Prince Matchabelli

Prince Matchabelli was created in New York in 1926 by Georgian nobleman and amateur chemist Prince Georges V. Matchabelli and his wife, Italian actress Norina Gilli Matchabelli. They began by blending custom perfumes in the basement of their Madison Avenue antiques shop, serving actors, socialites, and other private clients. In 1928 they introduced their first trio of ready-made fragrances, Princess Norina, Queen of Georgia, and Ave Maria, and launched the crown-shaped bottle modeled on the lost Matchabelli royal crown, designed by Norina.

The business grew quickly, with successive moves to larger Manhattan premises and an international expansion in 1929, when Les Parfums du Prince Matchabelli S.A. and a Paris factory were established and a showroom opened at the Hotel George V. After Prince Georges' death in 1935, Norina sold the company in 1936 to manufacturer Saul Ganz; the brand then passed through several owners, including Vicks Chemical Company in 1941, Chesebrough-Pond's in 1958, and Unilever in 1987, before being acquired by Parfums de Coeur in 1993.

Under later ownership, Prince Matchabelli shifted from intimate, European-influenced luxury perfumes to broadly distributed American mass-market scents. The most enduring release from the post-founder era is Wind Song, launched in 1953, a floral bouquet fragrance that became widely known through large-scale advertising and promotional campaigns. Today the brand is primarily recognized for affordable classics in drugstores and mass retailers rather than for new prestige launches.