Before becoming a timeless and elegant olfactory accessory to perfumery, leather, and particularly the tanneries who worked and produced it, aroused strong emotions and not such nice sensations. The animal odour and the unpleasant smell of treated raw leather invaded the local atmosphere of Grasse.
To counter this, the town of Grasse chose to cultivate fields of flowers to mask the pungent smell. Jasmine, tuberose, lavender and orange blossom flowers were grown to surround the city in delicious fragrances.
In the sixteenth century, a Grasse tanner, Gallimard, came up with the idea of using the natural essences from these flowers to scent his gloves.
He even had the audacity to offer a pair to the Queen of France, Catherine de Medicis. Already passionate about perfume from her years in Italy and accompanied in France by her personal parfumeur, she was immediately captured by this special gift.
Soon the fashion of perfumed gloves spread to the court of the King of France. In 1656, glover makers gathered together as a trade, producers of perfumed glovers, known internationally as les maîtres gantiers parfumeurs and during Louis XIV’s reign obtained the monopoly for the distribution of perfumes.
However the overall success of scented gloves gradually declined over the decades, eclipsed by the use of the perfume on its own that became highly popular. The cities of Grasse and Paris then asserted themselves as undisputed capitals of perfumery, an art that today constitutes one of the pillars of French heritage.
The collection of refined perfumed gloves by Thomasine links the ancestral craft of les maîtres gantiers parfumeurs to modern creativity in leather and perfumery.
The THOMASINE collection, with the concept identity of ‘gloves like soft jewellery’, gets a 4th dimension integrating a scent in combination with her modern vision on colour, shape and function. One of the main inspirations for the design work by Thomasine origins from nature – from flowers, plants and their structures. The same inspiration that built the ground for perfumed gloves in the sixteenth century.
The sincere collaboration between Thomasine and a heritage lambskin tannery from the historic Millau – made it possible to realize this collection of perfumed gloves for both women and men.
The special procedure of perfuming the leather in the early stage of the tanning process makes the scent last the longest as it is kept in the core of the leather and not on the surface. Each scent was carefully reviewed and inspired her visually to pair with a symbolic colour.
Referencing the historic glamour of Catherine de Medici’s sweet gloves, Thomasine has now made it possible to wear scented gloves as an everyday contemporary luxury accessory, with the ready-to-wear models called Paris, Milan, Beijing and Odessa.
