What Is Weil Perfume?

Weil is a French perfume house founded in Paris in 1927 as the fragrance arm of Les Fourrures Weil, a furrier run by the brothers Alfred, Jacques and Marcel Weil. It is the house that turned the practical problem of scenting fur into a genre: the parfum fourrure. Its three founding fragrances — Zibeline, Hermine and Chinchilla Royale — were named after sable, ermine and chinchilla, the three furs a wealthy Parisian client would have owned, and they were composed by Claude Fraysse with his daughter Jacqueline. Weil's best-known scent, Antilope, arrived after the Second World War and is one of the great aldehydic chypres of the 1940s. The house faded in the 1980s and has not produced its originals for decades, which is why every bottle worth owning today is vintage.

If you collect mid-century French perfume, Weil belongs on the same shelf as Caron, Houbigant and Molinard — but it is far less picked over. Antilope and Hermine turn up rarely, usually from estates, and almost never in the condition of the two bottles in our Weil collection.

The Fur House That Accidentally Became a Perfume House

Les Fourrures Weil had been dressing Paris in fur since before the First World War — sources date the fur business to somewhere between 1912 and 1920 — and by the mid-1920s the brothers were established names in a trade built on luxury, cold weather and the problem of smell. Fur absorbs odours. A wealthy client asked Marcel Weil whether a fragrance could be made that would sweeten a coat without damaging the pelts, and rather than outsource the question, the family hired the answer: Claude Fraysse, a perfumer who had worked at Firmenich in Geneva and had been head perfumer at Yardley in London.

The result was a trio released in 1928 and named with unusual literalism: Zibeline (sable), Hermine (ermine) and Chinchilla Royale (chinchilla). Each was built to be sprayed on fur linings and skin alike. Zibeline — a grand floral aldehydic with vetiver and oakmoss — became the commercial hit and outgrew its origin, worn by women (and, by several accounts, men) who had never owned a fur in their lives.

The Fraysse family is the other half of the Weil story. Claude composed the originals; his daughter Jacqueline Fraysse worked beside him and created Cassandra in 1936 on her own; his son André Fraysse went to Lanvin; another son, Hubert Fraysse, worked at Synarome in Geneva and is credited with the second version of Antilope in 1948; and André's son Richard Fraysse became the long-serving in-house perfumer at Caron. Few dynasties in perfumery connect a 1920s fur house to modern Caron quite so directly.

Marcel Weil died of pneumonia in 1933. The family kept expanding — Secret de Vénus in 1933, Bambou in 1934, Noir, Une Fleur — then left France in 1940, closing the Paris shop and re-establishing in New York, where they bought out their American distributor and opened on Fifth Avenue, manufacturing Zibeline and Cassandra on site. During the Occupation their Paris business was seized and run by others; after the war the Weils returned, regained control, and launched Antilope (1945–46) and Padisha (1946) into a very different market.

Top 5 Weil Perfumes Every Collector Should Know

1. Zibeline (1928) — the sable. Aldehydes, coriander and tarragon over orris, gardenia and jasmine, landing on honey, sandalwood, civet and vetiver. The reference parfum fourrure and the house's bestseller; early extraits are famously animalic, 1950s batches gain a spice note, and 1970s–80s versions turn powdery and honeyed. Parfumo rates the vintage parfum 8.6/10.
2. Hermine (1927, dated 1931 by some sources) — the ermine, and the rarest of the trio. A green chypre of magnolia and orange over jasmine and rose, with oakmoss, labdanum, tonka and vanilla underneath. Advertising of the period called it a "sweet tropical floral"; in the bottle it is drier and mossier than that suggests.
3. Antilope (1945–46) — the house's masterpiece and its most collected scent. Aldehydes, bergamot and clary sage, a heart of iris, carnation, violet and lily of the valley, and a base of Russian leather, ambergris, cedar, musk and vetiver. Frequently compared to Miss Dior and My Sin; collectors describe the parfum de toilette as the sweet spot between the extrait's density and the cologne's brightness.
4. Chinchilla Royale (1928) — the third fur, a jasmine-and-rose composition that is now the least documented of the trio and correspondingly the hardest to find in any concentration.
5. Secret de Vénus (1933) — less a single perfume than a bath-and-body line that carried the Weil fragrances into American department stores; the Zibeline bath oil is the version many collectors remember, closer to the extrait than the eau.

