Paul Poiret named his perfume and interiors companies after his daughters, then lost everything
In 1911 Paul Poiret launched two companies alongside his couture house and named them after his daughters: Les Parfums de Rosine for fragrance, after Rose, and Martine for interiors, after Martine. Rosine put out around forty fragrances in eighteen years. Martine was staffed by untrained working-class girls he sent to sketch flowers and animals in Paris parks and zoos, whose drawings he bought and put into production as textiles, wallpapers and carpets. He threw the Thousand and Second Night party for 300 guests on 24 June 1911 and let the newspapers do the rest. At the 1925 Paris Exposition he chartered three barges on the Seine at his own expense to show the whole world he had built. He sold the fashion house in November 1924, and in 1929 the remaining stock was sold off by the kilogram, as rags. He died penniless in 1944 and Elsa Schiaparelli (@schiaparelli) paid for the burial.