Schiaparelli & the artists

The bottle of the perfume Le Roy Soleil, created in 1947 in homage to Louis XIV, was designed by Salvador Dali and produced in a limited edition of 2000 by the illustrious crystal maker Baccarat. It was presented in a large gilded metal shell. The stopper in the shape of the sun surmounted a flask in the form of a rock beaten by waves.

Birds in flight, rendered on the sunburst, created an additional perspective and formed a trompe-l’oeil face. Le Roy Soleil also echoed the Place Vendôme, home to the House of Schiaparelli, because it was called the Place Louis le Grand before the French Revolution. A statue of the monarch previously occupied the place of the current Vendôme Column.

The Duchess of Windsor, to whom Elsa Schiaparelli had offered a bottle of the fragrance, wrote her: “Dear Madame Schiaparelli, it is the most beautiful bottle ever made, and the Roy Soleil is a very lasting and sweet gentleman… It has displaced the Duke's photograph on the coiffeuse!”.