Jean Patou
A few drops of Joy
Jean Patou founded his eponymous Parisian couture house in 1914, building it through the 1920s into one of the defining maisons of the Art Deco era — short tennis dresses for Suzanne Lenglen, the cubist-print sweaters that defined sportswear-as-fashion, and from 1925 a serious perfumery operation. Joy, his 1930 release composed by Henri Alméras with extraordinary doses of jasmine and rose absolutes, was famously launched at the height of the Depression as 'the costliest perfume in the world'. The house went quiet through much of the latter twentieth century before LVMH acquired it in 2018 and relaunched the maison as Patou under creative director Guillaume Henry, focusing the perfumery side on reissues of the classical catalogue alongside new compositions. Joy itself remains a benchmark of mid-twentieth-century floral perfumery.
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.
