Caswell-Massey
America's oldest soap and fragrance company
Caswell-Massey traces its founding to 1752, when Scottish doctor William Hunter opened an apothecary on Newport, Rhode Island's waterfront — making it one of the oldest continuously operating cosmetic and fragrance companies in the United States. The shop supplied George Washington with cologne and counted Dolley Madison and Edgar Allan Poe among its early customers. The contemporary catalogue still includes formulas first compounded in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries — the Number Six cologne purportedly worn by Washington, the 1873 Jockey Club, and the 1857 Almond and Aloe soap — alongside newer compositions developed under the brand's recent ownership. Pricing sits in the accessible to lower-niche range, with distribution through department stores, specialty retailers, and the brand's own East Coast boutiques.
DNA over time
Each column is an era. Each colored band shows that family’s share of accord weight across every perfume the house released in that window. Bigger band = the house leaned harder on that family.
