Parfums Grès: A House of Perfume Born from the Soul of a Sculptor

“I wanted to be a sculptor. To me, working with stone and working with fabric are the same thing.”

— Madame Grès

Basic Information
The Founder and the Origins of the Brand
What Defines the Brand
1. The Philosophy of a Sculptor
2. The Cabochard Bottle: Choosing a Bow
The Fragrance Lineup
A Few More Facts…

Basic Information

Founded: 1942 (as a fashion house) / 1959 (as Parfums Grès)

Founder: Germaine Émilie Krebs, known as Madame Grès

Official website: parfumsgres.com

Current operator: Lalique Group, based in Zurich, Switzerland

The Founder and the Origins of the Brand

The Beginnings of a Girl Who Dreamed of Becoming a Sculptor

Germaine Émilie Krebs was born on November 30, 1903, into a middle-class French Jewish family in Paris. From childhood she had a strong interest in painting, sculpture, and dance. Above all, she longed to become a sculptor, but her parents’ opposition forced her to abandon that ambition. Ironically, this act of giving up would lead to a revolution in twentieth-century haute couture.

Having decided to turn to fashion, she spent just three months training at the prestigious Paris couture house Premet around 1933. After learning the basics of dressmaking during this brief apprenticeship, Germaine adopted the name Alix and then, in 1933, established Alix Barton with her colleague Juliette Barton. The following year, 1934, she went independent under the name Alix and began making her mark in Parisian society.

In 1935 she designed the costumes for playwright Jean Giraudoux’s The Trojan War Will Not Take Place, spreading her reputation among society figures and cultural circles. In 1937 she won the top award in the haute couture section of the Paris International Exposition. On April 15 of the same year, she married the Russian painter Serge Czerefkov. Following this marriage she began calling herself Alix Grès. “Grès” was a partial anagram—almost a reversal—of “Serge,” the name her husband used to sign his paintings.

War, Resistance, and the Birth of Grès

Her daughter Anne was born in August 1939. Serge, however, had already left France for Tahiti. When Nazi Germany occupied Paris in 1940, Germaine fled the city with her young daughter and took refuge in the Pyrenees. A well-known anecdote recounts how she began wearing a turban during this period of exile because she could not visit a hairdresser. The turban subsequently became her lifelong trademark.

After returning to Paris in 1941 and opening her own salon, Germaine faced pressure from the Nazis to disclose the secrets of her techniques and comply with restrictions on fabric use. She refused outright and was ordered to close in January 1944. When she was allowed to reopen shortly before the liberation of Paris, she presented a collection using only the three colors of the French flag—blue, white, and red—expressing a quiet but powerful resolve to resist. This legendary collection is still remembered today.

In 1942, having lost the rights to the name Alix that she had previously used, Germaine established a new house, Grès, at 1, rue de la Paix in Paris’s first arrondissement. Thus was born the brand the world would come to know as Madame Grès.

From Her Heyday to a Tragic Final Chapter

In the 1950s and 1960s, both Madame Grès’s business and her design work reached their peak. In 1959 she launched her first perfume, Cabochard, which became synonymous with the brand. In 1972 she was unanimously elected president of the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture, France’s leading haute couture institution, and in 1976 she became the first recipient of its highest honor, the Dé d’Or, or Golden Thimble Award.

In the 1980s, however, the business began to decline rapidly. She entrusted the brand and trademarks to businessman and politician Bernard Tapie, but ultimately lost both. In 1982 she sold the rights to the perfume division. In April 1986 she was expelled from the Chambre Syndicale for unpaid membership fees. Then, after presenting her spring/summer 1988 collection, she quietly retired without even an official press release.

On November 24, 1993, Madame Grès died in a care facility in the south of France at the age of 89. Remarkably, her daughter Anne kept her death secret for thirteen months. Anne reportedly explained later that she had acted “out of love for my mother” and “out of resentment toward the fashion industry.” Only when the French newspaper Le Monde reported it in December 1994 did the world learn of her death. The end of the woman known throughout her life as the “Sphinx” was also shrouded in mystery.

The Subsequent History of Grès as a Perfume Brand

After 1982, the perfume division, Parfums Grès, passed through several owners. Art & Fragrance, founded by Swiss entrepreneur Silvio Denz, obtained the license in 2001 and acquired the brand itself in 2007. Under the company that would become today’s Lalique Group, Parfums Grès has continued as a Switzerland-based brand.

Cabotine and other fragrances released after the sale of the perfume division in 1982 were developed under new owners, with a different production structure from that of the period led by the founder herself.

