What to present the lady who has all the pieces? It’s a query that consumed Pierre-François-Pascal Guerlain when he was tasked with making a perfume to commemorate Empress Eugénie’s marriage to Napoleon III, in 1853. Whereas the perfumer started working on mixing notes of bergamot, lemon, neroli, and petitgrain, he turned to the grasp glassmaker Pochet du Courval to design a bottle that was as fashionable and memorable as its spirited younger recipient.

Guerlain’s perfume, Eau de Cologne Impériale, was introduced in a particular flacon engraved with the emperor’s coat of arms and adorned with bees—a long-standing emblem of the French empire—hand-gilded with high quality gold. Its cylindrical design was impressed by the Napoleon I column within the Place Vendôme in Paris, situated only a spritz away from Guerlain’s first boutique. The fragrance earned the corporate the title “Official Provider to Her Majesty the Empress” and the admiration of the women at court docket. After Empress Eugénie, Guerlain’s royal prospects included Queen Victoria of Nice Britain and Queen Isabella II of Spain.

The Bee Bottle continues to set trendy circles abuzz. “A brand new clientele is searching for luxurious with roots anchored in historical past and tradition, which might hopefully be handed on from one technology to the subsequent,” says Ann-Caroline Prazan, Guerlain’s director of artwork, tradition, and heritage. The corporate’s exacting artisans, often known as les dames de desk, nonetheless painstakingly seal the fragrance stoppers by hand with high quality thread, utilizing the time-honored strategy of baudruchage, which predates fashionable vacuum seals. Along with the unique Eau de Cologne Impériale, right now’s nouvelle empresses can fill 4 completely different Bee Bottle sizes with the Guerlain perfume of their alternative and add a personalised inscription. “It’s a customizable image of the distinctive, made with historical conventional know-how,” provides Prazan.

The Bee Bottle can be changing into a supply of inspiration for up to date artists and creators. For a 2021 collaboration with Guerlain, rising Swiss designer Kevin Germanier normal 11 vessels utilizing upcycled Swarovski crystals to recall luxurious couture clothes; jewellery designer Begüm Khan made 15 items with Turkish craftspeople in a historic workshop within the Previous Metropolis quarter of Istanbul, setting treasured stones in gold-plated bronze; and, this previous Could, in honor of World Bee Day, the Slovakian artist Tomáš Libertíny, who creates residing sculptures by inviting precise bees to construct their honeycombs round prefabricated frames, constructed a hive across the bottle’s beveled edges over the course of a month to supply an ornamental wax trim. Libertíny created a tribute match for a monarch—no shock, on condition that his most well-known art work is a wax bust of Nefertiti made in collaboration with 60,000 little pollinators.

To have a good time the Bee Bottle’s a hundred and seventieth anniversary within the new 12 months, Guerlain simply launched a limited-edition perfume, Think about, housed in yet one more array of ultra-exclusive bottles, created in partnership with the Parisian jewellery studio Atelier Truscelli. Accumulating all of them may really feel just a little de trop for some, however as Nefertiti herself may need mentioned, with out that contact of honey, what would a queen be?

Advantageous Artwork Photos/Heritage Photos/Getty Photos; Hulton Archive/Getty Photos; DEA/C. BALOSSINI/Contributor; Courtesy of Guerlain (3)