Le Sillon (1924)

Lanvin introduced Le Sillon in 1924, a perfume whose name beautifully captures Jeanne Lanvin’s dual identity as couturière and perfumer. Pronounced as "luh see-YOHN", the French word sillon, meaning "furrow," holds a layered meaning. On one hand, it evokes the idea of sillage—the invisible trail of fragrance that lingers in the air after someone has passed, a concept deeply connected to the artistry of perfume. On the other, sillon also refers to a luxurious type of silk, woven with soft self-colored stripes that create a subtle play of light and texture. For Lanvin, who built her fashion house upon exquisite textiles and refined craftsmanship, this double entendre was especially apt. Le Sillon became not just the name of a fragrance but a symbolic weaving together of fabric and scent—two arts she excelled in.

The word itself conjures images of elegance and refinement. It suggests softness and sensuality, like a trail of silk brushing against the skin or the lingering aura of perfume carried in the air. To a woman in the 1920s, Le Sillon would have evoked both the tactile luxury of fine couture and the ephemeral beauty of fragrance—an intimate yet public declaration of style. The name feels polished and modern, embodying Lanvin’s ability to translate fashion into olfactive language.

The fragrance emerged during Les Années Folles, the French “Crazy Years” of the 1920s, a period of cultural daring, modernism, and social change. Women’s roles were rapidly shifting; fashion embraced boyish silhouettes, sleek lines, and shimmering fabrics that caught the light in dance halls and soirées. Perfumery mirrored these transformations. The early 1920s were marked by abstraction, with aldehydes lending a new radiance to florals, while chypres and orientals captivated with their bold sensuality. Le Sillon, with its suggestive name, fit perfectly into this moment when perfume was no longer simply about flowers but about style, atmosphere, and modern identity.

Created by Madame Marie Zede, Le Sillon would likely have interpreted its name in scent through a composition that balanced luminosity with elegance—perhaps airy aldehydes or powdery florals softened with silken textures, leaving behind a refined trail. Its release foreshadowed a growing connection between couture fabrics and perfumes, a link made explicit the following year when Jean Desprez composed the aldehydic floral chypre Crêpe de Chine for Félix Millot, directly naming the perfume after a luxurious silk. Lanvin’s choice of Le Sillon was therefore both innovative and prophetic, merging the tactile world of fashion with the invisible artistry of fragrance.

In the context of its era, Le Sillon was not an outlier but part of a trend that saw perfumers and couturiers alike using fabric as metaphor for scent. Yet it stood apart in its poetic ambiguity: a single word that evoked both the tangible weave of silk and the intangible trail of perfume. For women of the 1920s, to wear Le Sillon was to embody refinement in every sense—a seamless blend of fashion and fragrance, fabric and aura, material and memory.

Fragrance Composition:

So what does it smell like? I have no notes on this perfume, I would need a sample to tell you what it smells like. It may have been built upon an earlier perfume known as Mousseline, named after the fabric, widely popular during the Victorian era.

Fate of the Fragrance:

Discontinued, date unknown, probably by 1926.