CLEOPATRA'S BOUDOIR

Le Trèfle Incarnat, created by perfumers Jacques Rouchè and Pierre Aremingeat, was made up of a newly synthesized aroma chemical called amyl salicylate. It had a soft, sweet-hay note. It was this use of accord chemicals that began to pull perfumery out of the 19th century floral phase and bring it into the golden age of perfumery — the first five decades of the 20th century.

Amyl salicylate was a creation of a chemist named Georges Darzens who worked with LT Piver in order to put his discoveries to use. Legend has it that, that Le Trèfle Incarnat was developed under professor Drazen's supervision at l'Ecole polytechnique.

Trèfle Incarnat ("trèfle" is French for clover; "trèfle incarnat" is French for a particular variety of clover, the trifolium incarnatum( red clover)) was blended from both the new iso amyl salicylate and iso eugenol with possibly a touch of natural clover tossed into the mixture. The exact date of creation is somewhat in doubt but the 1896 appears to be the date.

Trèfle Incarnat was distributed to LT Piver's international market which included, in addition to France and the rest of Europe, the United States and Japan. Advertising for Trèfle Incarnat can be found in La Illustratión Españole as early as 1899. An existing page from the Atlantic Constitution from February, 1909, shows that Trèfle Incarnat, along with other Piver products, was being sold in that city.

It is believed that LT Piver continued to sell the Trèfle Incarnat perfume into the 1920's.

Some bottles were distributed with a glass stopper in the shape of a four leaf clover, although the illustration on the bottle's label continued to show a three-leaf clover — the anatomically correct trèfle incarnat.

Of Le Trèfle Incarnat, perfumer Ernest Beaux comments, "We now saw a perfume emerge from banality, the Trèfle Incarnat of Piver, based on amyl salicylate."

Much of this article was used from Perfume Projects."