Lubin

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History of the house

Lubin was founded in 1798 in Paris (France) by Pierre-François Lubin, a perfumer trained in the workshop of Jean-Louis Fargeon, the official perfumer of Marie Antoinette. The first shop opened on rue Sainte-Anne, then moved to rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honore, in a post-Revolutionary Paris where luxury perfumery was rebuilding around a new clientele issued from the Directory.

Pierre-François Lubin (1774-1853) was already known to the imperial circle before opening his own house. He had supplied Empress Josephine with personal compositions and remained one of her preferred perfumers throughout the Consulate and the First Empire. Under Napoleon Bonaparte, Lubin became one of the documented suppliers of the imperial court, and the maison appeared in the perfumery records of the early nineteenth-century Parisian luxury trade.

Over the course of the nineteenth century, Lubin expanded its international reach. The house held royal warrants from the courts of Russia, Bavaria and Wurttemberg, and built a steady export business toward England, Russia and the United States. The catalog centered on eaux de toilette, eaux de cologne and floral compositions in the classical French perfumery tradition. Lubin appeared in the Parisian Universal Expositions and figured among the reference Parisian houses cited in the specialist press of the Second Empire and the early Third Republic.

The twentieth century was more uneven. The house changed hands several times, went through periods of commercial dormancy and lost ground to industrial brands and the rising couture perfume houses. A handful of compositions kept the Lubin signature in the French market Nuit de Longchamp in 1937 and Gin Fizz in 1955, two perfumes that remained in continuous circulation through the post-war decades.

In 2004, Gilles Thévenin acquired the dormant brand and relaunched the house. The editorial project combined historical reissues and new compositions signed by contemporary perfumers, with a clear positioning toward the international niche perfumery market. The 2004 relaunch placed Lubin among the heritage Parisian houses repositioned in niche perfumery during the early twenty-first century, alongside Houbigant and a handful of other long-dormant French names.

Today the house arranges its catalog into several lines, Classique, Portraits de femmes, Evocations, Talismania and Aristia, which work as catalog groupings rather than distinct editorial collections.

Notable perfumes

The contemporary Lubin catalog combines historical reissues and new compositions signed by contemporary perfumers. The releases below are reference compositions.

Olfactory signature

Lubin practises a heritage French perfumery centered on Parisian elegance, with a catalog built on three stylistic axes inherited from the founding period and reactivated after 2004. The signature combines structured citrus and aldehydic florals from the historical catalog with denser oriental and woody compositions developed during the contemporary phase. The continuity between the two eras rests on a shared attention to eau de toilette and eau de parfum formats and on the use of full natural materials in the upper notes.

The first stylistic axis is the aldehydic floral, embodied by Nuit de Longchamp (1937) and reactivated through several contemporary releases. The second is the structured citrus, anchored by the original Eau de Toilette Lubin (1798) and Gin Fizz (1955), both built on bergamot, neroli and aromatic herbs in the classical French perfumery tradition. The third is a resinous oriental and spiced woody register developed since 2004, with Idole de Lubin (2005), Akkad (2012) and Korrigan (2012) extending the catalog toward warmer compositions.

A French heritage perfume house anchored in the Napoleonic court, dormant for most of the twentieth century, relaunched in 2004 around historical reissues and contemporary niche compositions.

Key characteristics

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