Origins of the Fragrance

A leather-bound book in the Caswell-Massey archives revealed we originally created this bespoke fragrance in 1914 for the actress Marem Levanton, known best by her stage name Alla Nazimova. An extraordinary creature who was not content just to dream, she had a pulsating, innate desire to escape convention. Through her passionate work as an actress and filmmaker, she created a world for herself so exhilarating and thrilling that it made her one of the most heralded and celebrated women of the beginning years of Hollywood—and one of the most important early trailblazers of female power and independence. This remarkable scent—kept secret for more than one hundred years—is shared today to inspire our twenty-first-century customers with the same creative drive and ambition to make a change in the world pioneered by its original namesake a century ago.