Worth, Projets, 'Plain Sailing', 40 ml. or 1.4 oz. Flacon, Parfum Extrait, Lalique, 1936, Paris, France ..

Charles Frederick Worth founded the couture fashion house House of Worth in the 1850's. Worth worked for Swan & Edgar, an iconic department store in the heart of London's Soho that specialized in fine wool and silk items. He worked for Swan & Edgar for six years before he moved to Paris where he worked as a draper for Maison Gagelin for ten years. He had the chance to shine when he came up with ready-made and ready-to-choose muslin cloth samples and his designs were displayed in-store. Marie Vernet, the women who modeled the clothes in store, was the woman Worth eventually married in 1851.

Worth went on to design clothes and started the trend of sewing brand labels into the garments. He organized shows in the department store Maison Gagelin where his clothes were modeled by beautiful women. Customers attended the shows and chose the designs they liked the most so that Worth would create more garments in certain shapes, designs and colors. He moved away from the then popular bespoke tailoring to a more ready-to-wear approach to clothes. When Worth passed away in 1895 his business was taken over by his sons Gaston-Lucien and Jean-Philippe who stuck to their father's high standards. The house's own first collection was presented in 1936.

The company's first luxury fragrance, Dans La Nuit, was launched in 1924. The fragrance came in a bottle that was designed by the world-famous glass-maker René Lalique. Jacques Worth, Charles Frederick Worth's grandson, maintained the high standards that have been set and he hired the perfumer Maurice Blanchet to create several more perfumes. Those were Vers le Jour, Sans Adieu, Je Reviens, Vers Toi, and in 1936, Projets, which was named 'Plain Sailing' in the USA.

Projets is a beautiful perfume, and now extremely rare and hard to find. I have only seen one or two bottles of it over the past many years. Projets has a relatively simple formula, clean and bright, with a sparkling opening of Bergamot, a precious heart of Rose and Mimosa, and a perfect base of Patchouli and Oak Moss.

Top note is Bergamot
Heart notes are Mimosa, Labdanum, and Rose
Base notes are Patchouli, Oak Moss, and Ambergris

Offered here is an increasingly rare flacon of this precious perfume. Still sealed and in its original presentation box. A wonderful find, especially for Worth collectors! A little evaporation. Projets is a very hard to find perfume today ..