Douglas Hopkins - Perfume Development

Perfume Development

In 1989, Hopkins started the fragrance company Douglas Hopkins and Company, at first based in his duplex on the Upper East Side in New York City. In industry terms, the company is referred to as an international atelier perfumer.

Hopkins' company states that his products are based on centuries-old formulas and are packaged like perfumes in a Parisian apothecary. His products have been sold at Bergdorf Goodman in New York City, the Versaille museum, Galeries Lafayette in Paris, and others.

Hopkins' original mentor in perfume production was George Diamond, who holds many patents in perfume production. Hopkins and Diamond had initially intended to create a "Valentina" fragrance, named for the ballerina Valentina Kozlova, whom Hopkins had photographed. Hopkins determined that higher-quality Russian cosmetics were mostly made in Eastern Europe.

After the Berlin wall went down, Hopkins and Diamond went to Eastern Europe looking for investments. They were invited to cosmetic factories where production was still done in a primitive manner, using mostly manual labor and horse-drawn carts. Although Diamond had returned to the United States, on the last day of his trip Hopkins stumbled upon a tiny remote fragrance plant. The factory was a Communist-run coop that made one fragrance called Prastara. Hopkins acquired the Prostara trademark, which allowed him to market the fragrance worldwide, except in Russia.

Hopkins questioned the previous owners and determined that the fragrance probably originated with the chemist of Louis XV of France, because the king's mistress (and later his wife) Marie Leczinska was of Polish royalty.

As a result of his portrait work, Douglas became friends with a young German engineer and his wife who were from old European families. On one occasion when Hopkins was visiting the family at a castle in Austria, he was able to do some research on Prostara in their library. There he discovered a rare 18th century perfuming manual, which helped define the future direction of the company.

Douglas Hopkins' women's fragrances include Åse, Zazou, and Prastara. Men's fragrances include Prastara Royal and Prastara Blue. Hopkins describes Zazou as "the California scent with a hint of sanity."

Hopkins has an interesting perspective on the fragrance industry:

Many people believe fragrance is at all levels a “money printing machine” – as the founder of Revlon once called it, but this exists only at the mass market level. Art versus commerce -- commerce is where it is truly “juice” ... these are scents that most often don’t last beyond the first year and (are) backed by a 20 million dollar launch promotion. As an art, it is a labor of love.

The company also sells Geothermology, a personal treatment line, launched in 2005 with 35 products. This line "offers the volcanic and natural mineral substances derived from multiple, active, naturally occurring geothermal healing sources around the world".