far right leagues, to topple the Third Republic
French Third Republic
The French Third Republic was the republican government of France from 1870, when the Second French Empire collapsed due to the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, to 1940, when France was overrun by Nazi Germany during World War II, resulting in the German and Italian occupations of France...
. The group was outlawed in 1936, through a decision taken by the Popular Front
Popular Front (France)
The Popular Front was an alliance of left-wing movements, including the French Communist Party , the French Section of the Workers' International and the Radical and Socialist Party, during the interwar period...
government.
The Stade François Coty
Stade François Coty
Stade François Coty is a football stadium in the Corsican city of Ajaccio, France, and the home of AC Ajaccio. Its capacity is 10,660.The stadium was inaugurated on 1 December 1969 under the name Parc des Sports de l'ACA. A crowd of 14,421 was in attendance to see AC Ajaccio defeat SC Bastia in the...
in Ajaccio was named after him.
Personal life
Coty and Yvonne had two children, Roland and Christiane. Despite his marriage, Coty was well-known for his numerous mistresses and illegitimate children. He was known to house his lovers in Paris' Hotel Astoria, and to lavish money and gifts on them. His premier mistress was Henriette Daude, a former Coty shopgirl who bore him five children. Coty's love life was widely publicized in the French liberal newspapers, to the detriment of his public image.Coty had a penchant for acquiring and remodeling property. His first major purchase was the Château de Longchamp in 1906, near the Bois de Boulogne
Bois de Boulogne
The Bois de Boulogne is a park located along the western edge of the 16th arrondissement of Paris, near the suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt and Neuilly-sur-Seine...
, once the property of the famous French civic planner, Georges Haussmann. Coty used it as a laboratory in which to design his fragrances, bottles, packaging, and advertisements. The renovated Longchamp included a glass dome by Lalique and a stone tower designed by Gustave Eiffel
Gustave Eiffel
Alexandre Gustave Eiffel was a French structural engineer from the École Centrale Paris, an architect, an entrepreneur and a specialist of metallic structures...
.
In 1912, he bought the Château d'Artigny near Tours
Tours
Tours is a city in central France, the capital of the Indre-et-Loire department.It is located on the lower reaches of the river Loire, between Orléans and the Atlantic coast. Touraine, the region around Tours, is known for its wines, the alleged perfection of its local spoken French, and for the...
and set out to rebuild it. Over a period of 20 years, Coty rebuilt d'Artigny in a grandiose fashion, installing custom-built kitchens, ballrooms, and a large fresco depicting himself, his family, friends, and even his mistresses. During the 1920s, he resided with his family in a mansion at Avenue Raphael in the Bois de Boulogne, which Coty had rebuilt with etched-glass panels, a stair rail, and a glass ceiling designed by Lalique.
Coty's most famous acquisition was the hunting pavilion of Louveciennes
Louveciennes
Louveciennes is a commune in the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France region in north-central France. It is located in the western suburbs of Paris, between Versailles and Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and adjacent to Marly-le-Roi.-Sights:...
near Saint-Germain-en-Laye
Saint-Germain-en-Laye
Saint-Germain-en-Laye is a commune in the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France in north-central France. It is located in the western suburbs of Paris from the centre.Inhabitants are called Saint-Germanois...
, designed by Claude Nicholas Ledoux for Madame du Barry
Madame du Barry
Jeanne Bécu, comtesse du Barry was the last Maîtresse-en-titre of Louis XV of France and one of the victims of the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution.-Early life:...
, mistress of Louis XV. Coty had Louveciennes rebuilt to match Ledoux's original plan, but englarged it to include a perfume laboratory and a third story. He also bought the Château Saint-Hélène in Nice
Nice
Nice is the fifth most populous city in France, after Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Toulouse, with a population of 348,721 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Nice extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of more than 955,000 on an area of...
, the Villa Namouna in Beaulieu-sur-Mer, and Le Scudo in Ajaccio, Corsica. Though he owned multiple large residences, Coty often lived in a hotel on the Champs-Élysées
Champs-Élysées
The Avenue des Champs-Élysées is a prestigious avenue in Paris, France. With its cinemas, cafés, luxury specialty shops and clipped horse-chestnut trees, the Avenue des Champs-Élysées is one of the most famous streets and one of the most expensive strip of real estate in the world. The name is...
. He was something of a recluse, disliking crowds of any kind, and hiding behind his public image.
