There's a lot of material to cover here, so I'm not going to spend time on a prologue, except to say that much of what is assumed about the different vintages of Grey Flannel is wrong. While bloggers opine on finding "vintage bottles" and Youtubers upload "Grey Flannel Sucks" videos to humor Dan Mickers (love that guy), I went ahead and did some research on the commercial distribution history of Geoffrey Beene's beautiful violet leaf chypre. What I learned was very, very interesting.
The story starts in New York City, 1976. There are two dates given on the internet for when Grey Flannel was released - 1975 and '76, but most bloggers seem to believe it was '76, and indeed it won the FIFI that year, so I'll defer to the time when it was most likely that commercial units had appeared en masse in department stores, and cite the later date. If any reader remembers differently, please comment, and I will research further and possibly make a correction.
Geoffrey Beene's prestigious fashion brand was by this time a thirteen year success story, having garnered several awards and extended itself into the distribution of accessories and housewares. Licensing with a fragrance distributor was inevitable, and the first to file a trademark for Grey Flannel was Epocha Distributors, Inc., a company located on Seventh Avenue in New York City. Jeffrey Dame, former VP of marketing for Sanofi Beauty Products, revealed in a comment under this article that Epocha was Beene's own in-house design brand, so essentially Epocha is Geoffrey Beene. Epocha filing below, dated 1977:
This filing suggests that even though Grey Flannel was released in 1976, it was not widely marketed until the year after, when paperwork for distribution rights had entered the appropriate channels. It also corresponds with the resume of Denise DeBaun, current founder and president of DeBaun Development, Inc. According to Ms. DeBaun's employment history, she was Director of Brand Operations for Epocha Distributors from 1978 to 1980.
During this period, the Epocha sticker was placed on the bottom of all Grey Flannel bottles.
Bottle labels bore only the words "New York" under the fragrance name. Though not apparent in the picture below, the fragrance was also labeled with the word "Cologne" and not "Eau de Toilette" or "Eau de Toilette Spray Vaporasiteur."
Ms. DeBaun's updated resume, a snippet of which is shown below, might be a little more accurate about her starting date than the LinkedIn document, because it cites her employment record with Epocha as beginning in 1977, the same year that the company filed for trademark. Nevertheless, the LinkedIn resume above suggests that Epocha was taken over in 1980 by Jacqueline Cochran, Inc., resulting in the personnel shakeup that forced DeBaun out. She went on to work for Oscar de la Renta and Parfums Stern, Inc.
This raises the question, where did Jacqueline Cochran, Inc., come from exactly? While Ms. DeBaun's career was taking off in New York, a corporate reorganization was happening in New Jersey. American Cyanamid, owner of Shulton and Jacquelin Cochran Inc., allowed Cochran to take over Contemporary Fragrance Group, and with it the manufacturing and distribution rights to all fine fragrances by CFG under American Cyanamid. Amazingly, someone saved a newspaper page from the end of 1978, which documents the transition, and also notes that esteemed entrepreneur and art collector Carlo Bilotti, the president of Cochran, would continue to head Cochran's division as an enterprise separate from CFG.
This suggests that Jacqueline Cochran, Inc. was well positioned to begin manufacturing and distributing Grey Flannel when it purchased the Epocha license in 1980. Cochran's cosmetics enterprise had been operating since the 1930s, and had also been bought out by Shulton pretty early on. Cochran herself was a famous racing pilot with an entrepreneurial spirit, and her marriage to Atlas Corp. founder Floyd Odlum proved fruitful in moving units of makeup, lipstick, and perfume.
Jacqueline Cochran, Inc. owned and distributed Grey Flannel for most of the 1980s. This is important to note for vintage Grey Flannel enthusiasts, as most of the older bottles still in circulation are from the nineties. Bottles of fragrance, aftershave, and balms bearing the Epocha sticker date from 1977 to 1980. From 1981 onward, Epocha's sticker was replaced by Cochran's.
The next chapter in Grey Flannel's life is intriguing. By 1987 American Cyanamid had decided to sell Jacqueline Cochran, Inc., along with another subsidiary, La Prairie. According to an 1990 affidavit from the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals, Cyanamid sold Cochran to Sanofi Inc., on March 30, 1987. The heading for what was presumably the last motion can be seen here:
The sale resulted in some legal issues for Sanofi. The affidavit contends that a man named Mario Ronzani wanted to buy La Prairie from Cyanamid, but was told that the corporation wanted to sell La Prairie and Jacqueline Cochran "in a single transaction." Ronzani was apparently disinterested in Cochran, and approached Sanofi to see if they would agree to a joint bid. Their communication, according to Ronzani, established that Sanofi was amenable to this idea because they were disinterested in La Prairie, but wanted Cochran and its holdings.
