Napoleons second wife Marie Louise, Austrian, takes over Parma in Italy after her husband abdicates in 1816. She's obsessed with violets and grows them, and instructs local monks to distill them. At that time, leather gloves reeked of piss from tanning, so perfume was necessary to scent them. The recipe gets released in 1870 to Lodovico Borsari, who then in 1897 released the ultimate perfume of violets.

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To the common mix of violet leaf, violet flower and orris, Borsari adds heliotrope, rose and vanilla; giving us a dry, simple violet scent.