Worth knowing beyond the top five: Padisha (1946), Weil de Weil (1971, a dry green woody scent with a devoted following), Chunga (1978) and Weil pour Homme (1980). Fragrantica lists 36 Weil fragrances and Parfumo 61, averaging 7.8/10 — a high score for a house this obscure.

What Does Antilope Smell Like?

Antilope is an aldehydic chypre with an unusually aromatic, herbal spine. It opens bright and slightly soapy — bergamot, neroli, a fizz of aldehydes — then turns dry and green as clary sage and carnation take over from the flowers. Iris and violet keep it powdery rather than sweet. The drydown is the reason people hunt it: Russian leather, oakmoss, vetiver and a distinctly animalic musk-ambergris base that sits close to the skin for hours.

Think of it as the missing link between Chanel No. 5's sparkle and Miss Dior's mossy weight, with a leather note borrowed from a men's club. It is not a pretty perfume, and it is not meant to be. The 60 ml parfum de toilette in our collection is boxed, roughly nine-tenths full, and carries the embossed WEIL / PARIS / MADE IN FRANCE mark in the glass — see the bottle and its carton here.

What Does Hermine Smell Like?

Hermine is the quieter, stranger one. Officially a floral, it behaves like a green chypre: magnolia and orange at the top, jasmine and rose in the middle, then a long, mossy base of oakmoss, labdanum, tonka, amber, vanilla and musk. Where Zibeline is plush and Antilope is leathery, Hermine is cool and somewhat austere — the "virginal whiteness" the house's own advertising claimed for it, both of the blossoms and of the ermine's winter coat.

The example in our collection is a pure parfum in the tall shouldered flacon with a glass ball stopper tied on with wire, presented in its textured gold carton. It is a numbered bottle — a small printed label on the base and carton reads Nº 7947 — and it also carries a period distributor label for Francisco Huerta, Tlacotalpam 111, Mexico D.F., evidence of how far Weil's export network reached. The flacon is roughly two-thirds full and is sold as pictured: see the Hermine flacon here.

How to Authenticate Vintage Weil Perfume

• Read the roundel. Genuine Weil cartons carry a circular medallion with a laurel wreath and bow, printed ANTILOPE (or HERMINE) / WEIL / PARIS. Reproduction labels tend to set the three words in a single line.
• Check the concentration language. Weil used "parfum de toilette" — a category between eau de toilette and parfum that the house helped popularise — and printed it in script below the medallion. Modern fakes default to "eau de parfum".
• Look for the net content in fluid ounces. Genuine mid-century cartons state NET CONT. 2 FL. OZ. (60 ml) alongside MADE IN FRANCE, often with a small reference number such as 540 N.
• Examine the glass, not the label. Antilope bottles are embossed WEIL / PARIS / MADE IN FRANCE directly into the base or the back panel. A paper label where there should be moulded glass is a warning.
• Hermine stoppers are wired, not screwed. The parfum flacon uses a glass ball stopper seated on a cork and secured with a fine wire or cord; the cork darkens and the wire oxidises green with age.
• Numbered labels are a good sign. Bottles and cartons frequently carry a small printed Nº (ours reads 7947) plus a short letter code, and export stock often has a local distributor's label pasted on — Mexican, Cuban, Japanese and Lebanese labels all appear on genuine Weil.
• Judge the juice by smell and colour, not by fill level. Sixty to eighty years of evaporation is normal; a dark amber or reddish-brown colour in a parfum is expected, and a bright, thin, uniformly pale liquid in an "unopened" bottle is more suspicious than a half-empty one.

