Is it the past? The present? A vision of the future? Created in 1968, L’Eau was the first of the first. An intuition of artists, an olfactory time machine for inventing the future. The macerations of an apothecary’s spices can be perceived in it: clove and cinnamon, as well as flowers and woods. With its refinement of days gone by, it is a fragment of the Renaissance, while at the same time being wildly revolutionary: long before everyone else, L’Eau was defying gender codes. It spoke neither in the feminine nor the masculine. It captured both at the same time.