Isabey

Isabey was founded in Paris in March 1924 by Baron Henri James de Rothschild, who launched the Société Parisienne d'Essences Rares & de Parfums and named it after the miniaturist painter Jean-Baptiste Isabey. The house unveiled six fragrances at the 1925 International Exhibition of Modern Decorative Arts, capturing a particular Art Deco register of plush florals and chypres that suited the Parisian Twenties. Isabey closed during the Second World War and lay dormant until 1999, when the Panouge Group acquired it and undertook a careful revival. Under creative director Rania Naim, the house reissued archival formulas — Gardénia, La Route d'Émeraude, Rue de la Paix — and added new compositions in the same idiom. The result is a small, deliberately backward-looking catalogue: cabochon bottles, period typography, scents that read as polished interwar perfumery.