- Germaine Monteil perfumes and colognes:
Country:United States
Main activity:Fashion
Parent company:Wilde Cosmetics
Germaine Monteil: A Pioneer in Fashion, Cosmetics, and Fragrance
Germaine Monteil was a French fashion designer and cosmetician who established her eponymous brand in New York City. Centered on cosmetics and fragrances, the house bore the designer’s name as its official title.
Born in France in 1898, Monteil relocated to the United States in the early 1930s. She harbored a strong passion for dressmaking and initially worked as a cosmetician before transitioning into a fashion designer. Her design specialty lay in classic dresses featuring flaring skirts and silhouettes that emphasized women’s slender figures. Additionally, she gained widespread recognition for her distinctive prints on clothing—patterns that grew immensely popular among American women. In her adopted home of New York, her profound impact on the fashion industry was formally acknowledged when she was awarded the Neiman Marcus Fashion Award in 1938. Germaine Monteil passed away in 1987.
Monteil’s foray into the perfume business began in 1936, when she co-founded Germaine Monteil Cosmetiques Corp. with her husband, Guy Bjorkman. The company initially specialized in skincare treatments and creams, but she soon expanded into fragrance creation. Her debut fragrance,Laughter(later renamedRigolade), was launched in 1941. The line achieved such remarkable success that she made the decision to step away from fashion design entirely, devoting her full attention to perfume and cosmetics. In 2006, the company was acquired by Wilde Cosmetics GmbH, a German firm.
The 1940s saw the launch of several iconic Germaine Monteil fragrances, includingLaughter,New Love,Nostalgia, andFrou Frou. The 1950s brought further additions to the collection:Fleur Savage,Gigolo,Nouvel Amour, andRigolade. In 1964, the fragranceGalorewas introduced. In recent years, the brand’s latest releases have been part of the Royal Secret collection—whose original iteration dates back to 1935.
Our fragrance database features 11 perfumes by designer Germaine Monteil. As an established, longstanding perfume house, its earliest fragrance edition was crafted in 1935, with the most recent one released in 2012. The perfumer behind these scents is Christiane Plos.
