Guy Laroche
Avenue Montaigne couture, Drakkar Noir at retail.
Guy Laroche opened a haute-couture atelier on Avenue Franklin Roosevelt in Paris in 1957, after working under Jean Dessès. Within a few years the house had moved to Avenue Montaigne, introduced ready-to-wear, and built a reputation for vivid colour and plunging necklines that distinguished it from the more austere Parisian houses of the period. The fragrance line opened with Fidji in 1966 — a green floral that became one of the bestsellers of its decade — and continued through Eau Folle, J'ai Osé, and the men's pillars Drakkar (1972) and Drakkar Noir (1982), the latter a defining eighties masculine that anchors the brand commercially to this day. Laroche himself died in 1989, and the perfume license now sits with L'Oréal. The house suits wearers who reach for classical French department-store scents — green florals, aromatic fougères, the dark-blue Drakkar Noir bottle.
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.
