Audrey Hepburn wore Givenchy's first great perfume before the public could buy it. That is not a legend. It is the founding story of the house.
Hubert de Givenchy opened his Paris fashion house in 1952. He met Audrey Hepburn soon after and dressed her for years, on screen and off. In 1957 the house set up Parfums Givenchy as a separate perfume company, based in Beauvais.
Its early star was L'Interdit. Givenchy made the scent for Hepburn, and she wore it privately from the mid-1950s before it went on sale in 1957. Hepburn then became the face of the fragrance, one of the first film stars to front a perfume in an advert. The name means "the forbidden".
The men's side arrived next. Monsieur de Givenchy came in 1959. Then in 1974 the house launched Givenchy Gentleman, a woody aromatic by perfumer Paul Léger that became a benchmark men's scent of its era. The Gentleman name has been revived and reworked many times since, including richer, spicier private editions.
Hubert de Givenchy retired in 1995 and died in 2018. The brand is now part of the LVMH group, and the perfumes are made at a scale he never planned for.
The honest note is about change. A perfume like L'Interdit has been reformulated and relaunched more than once over seventy years, so the modern bottle is not the 1957 scent. That is normal for any old fragrance. Ingredient rules change, supplies change, and houses rebuild the formula to match. You are buying the current version of a famous idea.
Our Private Reserve rebuilds the Givenchy Gentleman Reserve Privee character as a UK-made spray at 35% concentration. Browse the full Givenchy collection.
