Catherine de’ Medici’s Scented Gloves
Once in Paris...
Catherine de' Medici was born in Florence in 1519. She came from a prominent and noble family, but she never knew a stable childhood due to the tragedies in her family’s life. Within a month of her birth, she lost both of her parents. However, due to her noble origin and wealth, she had a bright future (meaning: propitious marriage) ahead of her,
her guardians therefore saw to her education that allowed her to be very cultured.
When she was fourteen, her marriage was arranged to the second son of the king of France (he would later be crowned Henry II of France).
Ten children were born from the marriage, three of whom would become king and queens: a king of France, a queen of France and a queen of Spain.
Catherine were being sidelined until her husband’s death, even the king’s mistress had greater influence at court than she did. However, after the king’s death, everything changed: Catherine was thrust onto the political stage and held influence on affairs as guardian of the young king. After many years of being sidelined, accumulated hatred led to ruthless decisions and revenge mission.
At the same time, Catherine de’ Medici was not only one of the most prominent political figures of that era but also a fashion trendsetter.
For instance, she was the first to wear high heels, and what is more, at her wedding to offset her short stature.
However, she introduced even more interesting fashion trends to French court.
Perfumed gloves were already popular in Florence (where she came from) from the late 15th century, and Catherine brought these cultural novelties to France and introduced scented gloves into French fashion.
As was the custom in those days, people did not care too much about personal hygiene or keeping themselves clean. It was common during great wars that wives did not wash themselves until their husbands returned from wars. And since men were often away for months or even years, ladies were without the benefits of taking a bath for so long. It cannot be said that that was also the case for Catherine de’ Medici, but it is certain that keeping the entire body clean was not a daily routine in those days.
Therefore, gloves soaked in perfume served to mask (or at least reduce) unpleasant body odours.
As an easily removable garment, glove wearers could change their ‘scent’ by switching pairs.
The gloves were scented with different fragrances, including pomegranate, orange blossom, jasmine and violet. However, the process of fragrancing may at first sight appear surprising.
It would be easy to assume that these ingredients were stuffed into the gloves, but the process was more complicated than that. Fragrance ingredients were mixed with animal fat and boiled, then the gloves were dipped into the liquid and left to dry. The scented gloves thus served a double purpose: to cover unpleasant body odours, on one hand, and to mask the offensive smell of the gloves themselves, on the other hand. Since, in the 16th century, animal excrement was used in processing leather to achieve the desired uniform and beautiful brown colour result.
The scented gloves quickly grew in popularity at French court, and other clothes, including shoes and doublets (men’s outerwear in the Renaissance), would soon also be perfumed.
At the same time, the history of Catherine de’ Medici and scented gloves is also linked with a sad incident.
In 1572, shortly before the planned wedding of Catherine’s daughter and her future husband, Catherine had sent a pair of gloves to the groom’s mother who died shortly thereafter. Some historians do believe that the gloves soaked in poison instead of perfume were the cause of her death.
The story is mentioned in Alexander Dumas’ novel La Reine Margot (Queen Margot) written in 1845, which was adapted into film of the same title in 1994 (with a subplot involving a poisoned book instead of poisoned gloves).
For the sake of clarity, that was the wedding during which, on St. Bartholomew’s Day, Catherine de’ Medici orchestrated the massacre of tens of thousands of Huguenots, going down in history as one of the bloodiest nights.
Perfumed gloves continued to be in fashion in the decades and centuries after the 16th century, and glove scenting became an established industry over time.
Perfumed gloves today are still produced, as the House of Guerlain, in collaboration with the company Agnelle, has put scented glove creation
“La Petite Robe Noir”
on the market in recent years.
