Celine

Celine was founded in Paris in 1945 by Céline Vipiana and her husband Richard as a made-to-measure children’s shoe boutique at 52 rue Malte, identified by a red elephant logo drawn by French cartoonist Raymond Peynet. The company expanded into women’s shoes in 1959 and leather goods by the mid 1960s, building a reputation for high quality handbags and accessories while opening a leather goods workshop in Florence.

The brand entered perfumery in 1964 with Vent Fou, its first fragrance, which appeared alongside the American Sulky accessories collection. Later releases included Magic (launched in 1996 as a key women’s fragrance) and several scents in the 1990s and early 2000s. After a long pause in new launches, Celine re-entered the fragrance market under creative director Hedi Slimane with the Celine Haute Parfumerie line, unveiled in 2019. This collection debuted with 11 eaux de parfum, including scents such as Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Dans Paris, Cologne Française and Eau de Californie, many of which Slimane has described as being based on his own memories of Paris and California.

Celine is part of the LVMH group, which acquired the fashion house in the 1990s as it consolidated several French luxury brands. The current fragrance output is focused on the Haute Parfumerie range, sold through selected Celine boutiques and the brand’s website, rather than mass distribution. The line is positioned as a coherent wardrobe of scents with a noticeable emphasis on powdery textures and understated sophistication rather than loud, crowd-pleasing compositions.