L’Interdit is a perfume of friendship, a perfume that captures within its unparalleled essence an unexpected but sublime meeting between a couturier and his muse, between a man and a woman. Hubert de Givenchy was 27 when he made the acquaintance of Audrey Hepburn. The actress, who had just been discovered, was poised as the figurehead of a new femininity. Audrey certainly marked a break with the trends of the 50s: tall and thin, almost androgynous, slender and gracious, she was a far cry from the voluptuous blonde pin-ups that once were all the rage in Hollywood, like Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield. Audrey Hepburn was different. She was chic, sophisticated, and romantic. And that’s why Hubert de Givenchy’s olfactory composition couldn’t have been created any other way.
“Without being inflammatory, L’Interdit evokes a passionate seduction.” – Françoise Donche, scent specialist at Givenchy. Like Audrey, this fragrance is outrageously feminine. Imagined for a woman of charm, spirit, and style, it’s also the perfume for an exclusive woman. When Hubert de Givenchy decided to start selling the perfume, the star who’d already been wearing it for three years responded: “But I forbid you!” This very exchange would give the perfume its off-limits name in French, all while announcing a new style like a modern flower bouquet.
Here once more, the couturier actually transgresses the too-smooth, too-well behaved image of romantic scents. For this gift to Audrey Hepburn, he called on the Roure Bertrand Dupont laboratory, today renamed Givaudan, that imagined a luminous beginning with a little help from some aldehydes. “An unsettling ambiguity, the mischievous side of its headnotes is finally revealed to be very sensual. The carnations are not so well behaved, and the cloves, a burning spice, bring a clearly enrapturing touch,” explains Françoise Donche. The finished product is captured by designer Pablo Reinoso within a flask with rectangular lines completed by a rosé champagne insert!
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