Les Années Folles Exhibition at the Galliera Museum in Paris {Scented Paths & Fragrant Addresses}

A beautiful exhibition called Les Années Folles (1919-1929) can currently be seen at the Musée Galliera de la Mode de la Ville de Paris. It offers a retrospective on the fashion and beauty culture of the Roaring Twenties showing the progressive emancipation of the feminine body. The era saw the birth of the garçonne and a host of convenient symbols of emancipation such as smoking in public, driving a car, wearing short dresses and short hair, signs that hardly masked the fact that the right to vote was still denied to women in France and would be until 1944. In the US, thanks to the suffragette movement, national women's vote was established earlier, by 1920. The first country in the world to grant women the official right to vote was actually New Zealand in 1893.......

Very rare dresses by Jeanne Lanvin from the Universal Exhibition of 1925 dedicated to Art Deco were retrieved from the house's vault, for example, and due to their fragility, a first group of dresses will be replaced by a second one at the end of 2007. 50 perfume and cosmetic items are on display as well, including a reconstruction of a leather perfume in the spirit of the period, by nose Antoine Maisondieu. An account of the exhibition can be read here and some pics can be seen here, courtesy of 1000 Fragrances. A video commented by one of the exhibition lecturers can be watched here.

Great perfume classics of the period include Mitsouko, Tabac Blond, No 5, Emeraude, Nuit de Noël, No 22, Royal Bain de Caron, Cuir de Russie, Bois des Iles, Shalimar, Knize Ten (Part I & Part II), Habanita, My Sin, Arpège, Zibeline, Soir de Paris and more. We chose to name the perfumes that are still available albeit in a re-worked form (how could it be otherwise?)

Other museums in Paris are also currently paying homage to the 1920s, including Baccarat and the Musée d'Orsay. 

(via Le Figaro)