What Defines the Brand

The Philosophy of a Sculptor

At the heart of Madame Grès’s creative practice was the belief that the act of sculpting is the same whether the medium is fabric or stone. Rather than relying on sketches alone, she used a distinctive method of placing fabric directly on a live model’s body and shaping it through draping—drapé, the technique of letting fabric flow along the body—and pleating. A single dress could therefore use as much as thirteen to twenty-one meters of fabric, and some pieces required at least 300 hours for the hand-sewn pleats alone.

Her garments were also known for being seamless, in the sense that their seams were not visible. The folds of silk jersey were precisely calculated, and it is said that nine feet of fabric could be condensed into just 2.8 inches. The silhouettes this technique created, like sculptures in motion, evoked the divine figures of ancient Greece and Rome and were described as “Grecian dresses.”

The Cabochard Bottle: Choosing a Bow

For the bottle design of her first perfume, Cabochard, Madame Grès chose a bow. Adopted as a motif symbolizing the house of Grès, it lives on in the glass-appliqué bow of the modern bottle. Even after Grès left the perfume business, the spirit of this bottle design remained part of the brand’s identity.

The Fragrance Lineup

Cabochard: The Starting Point and Landmark of Grès

Released in 1959, this was Grès’s first signature perfume. “Cabochard” derives from the old French word “caboche” and means “stubborn” or “strong-willed.” The name is also said to reflect Madame Grès’s own character: she adhered to her aesthetic with unwavering determination.

Its origins lie in a trip to India in the 1950s. On this journey, undertaken to study textiles, Madame Grès’s memories of Indian plants, spices, and sea breezes became the inspiration for the perfume. The perfumer responsible was Bernard Chant, who would later create such fragrances as Clinique’s Aromatics Elixir.

In fact, Grès had initially commissioned Guy Robert to create her first perfume, and he completed a floral fragrance called Chouda, inspired by the scent of water hyacinth she had encountered in India. It was not chosen as the main product, however, because it did not fit market trends; instead, Chant’s Cabochard became the brand’s representative fragrance. Chouda was produced only in very limited quantities, and Madame Grès herself is said to have worn it regularly.

Cabochard is a classic leather chypre, combining leather and the chypre style. It unfolds from top notes of aldehydes, tarragon, galbanum, and lemon through middle notes of ylang-ylang, jasmine, rose, and orris to base notes of leather, oakmoss, tobacco, patchouli, and sandalwood. Its distinctive “dry elegance” is said to have influenced many brands, including Chanel and Givenchy.

Madame Grès herself, incidentally, is said to have preferred Chouda to Cabochard.

Cabotine: The Fresh “Daughter” of the 1990s

Released in 1990, Cabotine is sometimes described as Cabochard’s “daughter” fragrance. Its name is a French word meaning “actress” or “a woman who plays to the gallery,” suggesting a woman with many different expressions.

It opens with mandarin, ginger, and ylang-ylang, moves into a floral heart of ginger lily, tuberose, and hyacinth, and closes on a base of patchouli, sandalwood, and musk. In contrast to Cabochard’s weighty world of leather, it is characterized by bright, fresh florals. Its striking rounded green flacon also embodies the direction of the scent. Cabotine subsequently gave rise to numerous flankers, or variations.

Folie Douce, Cabaret, and Beyond

Folie Douce, launched in 1997, is a floral composition with top notes of lemon, mimosa, and blackcurrant; a heart of heliotrope, iris, and ylang-ylang; and a base of sandalwood, vanilla, and musk. In 2003, Cabaret was created by perfumer Michel Almairac and won appreciation for its clean floral notes of rose, lily of the valley, violet, and incense.

A fragrance named Madame Grès also appeared in 2013. It was positioned as a tribute to the couture maison from which the brand originated.

Since then, under Lalique Group, the brand has continued to develop its range, focusing mainly on flankers built around Cabochard and Cabotine.

A Few More Facts…

Madame Grès’s nickname was the “Sphinx of Fashion.” She avoided media exposure as much as possible and is said to have repeatedly remarked, “Look at my dresses; there is nothing else to see.”

The New York Times once described her couture house as “the place to buy the most intellectual clothes in Europe.”

The clients who loved Grès’s dresses included Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, Grace Kelly, the Duchess of Windsor, and Jacqueline Kennedy.

The brand name “Grès” also means “sandstone” in French. Some have suggested that, as well as being an anagram of her husband’s name, it symbolized the hard strength of sandstone.

Fashion historians and critics often name Grès, Madeleine Vionnet, and Cristóbal Balenciaga as the twentieth century’s “three great couture artists.”

From May 15 to October 11, 2026, the Kunstgewerbemuseum in Berlin is hosting an exhibition entitled Many Shades of Grès: Fashion Becomes Art. Bringing together twenty-five garments and works of ancient and Byzantine art, it seeks to show how Grès’s creations can be appreciated as both craft and art.

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