Rochas

Overview

Rochas is a Paris couture house founded by Marcel Rochas in 1925 whose fragrance division produced two compositions of lasting importance: Femme (1944), by Edmond Roudnitska, and Tocade (1994), by Maurice Roucel.

The house is a useful case study in how much of a fragrance house’s reputation belongs to its perfumers rather than to itself. Neither of its major works reflects a house style, and both are landmarks in their composers’ careers. Since 2015 the brand, fashion and fragrance alike, has belonged to Interparfums.

Founding and early history

Marcel Rochas established his couture house in 1925 and was a significant figure in interwar Paris fashion, showing wide, padded shoulders in the early 1930s, a silhouette also associated with his rival Elsa Schiaparelli. In 1945 he introduced the guêpière, a long strapless corset that cinched the waist and became part of the postwar silhouette.

The fragrance business began in the 1930s. German Wikipedia and Perfume Projects date the first three perfumes, Air Jeune, Audace and Avenue Matignon, to 1936; Fragrantica gives 1934. Femme was composed by Roudnitska during the German occupation of Paris and launched in 1944 (Perfume Projects gives 1945). It was the perfume that established Roudnitska’s career. Its bottle took its shape from a corset Rochas had designed around the figure of Mae West.

A new fragrance, Moustache, followed in the late 1940s.

Marcel Rochas died in 1955; his widow Hélène Rochas ran the house until 1970, when she sold it to the pharmaceutical group Roussel-Uclaf (Fragrantica dates the sale to 1971). She was a considerable figure in her own right, later returned to the brand as an ambassador (from 1980 according to WWD, 1984 according to Fragrantica), and died in 2011.

House style

There is no consistent Rochas style, and the more accurate description is that the house commissioned well at two moments and unremarkably in between.

Femme is a rich, plummy chypre of plum and peach over oakmoss and patchouli, with cumin added in the 1989 reformulation by Olivier Cresp rather than original — worth knowing, since it substantially changes the perfume’s character and is what most people now recognize as Femme.

Tocade is a rose–vanilla composition of unusual brightness and simplicity, composed by Maurice Roucel.

Key fragrances

Perfumers

For most of its history the house worked through commissions — Roudnitska at Art et Parfum for Femme, then Guy Robert, Nicolas Mamounas, Maurice Roucel and others.

That changed under Procter & Gamble. Jean-Michel Duriez, already the perfumer of Jean Patou, became the in-house perfumer of Rochas; Fragrantica and Perfume Projects date the appointment to 2008, while French Wikipedia describes him as house perfumer for both Patou and Rochas from 1997 to 2014.

Commissioning is the normal arrangement for a couture house of its size, and it explains the catalogue’s unevenness: the quality of a Rochas fragrance is the quality of whoever was commissioned, without a house filter either improving or homogenizing it.

Ownership and business history

Hélène Rochas sold the business to Roussel-Uclaf in 1970. The German hair-care group Wella acquired Parfums Rochas in 1987, and the house passed to Procter & Gamble with the Wella acquisition in 2003. In 2015 Interparfums bought the entire Rochas brand, fashion and fragrance, from P&G for about $108 million.

The fashion line has been revived several times. Olivier Theyskens designed it from 2002 until P&G closed it in 2006; Alessandro Dell’Acqua led it from 2014 to 2020, Charles de Vilmorin from 2021, and Alessandro Vigilante since December 2023.

The corporate history matters mainly for what it did to the catalogue. Femme was reformulated in 1989 by Olivier Cresp with the cumin addition; Mystère and several others were discontinued; and the modern releases are mass-market products.

Present position

Rochas today is owned by Interparfums, and its fragrance line is a small mass-market range. Femme and Tocade remain available in reformulated form, both reduced but both still recognizable and both unusually good value.

Mystère and Byzance are discontinued, with Byzance revived recently as a reinterpretation rather than the original formula.

Historical assessment

The house’s significance is borrowed and considerable: Femme is a major twentieth-century perfume and the beginning of Roudnitska’s career.

It is also the clearest illustration in this section of a structural point — that a commissioning house without a perfumer, a signature or an archive has no mechanism for maintaining quality, and depends entirely on the judgment of whoever is buying. Rochas bought brilliantly twice in seventy years. Its later history also shows how far a reformulation can move a classic: the Femme most people know today is Olivier Cresp’s 1989 version, with its cumin, rather than Roudnitska’s original.

Sources