Bourjois

Bourjois began in Paris in 1863 when Joseph-Albert Ponsin, a theatre actor and producer, started selling powdered makeup formulated for the stage. Alexandre-Napoléon Bourjois acquired the business in 1868 and gave it his name, expanding from greasepaint into the first powder rouges and tinted face creams marketed to women outside the theatre. The house's signature came with Pastel Joues, the round cardboard pots of baked powder blush introduced in 1898, which remained almost unchanged for more than a century. Bourjois pushed perfume in parallel, including the long-running Soir de Paris launched in 1928 — a deep, blue-bottled aldehydic floral that became one of the defining French popular fragrances of the twentieth century. Now part of Coty since 2014, Bourjois operates as a mass-market beauty and fragrance brand sold widely through European drugstores and supermarkets.