Vintage Weil vs Modern Weil: What Changed

Era	What was made	Collector's note
1927–1939	Zibeline, Hermine, Chinchilla Royale, Secret de Vénus, Bambou, Cassandra	Original Fraysse formulations; the animalic, civet-heavy parfums
1940–1945	New York production on Fifth Avenue	US-manufactured Zibeline and Cassandra; different labels, same house
1946–1960s	Antilope, Padisha, parfum de toilette concentration	The golden age; Antilope PDT is the benchmark
1970s–1980s	Weil de Weil, Chunga, Weil pour Homme	Last original-era releases; the house then goes quiet
2002–present	Trademark relaunches (Zibeline de Weil 2011, Essence series)	Not the same perfumery; collect for the name, not the formula

Weil's decline is a familiar French-perfume story: repeated changes of ownership through the 1970s and 1980s left the house without a flagship scent or a market, and by the time the name changed hands again the original compositions were out of production. The upside for collectors is that Weil has never been hyped the way Guerlain or Caron has, so genuine Antilope and Hermine still surface at prices set by scarcity rather than by influencer attention.

Frequently Asked Questions About Weil Perfume

Is Weil still making perfume?

No — not in any meaningful way. Parfums Weil effectively stopped producing new fragrance in the 1980s, and the trademark has changed hands since (Perfume Shrine reports the name passed to Aroli Aromes Ligeriens in 2002). A handful of relaunches appeared in the 2010s, including Zibeline de Weil and an Essence series, but the house that made Antilope and Zibeline in their original form no longer exists. Everything collectors want is vintage.

Is Weil Antilope discontinued?

Yes. Antilope was discontinued decades ago, and the versions still in circulation are vintage bottles from the 1940s through the 1980s. Parfumo dates the original to 1945 and Fragrantica to 1946; a second version followed in 1948, credited to Hubert Fraysse. Later 'hexagonal bottle' eau de cologne releases are widely described by collectors as bearing little resemblance to the original aldehydic chypre.

Why are Weil perfumes named after furs?

Because Weil was a furrier before it was a perfumer. Les Fourrures Weil of Paris sold coats, and in the 1920s a client asked whether something could be made to scent fur without damaging it. The answer was a trio of perfumes named after the three most prized furs — Zibeline (sable), Hermine (ermine) and Chinchilla Royale (chinchilla) — which is why the house is still called the definitive maker of parfums fourrure.

Which Weil perfume is the most collectible?

Zibeline is the best known, but Hermine is the scarcest of the original trio and Antilope Parfum de Toilette has the strongest cult following. In practice, condition decides value: sealed parfum, original boxes and complete presentation sets carry a large premium over loose bottles, and numbered flacons with their original cartons are the hardest to find.

How can I tell if a vintage Weil bottle is original?

Look at the typography and the glass, not the juice colour. Genuine Weil packaging uses the ANTILOPE / WEIL / PARIS roundel with a laurel wreath, the words 'parfum de toilette' in script, and 'MADE IN FRANCE' with a net content in fluid ounces. Antilope bottles are embossed WEIL / PARIS / MADE IN FRANCE in the glass. Hermine parfum comes in a shouldered flacon with a ball stopper tied on with wire, and often carries a small numbered label on the base. Wear to the gold foil and slightly sunken cork are normal on 70-year-old stock; laser-sharp modern printing on an old mould is not.

Was Hermine by Weil a unisex fragrance?

Yes, in practice. Hermine is catalogued as a women's fragrance, but Fragrantica and Parfumo both list it as worn by women and men, and vintage advertising sold the fur trio to a mixed clientele — Zibeline in particular was reputedly worn by men in the 1950s. The green chypre structure of oakmoss, labdanum and tonka reads closer to a classic masculine cologne than to a sweet mid-century feminine.

Related reading: Molinard — the Grasse family house since 1849 · Houbigant — the 1775 house that invented the fougère · Caron — Paris, 1904