Perfumer recreates Marie Antoinette’s favorite scent

Marie Antoinette loved the smell of rose, jasmine, and bergamot. Photo by APMany fragrances go in and out of popularity as trends change, but some, like Chanel No. 5, remain timeless classics and can define your life. Marie Antoinette was obsessed with one particular scent in the late 18th century that featured rose, jasmine, and bergamot, and it is now being brought back for us all to enjoy.

Antoinette commissioned Jean-Louis Fargeon to produce the fragrance during the creation of the Trianon gardens. According to perfumery Aedes de Venustas, exotic elements including patchouli, sandalwood, vanilla, cinnamon, coriander, cardamom, frankincense, and galbanum were shipped in from India and French islands and combined with rose and jasmine that reminded her of her garden. Fargeon's apprentice, Pierre François Lubin, kept the queen supplied with the concoction which she carried everywhere in a flask made of black jade designed to shield the notes from sunlight. She even kept it when she was imprisoned in the Temple Tower of Paris. Shortly before she died, the story continues, Antoinette entrusted it to her trusted confidant, the Marquise de Tourzel. The original black jade flask remains in the de Tourzel family's chateau.


Black Jade perfume is the same formula the queen wore in the late eighteenth century. …Now perfumer Lubin has finally recreated the scent once called "jardin secret" and appropriated renamed it Black Jade. But the exquisite, historical perfume doesn't come cheap! You can buy a 3.4 oz bottle online at aedes.com for $160.

As Marie Antoinette once said, "There is nothing new except what has been forgotten." Seems her favorite scent is not forgotten and is new once again.

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