Scent to seduce

The perfume house of Coty, which relaunches this week, was founded by a wall-eyed megalomaniac. Gareth Parry tells his bizarre story

Remember Coty? That sensual C, and a Y the length of a sword? It spelt perfume and affordable seduction. Scents such as Chypre, La Rose Jacqueminot and Emeraude were everywhere, including your mother's dressing table. Since its heyday in the Twenties and Thirties, however, Coty has gone a mite downmarket. Little in past decades was spent on promotion, and the most popular Coty perfume in the UK, L'Aimant, sells for only pounds 10.95 for 50 ml.

But Coty is set to win back some of its historic glamour.This week the company relaunched, with a promotional sale of 3,500 "limited edition" Lalique-designed flacons of Ambre Antique "a sensuously feminine floral- oriental fragrance", pounds 220 for three ounces. And last week a glossy new book about the company's founder was published, entitled Coty: Parfumeur and Visionary.

It could just as well read: "Coty: Utopian, Tyrant, Megalomaniac, Obsessive, Excessive, Seducer, Ribbon Salesman, Lunatic Fantacist."Customers scrambling for the limited edition scent at Harrods, London, Neiman Marcus, New York, and other seriously-expensive parfumeries in Tokyo and the Middle East will be unaware of the bizarre life of Francois Coty, the "Napoleon of perfumery", who was born Francois Spoturno in 1875 in Corsica and died a mad recluse in 1934.

Coty was small, with a wall eye, and by the age of four had lost both of his parents. Then he was forced to cut short a promising academic career because his guardian could not afford college fees. But these early humiliations only fired his desire for success.

He dyed his red hair yellow and moved to Marseilles to sell haberdashery. There Coty found that, despite his unprepossessing appearance, he was a hit with women. He knew instinctively how to flatter them, just as he would later develop a sixth sense for the perfumes they loved.

By the age of 25 he had "arrived" in 1900 Paris, city of fashionable salons. Knowing only the back streets of Ajaccio and Marseilles, it took courage, bravado and contacts to confront such a dazzlingbonfire of vanities.

A fellow Corsican, Emmanuel Arene, celebrated playwright, member of the Academie Francaise and senator in the Third Republic, advised Francois: "The main thing is to call yourself something, put it on your card, and get on with it." So he became a fashion accessories salesman and married well. Then he met a pharmacist who made eau-de-Cologne. He was fascinated and started making his own scents.

Coty told Senator Arene he would market his own perfumes under the name Spoturno. "In that case," said the politician, "you can bid Paris farewell". Coty - his late mother's name - was short, easily remembered. It also looked good on the visiting card which now said "Francois Coty, Industrialist, Artist, Craftsman, Economist, Financier, Social Scientist." Before the 1900s, perfume reached a privileged elite but now there were 300 perfumeurs in Paris, 2,000 retailers and 20,000 employees.

Coty targeted the emerging bourgeoisie, women for whom perfume was still a magical substance. He seduced them with elegant presentation, beautiful fragrances and an air of refinement previously reserved for the very rich.

His small Paris apartment became his first factory. By night perfumes were packaged, and by day they were sold to an ever-increasing circle of women. The perfume bottles he used were made by Rene Lalique, a master of decorative art whose flacons hugely contributed to Coty's fortunes.

By the Thirties his perfumes were selling worldwide, and Coty began to flaunt his fortune and success. Power over people became everything. Coty would take potential employees up over Paris in his private plane, and order the pilot to cut engines. If the man as much as paled as the plane spiralled to earth, he would not be hired.

He also fell out with his old friend Lalique: when Lalique could not meet impossible production targets - Coty's glassworks were capable of 100,000 bottles a day - Coty sacked him.

Coty's next step was to buy Le Figaro, and use it to publish his own dictat reconstructing "the order, authority, hierarchy, social and democratic discipline without which no great civilised nation can survive". The words, written in 1933, made people shudder.

He wore a maharajah's sapphire on his index finger and carried around a handful of precious stones to look at whenever the fancy took him. He was now one of the richest men on earth.

Coty also collected mistresses and houses - as long as the latter were in the style of a chateau which he could model to his lunatic fantasies.

However, these fantasies eventually took over, and inthe years to his death in 1945 Coty lived in constant fear of abduction, imagining he was being followed by invisible furies.

Despite his huge success, Coty died sad, dissatisfied and disillusioned. "But you had everything that a man could want, you owned all that you desired," said a confidante. "Not at all," said Coty, "I never managed to capture the smell of honeysuckle."

'Coty: Parfumeur and Visionary' by Elisabeth Barille is published by Editions Assouline.