Davidoff: The Scents of Water and Freedom Created by a Cigar Merchant’s Son

“Tobacco makes time stand still.”
— Zino Davidoff

Essential Information
The Founder and the Origins of the Brand
The Brand’s Commitments
The Fragrance Collection
As an Aside…

Essential Information

Founded (fragrance business): 1984 (launch of the first fragrance, Davidoff)
Group established: 1980 (as Zino Davidoff SA)
Founder: Zino Davidoff (born Sussele-Meier Davidoff)
Official website: https://www.zinodavidoff.com
Fragrance license managed by: Coty Inc.

The Founder and the Origins of the Brand

A Ukrainian Boy Born into a Tobacco Merchant’s Family

Zino Davidoff was born in 1906 in Kiev, then part of the Russian Empire (now Kyiv, Ukraine; some sources give Novhorod-Siverskyi instead). His father, Henri Davidoff, was a tobacco merchant who ran a business in Kiev. It is said that the first aroma the young Zino breathed in was the fragrance of the Oriental tobacco his father hand-rolled for friends.

When he was five, the family fled the persecution of Jews, or pogroms, in Imperial Russia and moved to Geneva. In 1911, his father opened a small tobacco shop on Rue des Philosophes (described as Place des Philosophes in some biographical accounts). During the First World War, the shop became a meeting place for Russian émigrés, and even Lenin is recorded among its customers, although, according to the shop’s ledger, he apparently did not pay his bill.

Wandering through Latin America and Discovering Cuba

After finishing school, Zino chose not to go to university and instead set off for Latin America, driven by a desire “to see the world.” He is said to have been almost penniless, with a single dinner jacket as his only luggage. On arriving in Argentina, someone stole his League of Nations-issued passport. An anecdote recounts that, because the authorities had never seen that type of passport, they took the self-assured Zino to be a “diplomat” and readily issued him Argentine citizenship.

In the years after his departure in 1924, Zino worked on tobacco plantations and in cigar factories in Argentina, Brazil, and Cuba. In Havana, he studied under Mr. Palacios of Hoyo de Monterrey, learning every aspect of cultivating, storing, and manufacturing Cuban cigars, or “puros.”

Returning to Geneva and Building a “Kingdom”

Back in Geneva in 1930, Zino took over his father’s shop and added a cigar department with a dedicated underground storage cellar. There he devised a system for keeping cigars at the same temperature and humidity as in Havana, a forerunner of today’s “humidor.” Regarded as the first attempt of its kind in the world, it rapidly elevated Zino Davidoff’s reputation among cigar enthusiasts.

During the Second World War, Geneva in neutral Switzerland became a refuge for the wealthy, and Davidoff’s shop served as virtually the only source of Havana cigars in Europe. After the war, Zino devised a series of cigars bearing the names of classified Bordeaux wine estates, such as Château Margaux and Château Latour, bringing the world of “grand cru” to cigars. The Cubans were skeptical, saying the idea “could never work,” but it proved a tremendous success.

Zino’s clientele included Marshal Josip Broz Tito, violinist Isaac Stern, pianist Arthur Rubinstein, and Orson Welles. The transaction remembered as his largest was a deal with the exiled King Farouk I of Egypt. After diligently carrying out a credit check, Zino secured an order for 40,000 cigars, said to have been an exceptionally large contract even by European standards at the time.

Meanwhile, Zino remained committed to “keeping his distance from politics,” meeting neither Castro nor Batista even after the Cuban Revolution. He later said, “I dealt only with the ministers of agriculture and of commerce and industry, and never became involved in politics.”

The Sale and the Leap into a Broader Brand

In 1970, Zino sold the tobacco business to the Max Oettinger Company and continued to serve as its ambassador. In 1980, the holding company Zino Davidoff SA was established to handle non-tobacco products, extending the brand into a wide range of luxury goods, including watches, leather goods, writing instruments, and fragrances.

A passage from an interview in his later years records these words from Zino himself.

“I am a man of smoke. My mother wanted me to become a dentist, but I simply could not work inside people’s mouths. In a way, perhaps I did become a dentist, only with smoke rather than teeth.”
— Zino Davidoff

On January 14, 1994, Zino died in Geneva at the age of 87.

The Lancaster Agreement and the Beginning of the Fragrance Business

In 1984, Zino Davidoff SA partnered with the French cosmetics group Lancaster and launched its first fragrance, Davidoff. This marked the established luxury tobacco brand’s first venture into the different world of perfume, paving the way for later brand extensions. Lancaster was acquired by Germany’s Benckiser Group in 1990 and subsequently integrated into Coty, through which the Davidoff fragrance license passed to Coty. The Coty–Davidoff partnership has now continued for at least 20 years, with a further long-term extension agreed in 2023.

The Brand’s Commitments

The Philosophy of “The Intense Experience of Living”

The philosophy at the heart of Davidoff comes from the “curiosity, travel, and deep enjoyment of life” embodied by Zino Davidoff himself. The brand’s official motto is said to be “The intense experience of living,” and fragrance vice president Hugues de la Chevasnerie has repeatedly stated, “There are no half-measures in the house of Davidoff.”

