Volnay

Parfums Volnay was founded on the first of May 1919 by René Duval and Germaine Madeline, who had met the previous year aboard a transatlantic ship and chosen the name of a celebrated Burgundy wine as a symbol of their beginning together. René, trained as a perfumer under François Coty, brought craft and commercial instinct; Germaine, a former Lanvin model and adventurer — notably the first woman to fly over the Andes as a passenger — brought temperament and flair. Their house rose quickly to international distinction, its fragrances distributed from Buenos Aires to New York, their flacons designed by René Lalique. Volnay's signature was René's own "base 4092" — a powdery accord of rose, vanilla, and clove that gave the house a recognisable olfactory fingerprint across its early releases, including Yapana, Brume d'Hiver, and Ambre de Siam. The house quietly withdrew during and after the Second World War, its original formulas preserved at the Osmothèque in Versailles. In 2013, Germaine's great-grandchildren Muriel and Olivier Madeline revived the maison, working with perfumers from Flair Studio to reinterpret the archive for contemporary wearers while preserving the historic character of a genuinely storied house.