Iconic Perfume: L’Air du Temps by Nina Ricci

In the aftermath of the Second World War, France and Europe dreamed of only one thing: to rise again. With the arrival of L’Air du Temps, the new lightheartedness the world thirsted for no longer merely inhabited hearts and minds—it was now also on every skin. Master Parfums looks back on this Nina Ricci perfume that became mythical, which was and continues to be the olfactory reflection of rediscovered freedom.

Post-War, New Aspirations

In 1948, France had just been crossed by two major conflicts in less than half a century. While the scars of the Second World War, which had ended only three years earlier, were still fresh, an ardent desire for renewal was just as fresh. It was, moreover, the beginning of the Trente Glorieuses, a period of strong economic growth. On the side of mentalities, the desire for a universal peace as an antidote to the horror of war and as a means of building a better world was reflected everywhere… perfumery included.

Nina Ricci in Paris

In 1932, the eponymous fashion house of the Franco-Italian Maria Adélaïde Giuseppa Nielli, known as Nina Ricci, settled in Paris. It was the couturier’s son, Robert Ricci, who founded the house at 20 rue des Capucines in the 1st arrondissement of the capital. The brand quickly positioned itself against the grain of the trends of the time: its ultra-feminine style was the opposite of the boyish fashion in full swing in the 1930s.

Fifteen years later, for many companies, the economic fallout of the war had been heavy. It was then imperative to diversify one’s activities and therefore one’s sources of income. Nina Ricci did not escape this: in 1946, under the tutelage of Robert Ricci, the house inaugurated its perfumery department and launched the same year its very first fragrance, Cœur Joie. While floral perfumes with a springlike look (such as the evocative Vent Vert by Balmain or Ma Griffe at Carven) were nonetheless in favour, the greenery of Cœur Joie unfortunately did not meet with the expected success. Never mind: Nina Ricci released a second fragrance two years later, and this time it had the effect of a small olfactory revolution.

L’Air du Temps, a Perfume of Freedom

In 1948, Francis Fabron composed L’Air du Temps, a magnificent spicy floral perfume, the very first in the history of perfumery. The perfumer would say about his creation: “I imagined the perfume I would want to smell on the shoulders of the woman I love.” The result? A fragrance where tenderness is the watchword and embodying the collective desire to move forward with optimism and a certain nonchalance.

With L’Air du Temps, Fabron delivered a juice that was delicate and solar at once, turning its back on the verdant notes of Cœur Joie, but not only that: the fragrance also went against the grain of the chypre perfumes that were all the rage during the interwar period. Nina Ricci’s perfume fit into a new olfactory context where more luminous fragrances were the reflection of the mentalities of the era.

L’Air du Temps opens its perfumed ball with hesperidic notes of bergamot, then giving way to a sublime floral arrangement: rose centifolia, Grasse jasmine and a powdery violet. It is undoubtedly the carnation-gardenia accord on which a large part of the perfume’s olfactory identity rests: the carnation exalts its charisma with its spicy note of clove, while the gardenia means to be greener and more opulent. Finally, the marriage between a sensual Mysore sandalwood and Florentine iris confers on L’Air du Temps a velvety quality. Amber and cedar coat the fragrance to make it a true olfactory caress.

With only around thirty components, the ingredient list of L’Air du Temps is short, especially for the era in which it came into being. Moreover, an atypical guest slipped in among this small committee…

Benzyl Salicylate: Sunshine in a Bottle

Robert Ricci would say: “There is in L’Air du Temps a little miracle that gives it its strong personality.” This little miracle is benzyl salicylate, a synthetic molecule usually used as a UV filter and used in sunscreens. It is, moreover, the olfactory signature of Garnier’s Ambre Solaire! Green and floral, benzyl salicylate makes Francis Fabron’s sublime bouquet shimmer and airy. While this molecule is nowadays frequently used in perfumery, this was not the case at the time of L’Air du Temps’s release.

Beyond its juice, how can we speak of L’Air du Temps without evoking its bottle, recognisable among a thousand?

The Timeless “Two Doves” Bottle

Did you know that Nina Ricci’s perfume was not always contained in its iconic bottle with intertwined doves? The very first packaging of the fragrance was designed by the Spanish sculptor Joan Rebull: oval, sun-shaped, a gold thread around the cabochon already engraved with the standard-bearer bird of peace.

At the time, the order of the day was sobriety and pared-down lines. The historian Élisabeth de Feydeau describes “the amphora-bottle model,” like the rounded, minimalist curves of a Femme by Rochas or the sober elegance of Diorissimo. But in 1951, an air of renewal was in the wind… The bottle of L’Air du Temps reinvented itself! Two doves entwined in their flight are now sculpted and set on a twisted bottle by Marc Lalique (who was already behind the Cœur Joie bottle). The meeting of the birds appears as a celebration of love, peace and freedom: the values embodied by the fragrance are now no longer carried only by the juice itself—they are also reflected by its bottle and its box of a luminous, solar yellow.

For Robert Ricci, “a perfume is a work of art, the object that contains it must be a masterpiece.” Many will agree that the bottle of L’Air du Temps is well up to this ambition. This little jewel won hearts to the point of being voted “Perfume Bottle of the Century” in 2000 and being revisited countless times over the years. In the 1990s, the doves were by turns blue, amber or emerald. In 2010, the designer Philippe Starck rehoused the fragrance in a single wing of frosted glass with a metallic tip. There is also the designer Olivia Putman who repainted the bottle in Klein blue in 2013, “like the sky and the sea that evoke the infinite and freedom”…

A Perfume That Passed Into Posterity

L’Air du Temps served as inspiration for many other perfumes.

• With L’Interdit (1957), Givenchy put into a bottle a luminous flowerbed dressed with a note of coriander.
• The bucolic Anaïs Anaïs (1979) by Cacharel is not unlike the absolute tenderness of the perfume with doves.
• Bvlgari pour Femme (1994), for its part, is a bouquet of lily of the valley, iris and rose, again enhanced with coriander, but also with Sichuan pepper.

Another common point between these examples? The presence of the characteristic carnation accord of L’Air du Temps!

But let us set aside its successors, its re-editions and its reinterpretations: Francis Fabron’s original remains cult today. It is not only its airy fragrance that was and continues to be celebrated; it is also the lightheartedness of happy days and the rediscovered peace that it and its case represent.

Want to learn more about the history of your favourite perfume brands? Other exclusive anecdotes await you in the Master Parfums game: its questions and its olfactory challenges will plunge you into the world of perfume while having fun!

Photo credits: Nina Ricci Officiel