François Coty

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François Coty, around 1910

François Coty (born May 3, 1874 in Ajaccio in Corsica as Joseph Marie François Spoturno , † July 25, 1934 in Louveciennes near Paris ) was a French perfumer , industrialist and newspaper publisher . Coty is considered the founder of modern perfumery. As a publicist he propagated anti-communist , anti-Semitic and fascistIdeas and supported groups of the extreme right in France. His company, founded in 1904, is now the cosmetics group Coty Inc. based in New York City .

Life and work as a perfumer

Flacon by Lalique for Coty (around 1910)

Joseph Marie François Spoturno grew up with his grandmother in Corsica after the death of his parents. In 1900 he came to Paris as a medical student, where he took his mother's name, Coty (modified from Coti ), and married Yvonne Alexandrine Le Baron, daughter of the painter and coin engraver Alphée Dubois. He learned his craft as a perfumer in a pharmacy in Paris and in 1903 in the perfume factory of Antoine Chiris in Grasse . His first perfume La Rose Jacqueminot from 1904 established his success. In 1905 he opened a shop near Paris.

Coty composed fragrances using synthetic products newly discovered at the end of the 19th century, in which, using new extraction techniques, distilled natural fragrances, called absolute , are combined with synthetic ones. He had many of his flacons designed by René Lalique in the Art Deco style . With his fragrances, which he produced and exported, he came to enormous wealth and expanded his company to the USA, Great Britain , Asia and Latin America. In France, Coty bought several châteaus and villas; In 1923 the pavilion of the Comtesse du Barry in Louveciennes , which he had rebuilt according to original plans. After his divorce from Yvonne Le Baron in 1929, he spent most of his time there until his death at the age of 62.

His American company Coty Inc. , which he founded in Delaware in 1913 , is now a public company based in New York City. A homage to his work as a perfumer can be seen in the International Museum of Perfumery in Grasse.

Newspaper Publishing and Politics

Editorial by Coty in Le Figaro , April 3, 1933

With his fortune, which he made as a perfume entrepreneur, Coty acquired shares in newspapers in the 1920s in order to promote anti-communist , anti-Semitic and fascist ideas, especially the leadership principle of Italian fascism , in France and to influence public opinion. He supported groups such as Action Française and Croix de Feu as well as right-wing extremist papers and wrote anti-Semitic articles himself. In 1919 he had started buying shares in the daily Le Figaro . In 1927 he became political director of the newspaper and, against the opposition of the editors , made Figaro the mouthpiece of his political views and wrote leading articles himself. In 1929 he held 75 percent of the capital. In 1928 he brought out the daily newspaper L'ami du peuple , a popular as well as demagogic mass paper, which he sold under price. With him he wanted to bring his political ideas to the "common people". It had a circulation of one million in 1930. At the time of the center-left coalition with Édouard Daladier as prime minister, Coty founded the Liga Solidarité Française in 1933 , a paramilitary organization that participated with other leagues of the extreme right in the riots of February 6, 1934 .

The central element in Coty's world of ideas was "state reform". This corresponded to a widespread problem debate at that time. In 1933 he wrote a detailed program of state reform , which he distributed as a brochure with a print run of 200,000. With a populist anti-capitalism concept, in which he differentiated between a “plundering” capitalism of finance capital and a “good and productive” one of national labor, he tried to win the masses over to his ideas. His political line was anti-democratic and characterized by an obsessive hatred of communism , which was also directed against Germany. He accused Ludendorff of sending a large sum to Lenin to support the revolution . After Hitler was made Chancellor of Germany, Coty turned around and declared that France and Germany had common enemies: international finance capital and Bolshevism . From this point on, L'ami du peuple published articles such as “With Hitler's Germany against communism”.

His entire press empire with over 53 newspapers was geared towards propaganda and made no profit. After financial collapse, Coty had to sell Le Figaro in 1933 and L'ami du peuple six months later .

Perfumes (selection)

  • La Rose Jacqueminot (1904)
  • L'origan (1905)
  • Jasmin de Corse (1906)
  • Muguet (1910)
  • Styx (1911)
  • L'or (1912)
  • Chypre de Coty (1917)
  • Émeraude (1921)
  • Paris (1922)
  • Knize Ten (1924) (with Vincent Roubert)
  • L'aimant (1927) (with Vincent Roubert)
  • La Fougeraíe au crépuscule (1933)

Book publications

  • Contre le Communisme , Éditions Grasset, Paris 1927, 1928 (362 pages)
  • Sauvons nos colonies. Le péril rouge en pays noir , Éditions Grasset, Paris 1931

literature

  • Roulhac Toledano, Elizabeth Z. Coty: Francois Coty. Fragrance, Power, Money , Pelican Publishing, Gretna / USA 2009, ISBN 978-1-58980-639-9 (English)
  • Ghislaine Sicard-Picchiottino, François Coty: Un industriel corse sous la IIIe République , Albiana, 2006, ISBN 2-84698-173-6 (French)
  • Orla Healy, Coty: The Brand of Visionary , Assouline, 2004, ISBN 978-2-84323-622-8 (English)
  • Patrice de Sarran, François Coty, empereur d'Artigny - le parfum de la gloire , La Nouvelle République du Center-Ouest, 1990, ISBN 2-86881-085-3 (online) (French)
  • Laurent Joly: L'Ami du Peuple contre les "financiers qui mènent le monde". La première campagne antisémite des années 1930 . In: Archives Juives. Revue d'histoire des Juifs de France , 2006/2 (Vol. 39), Les Belles Lettres , ISBN 978-2-251-69422-1 , pp. 96-109 ( online )

Web links

Commons : François Coty  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ François Coty, Encyclopedia Britannica
  2. ↑ a b History of the International Perfumery Museum. In: Musées de Grasse www.museesdegrasse.com. Président de la communauté d'agglomération Pays de Grasse, accessed on 21 October 2019 .
  3. ↑ Coty on Cosmetics and Skin
  4. ↑ Klaus-Jürgen Müller  : “Fascism” in France's Third Republic? In: Horst Möller , Manfred Kittel (Ed.): Democracy in Germany and France 1918-1933 / 40 . Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 2002, ISBN 978-3-486-56587-4 , p. 93ff. [1]
  5. ↑ Richard Millmann: Les ligues et la République dans les trente année . In: Horst Möller , Manfred Kittel (Ed.): Democracy in Germany and France 1918-1933 / 40 . Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 2002, ISBN 978-3-486-56587-4 , pp. 85ff.
  6. ^ Robert Soucy : The Solidarité Française . In: ders .: French Fascism. The Second Wave , 1933-1939, Yale University Press, New Haven / London 1997, ISBN 978-0-300-07043-9 , pp. 59ff., JSTOR
personal data
SURNAME Coty, François
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Joseph Marie François Spoturno
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French perfumer
DATE OF BIRTH May 3, 1874
PLACE OF BIRTH Ajaccio in Corsica
DATE OF DEATH July 25, 1934
Place of death Louveciennes near Paris