After 1929, Coty's fortunes began to diminish considerably. Both Figaro and L'Ami du peuple had been losing money for years and his perfume business had been affected by the 1929 Wall Street crash. But it was his divorce that most contributed to his financial ruin.
In 1929, Yvonne divorced Coty and married Leon Cotnareanu. Their divorce settlement stipulated that Coty would pay his ex-wife several millions of francs in three installments, but in 1931 Coty defaulted on the last payment, citing financial hardship. Over the next few years, divorce courts ruled in favor of Yvonne, and granted her ownership of most of Coty's fortune and his newspapers.
He died in 1934 at his home in Louveciennes, of pneumonia and complications after an aneurysm.
In 1963, Yvonne sold Coty Inc. to pharmaceutical giant Pfizer
Pfizer
Pfizer, Inc. is an American multinational pharmaceutical corporation. The company is based in New York City, New York with its research headquarters in Groton, Connecticut, United States...
, with the stipulation that no member of the Coty family would be involved in the company. Under Pfizer, the company began to distribute its perfumes almost exclusively through drugstores, instead of in department stores as it had previously done. In 1992, Pfizer sold Coty to the German company Joh. A. Benckiser GmbH
Reckitt Benckiser
Reckitt Benckiser plc is a global consumer goods company headquartered in Slough, United Kingdom. It is the world's largest producer of household products and a major producer of consumer healthcare and personal products...
, which owns it today.
List of creations
François Coty was a pioneer in the field of perfumery, creating many notable masterpieces, including:- La Rose Jacqueminot 1904: a floral perfume based on the Jacqueminot RoseRosa 'Général Jacqueminot'Général Jacqueminot is an early member of the Hybrid Perpetual rose class. It has dark red petals and is extremely fragrant. The flowers grow on long stems and were long stemmed rose...
- L'Origan 1905: (The Golden One) a floral oriental fragrance
- Ambre Antique 1905: a soft amber fragrance
- L'Ambréine 1906
- Jasmin de Corsé 1906
- La Violette Pourpre 1906
- L'Effleurt 1907
- Cologne Cordon Rouge 1909
- Cologne Cordon Vert 1909
- Muguet 1910: (Lily of the Valley)
- Lilas Blanc 1910
- Styx 1911
- Au Coeur des Calices 1912
- L'Or 1912
- Cyclamen 1913
- L'Entraînement 1913
- Iris 1913
- Héliotrope 1913
- Jacinthe 1914
- Lilas Pourpre 1914
- La Violette Ambrée 1914
- L’Oeillet France 1914
- ChypreChypreChypre, or , is the name of a family of perfumes that are characterised by an accord composed of citrus top-notes, a floral middle, and a mossy-animalic base-note derived from oak moss and musks...
1917: named after the island of CyprusCyprusCyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country, member of the European Union, in the Eastern Mediterranean, east of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria and north of Egypt. It is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.The earliest known human activity on the...
, Chypre is based on a combination of bergamotBergamot orangeCitrus bergamia, the Bergamot orange, is a fragrant fruit the size of an orange, with a yellow colour similar to a lemon. Genetic research into the ancestral origins of extant citrus cultivars recently matched the bergamot as a likely hybrid of Citrus limetta and Citrus aurantium...
, oakmossOakmossEvernia prunastri, also known as Oakmoss, is a species of lichen. It can be found in many mountainous temperate forests throughout the Northern Hemisphere, including parts of France, Portugal, Spain, North America, and much of Central Europe...
, and labdanumLabdanumLabdanum is a sticky brown resin obtained from the shrubs Cistus ladanifer and Cistus creticus , species of rockrose. It has a long history of use in herbal medicine and as a perfume ingredient.-History:...
. Chypre was one of Coty's greatest successes and gave its name to an entire fragrance family. Its novel structure spawned many variations, such as Guerlain Mitsouko, Robert Piguet Bandit, and Chanel Pour Monsieur - La Feuillaison 1920
- Émeraude 1921: (Emerald) an oriental fragrance, Émeraude is similar in composition to Guerlain Shalimar, which was released in 1925
- Idylle 1922
- Paris 1922: a floral fragrance
- Le Nouveau Cyclamen 1922
- L'Aimant 1927 (The Magnet) a floral aldehyde perfume, said to be Coty's reply to Chanel No. 5Chanel No. 5Chanel No. 5 is the first perfume launched by Parisian couturier Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel. The French government reports that a bottle of Chanel No. 5 is sold every thirty seconds and generates sales of $100 million a year. It was developed by Russian-French chemist and perfumer Ernest Beaux...