Ronzani claimed that Sanofi agreed to a joint bid, and thus entered into a bidding partnership with him. One party would get all the shares of one company, and the other party would get the shares of the other company. This is described in lines six and seven below (click on picture to enlarge):
Then Sanofi pulled the rug out from under Ronzani (see line eight below):
This appears to have angered Mr. Ronzani, and he filed the first of several complaints. The court struck down his main complaint, citing in legalese that Ronzani's agreement with Sanofi was invalid because he was not legally categorized as a legitimate "purchaser or seller of securities," as highlighted in lines eleven and twelve below:
Why am I bothering to tell you all of this? This legal wrangling over Sanofi's purchase may very well have delayed production of its newly-acquired product line. Note that on line twelve above, the cited court date of Ronzani's complaint dismissal is August 22, 1989, about two and a half years after Sanofi purchased American Cyanamid's holdings package. Because Sanofi bought a company and not just distribution rights, they did not have to file for trademark, and there is no record of Sanofi filing for Grey Flannel's trademark at that time. (There is a record of Sanofi owning the trademark, which can be found further on in this article.) Based on the affidavit, I think the earliest Sanofi could have begun producing and distributing Grey Flannel is 1988, assuming they ignored Ronzani's complaints and forged ahead with business as usual. It is possible that Cyanamid allowed production to continue during the transition, but I think that is unlikely, and doubt there are bottles of Grey Flannel from 1987.
From 1988 to 1995, all Grey Flannel bottles bore the sticker of Sanofi Beaute, Inc.
Sanofi's tenure as Grey Flannel's manufacturer and distributor ended in 1995. French Fragrances, Inc. bought from Sanofi Beaute the license to manufacture and distribute Grey Flannel in March of that year, and their first batches appeared in 1996. From 1996 to 2000, all Grey Flannel bottles bore the sticker of French Fragrances, Inc. By this time Grey Flannel bore both "New York" and "Paris" on its label. The word "Cologne" had also been replaced by "Eau de Toilette," although that change supposedly happened during the Sanofi years.
French Fragrances bought Elizabeth Arden from Unilever in 2000, and changed its company name to Elizabeth Arden, Inc. This is interesting because it basically means that EA Fragrances is the same company as French Fragrances. According to The New York Times, about 1,500 of Arden's employees were expected to transfer to French Fragrances, which suggests that a segment of Arden's Unilever people were laid off.
Of note also is the trademark filing by French Fragrances, which had already assumed the EA moniker. It seems that in July of 2004, EA cancelled its original Grey Flannel trademark, and also owned all of Grey Flannel's previous trademarks. Note that the French Fragrances trademark is not listed.
From 2000 to the present time, Grey Flannel bottles have held the EA Fragrances sticker, and their labels have gone from saying "Eau de Toilette" to "Eau de Toilette Spray Vaporisateur." They also still say "New York" and "Paris."
Below is a basic timeline of each of the corporate distribution transitions that were made in Grey Flannel's 37 year history. Click on the image to enlarge:
And that brings us up to speed. How do any of these vintages of Grey Flannel smell? I'm only familiar with EA's version, but I have a bottle of Jacqueline Cochran's version coming in the mail, so I'll have an opportunity to compare it to the current stuff soon. Finding certain vintages of Grey Flannel becomes increasingly difficult the further back you go. It seems that the most readily available "vintage" version is French Fragrance's, before their acquisition of EA. You can sometimes spot a bottle by Sanofi on Ebay, but those are fewer and further between. There are usually no bottles of Jacqueline Cochran Grey Flannel on the internet, and you can forget about finding Epocha's vintage. I have yet to spot a bottle of the Epocha cologne, although rarely an auxiliary product, like the aftershave balm, will randomly appear (and very quickly disappear again).
There seems to be a widely-held notion that the Sanofi vintages of Grey Flannel are "eighties vintages," and while that may just barely be true (assuming Sanofi picked up production slipstream in 1987), Jacqueline Cochran's bottles definitely comprise the bulk of eighties vintage. I think the soonest Sanofi was able to get production underway would have been 1988, and given that the final legal motion by Ronzani took place in 1990, who knows for certain? Most of the Sanofi bottles are from the first half of the nineties, and all of the French Fragrances bottles are from the late nineties. EA Fragrance's tenure is already thirteen years old.
I received a comment from Jeffrey Dame of Hypoluxe, Inc., formerly of Sanofi Beauty Products, and he revealed some very interesting information regarding Grey Flannel. He was VP of marketing in the men's fragrance division of Sanofi, and he clarified some points about safety regs, and the various crossovers in batches and bottlings during each transition that Grey Flannel made. He also mentioned that Epocha was Beene's own in-house design brand (it's all in his comment below). I'm hoping I can persuade Jeffrey to participate in a brief interview, in which he can field some insider questions about his years at Caron, Sanofi, and the other top brands he has worked for. His stories and insights would be of immeasurable value to us all.