If Zino’s own lifestyle could be summed up in one phrase, it would be “art de vivre,” the art of living. He traveled the world, worked on plantations, welcomed politicians and artists as customers, and brought an aesthetic sensibility even to the practical problem of storing cigars. That spirit is also reflected in the conceptual design of the fragrances, each of which is positioned not simply as a scent, but as an embodiment of “a man’s way of life.”

The Philosophy of Bottle Design

Davidoff’s fragrance bottles are designed with an emphasis on visually embodying the world of each product. The blue bottle of its signature Cool Water evokes waves, and the series maintains a unified identity through gradations of blue, its “50 shades of blue.” For Cool Water Deep, designer Thierry de Baschmakoff used gentle curves and contrasting depths of blue to express “the power of the sea” and “a blue atmosphere” through the shape of the bottle.

Attention to Ingredients

Recent fragrances have shown a growing awareness of where their ingredients come from. Cool Water Reborn (2022), for example, uses rosemary from Tunisia, distilled locally where it is harvested, and responsibly sourced vetiver from Haiti. Part of Coty and Davidoff’s “premiumization” strategy, this reflects a commitment to meeting contemporary consumer needs while increasing transparency around ingredients.

The Fragrance Collection

All Davidoff fragrances are produced under license by Coty. The brand’s perfume business is broadly built around the following pillars.

The Cool Water Series (Since 1988)

The brand’s signature series centers on Davidoff Cool Water, created in 1988 by perfumer Pierre Bourdon. An aromatic aquatic scent with mint, seawater, and rosemary at the top, lavender, jasmine, geranium, and neroli in the heart, and oakmoss, musk, and sandalwood at the base, it pioneered the olfactory movement known as “New Freshness.”

Sales were so strong that waiting lists formed at fragrance counters in Germany, Britain, and the United States. In 1992, it won the Fragrance Foundation’s FiFi Award for “Fragrance of the Year – Men’s Prestige.” Cumulative sales since its launch had reached approximately US$1.75 billion by 2004, said to be “equivalent to a continuing rate of nine bottles sold every minute.”

Cool Water Woman followed in 1996, and seasonal limited editions and collectors’ editions have subsequently appeared almost every year, with at least 30 variations released within this series alone. Cool Water Reborn launched in 2022, paying homage to the original with an aromatic-fougère interpretation centered on rosemary and vetiver.

Davidoff (1984) and Zino Davidoff (1986)

The brand’s first fragrance, Davidoff, was a men’s chypre composed by perfumer Edouard Fléchier. Although later discontinued, it remains highly regarded by vintage enthusiasts. A separate fragrance, Zino Davidoff, created by Michel Almairac, appeared in 1986. This has a complex, woody structure, with bergamot, lavender, and clary sage at the top, rose, jasmine, and geranium in the heart, and sandalwood, patchouli, and vanilla at the base.

Echo and Silver Shadow

These series emerged in the 2000s for an urban, sophisticated audience. Echo pursued an urban, trend-conscious direction, while Silver Shadow (2005) was positioned as “a fragrance for a more mature, more experienced man.”

“Silver Shadow is an attractive name, with a great deal of charisma and mystery. It supports the feeling of leaving something behind you.”
— Hugues de la Chevasnerie, Davidoff Vice President

Adventure and Horizon

This direction centers on the ideas of “adventure” and “exploration.” Adventure (2008) evokes the power of the wilderness, while Horizon (2016), composed by Olivier Pescheux and Jacques Huclier, takes “the boundary between earth and air” as its concept. Moving from top notes of grapefruit, rosemary, and ginger to a base of vetiver and cacao, the scent expresses the duality of earth and air.

The Blend Collection

From 2014 onward, the brand introduced a line foregrounding the distinctive character of individual materials, including Leather Blend, Agar Blend, Amber Blend, and Wood Blend. This may also be interpreted as an attempt to move closer to the niche perfume market.

As an Aside…

The Mystery Surrounding Pierre Bourdon and the Creed Family

One topic that often arises in discussions of Cool Water is the relationship between its perfumer Pierre Bourdon and Creed. In addition to the theory that Bourdon was involved in creating Green Irish Tweed in 1985, enthusiasts tell a story that, after relations with the Creed family deteriorated, he reworked a formula he had developed into a lighter eau de toilette, which became Davidoff Cool Water in 1988. However, no primary sources could be found to substantiate the deterioration in their relationship or the reworking of the same formula, so this should be distinguished from established brand history. The similarity between the two scents and the debate over their authorship continue to attract perfume enthusiasts’ interest.

In 2025, Coty released the documentary Pierre Bourdon, Gentleman Perfumer, exploring the story behind the creation of Cool Water. In it, Bourdon reveals that reading Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time inspired him to become a perfumer, and compares perfume to Schubert’s Serenade.

“With just a few notes, a form emerges, an atmosphere emerges, a longing emerges. It becomes addictive: you want to hear it again. That is true perfume.”
— Pierre Bourdon

Did Snoop Dogg Wear It Too?

In “Lodi Dodi,” a track on the 1993 hip-hop album Doggystyle, the young Snoop Dogg mentions “Davidoff Cool Water and Johnson & Johnson’s baby powder” as part of his daily fragrance routine. Fans still talk about this moment when an icon of street culture invoked the fragrance from outside the perfume industry.

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