Parfums Chevalier Garde, Inc.

Parfums Chevalier Garde, lnc. was established by Alexandre "Sasha" Georgievich Tarsaidze in 1940 at 730 Fifth Ave, New York. 

The Beginning:

Alexandre Tarsaidze was an officer in the Czar's Imperial Navy and in the 1930's joined Prince Matchabelli's perfumery concern. Together with a fellow friend, Prince Serge Obolensky, he started Parfums Chevalier Garde in 1937. They were joined by fellow Russian émigré Baron Serge de Gorin, who served as the firm's representative and may have been involved in the creation of the Chevalier Garde perfume and cosmetics lines. Parfums Chevalier Garde was intended to be a company that produced a small, but complete line of French perfumes, cosmetics and other toiletries. He was president of Parfums Chevalier Garde until 1940, when the war cut them off from French imports.

The Chevalier Garde salon was opened in 1937 and was located at 730 Fifth Avenue, New York City. It was designed by Vladimir Bobri in the Russian empire style of the early 19th century, with white, blue and gold colors, predominating, typical of that period. Decorations on the walls, painted by Bobri, represented the Champ de Mars of St. Petersburg Russia, where all the military parades of the imperial guards took place for centuries. The mural on the left portrayed the empress of Russia mounted on a white horse, wearing the uniform of the chevalier garde regiment. On the opposite wall, an Iconic column is topped with the double eagle, a replica of a monument adorning the winter palace square in St. Petersburg. The wall's color was in delicate "café au lait" shades. The furniture, especially designed in the Russian empire period, gave a finishing touch to the atmosphere of that era. The large window that faced Central Park was elegantly framed in a way suggestive of a beautiful landscape painting, flanked with blue and magenta drapes, completing the picture.

A 1937 advertisement reads:

" Introducing CHEVALIER GARDE PERFUMES... HRH, delicately glamorous; Fleur de Perse, quite Oriental, and Roi de Rome,  a languorous scent, each $12.00."

Fate of Parfums Chevalier Garde, Inc:

In 1938, Chevalier Garde lent their signature perfume scent exclusively to a company called Imra for use in their depilatory. The typography used on the packaging was designed by Bobri. Imra was renamed Artra Cosmetics Co. in 1940.

Printers' Ink, Volume 194, 1941:

"The company marketing Imra was first known as Parfums Chevalier Garde, Inc., and was an established firm in the cosmetic field. Last summer the name was changed to Artra Cosmetics, Inc., so that it would better agree with the feature line of.."

The Chevalier Garde, Inc name was purchased in 1961 by the Schering Corporation. this appears to be the last time the name was ever mentioned in any publications.

The Perfumes:

The perfumes of Chevalier Garde:

• 1936 Roi de Rome (a luxuriant, heavy, voluptuous, floral scent)
• 1936 Fleur de Perse (barbaric, quite Oriental)
• 1936 HRH (light, fresh, delicate, sweet and floral)
• 1940 Jubilee
• 1940 Mine Alone
• 1940 Arghavani
• 1940 Rose Petal
• 1940 Garde

Roi de Rome:

Harper's Bazaar, 1937:

" Chevalier Garde's "Roi de Rome" in the crested spherical bottle is a clinging fragrance, typically French, recalling the nineteenth-century flower gardens and tender memories of Napoleon's son."

Roi de Rome was named for Napoleon's ill-fated son, the King of Rome, who was called "L'Aiglon" (Eaglet). It is classified as a heavy floral fragrance for women. Described as "a glamorous perfume that is an aroma of flowers, poetic as the gardens of Rome."

• Top notes: bergamot, neroli, orange blossom, and heliotrope
• Middle notes: rose, ylang ylang, jasmine, carnation, and lilac
• Base notes: sandalwood, amber, musk, ambergris, and vetiver

Fleurs de Perse:

Fleurs de Perse (Flower of Persia) is classified as a tangy floral oriental fragrance for women. Described as . "elusive as the smoke of the narghile, enchanting as a miniature of Ispahan, this fantastic perfume."

• Top notes: bergamot, lilac
• Middle notes: rose, jasmine, incense, spices
• Base notes: sandalwood, amber, musk, ambergris, vanilla

H.R.H.

H.R.H. The perfume was dedicated by special permission to Her Royal Highness, Marina, Duchess of Kent. It is classified as a sweet floral fragrance for women. Described as "delicate as drifting clouds, glamorous as a cavalcade of knights."  

• Top notes: bergamot, gardenia
• Middle notes: rose, jasmine, carnation
• Base notes: sandalwood, vanilla, amber 

The New Yorker, 1939:

"Chevalier Garde: HRH, a light, fresh scent, comes in a round bottle with the famous eagle watching over it; from $4.00."

Bottles:

Bottles were designed by Tarsaidze, Basil Sabaneeff (1902-1991) and Vladimir Bobri (1898-1986). The bottles were packaged in modern styled white presentation boxes. Inside the luxurious packaging of gold and white, designed after the dazzling uniforms of the Chevalier Garde, the Guard of Honor of Emperors, is a crystal sphere bottle, the perch for twin eagles which were said to have been copied from the officer's helmet of the same order. 

Parfum bottles were available in three sizes:

• Small (original retail price was $4.00)
• Medium (original retail price was $6.50)
• Large (original retail price was $12.00)

Bottle sizes with the frosted base:

• 5.25" tall
• 5.75"

Bottle without the frosted base were known as the "Eaglet": 

• 2.25"
• 0.50 oz bottle stands 2 3/4" tall.
• 3.5" 
• 5"
• 5.25"
• 5.5"  

Chevalier Garde also produced other items such as Eau de Toilettes, Eau de Colognes, bath oils, and sachets. Their cosmetics line was scented with their perfumes and packaged in square compacts or lipstick cases of white enamel emblazoned with the blue Maltese Cross, which is the special symbol of the Russian order of the Chevalier Garde. Eau de Toilette was available in one size only and retailed for $10.00.

"PARFUMS CHEVALIER GARDE Parfums Chevalier Garde is introducing a bath oil called "Mare Nostrum." This bath oil is a new creation which is described as a combination of aroma of amaryllis, mimosa, and sweet herbs of the Dalmatian Coast. The bottle is.."

Esquire, 1939:

"Chevalier Garde's complexly elegant H. R. H. created to match the May- fair sophistication of the Duchess of Kent, and Fleurs de Perse, barbaric, Oriental, exotic. ."

Notable Contributors to Chevalier Garde:

Alexandre Tarsaidze:

Alexandre Tarsaidze was born in 1901 in a town called Gori, near Tiflis, Russia, into a family of old Georgian nobility. He claimed that the name Tarsaidze means "the son of the early Christians" in Persian and that his family was subjugated by Persia in the fifteenth century, and that he was kin to the Celts and the Basques. His father, Dr. George A. Tarsaidze, was an oculist by trade and his mother, the former Elizabeth Eristoff, was a princess who descended from King Irakli II, of what had once been the kingdom of Georgia before it was absorbed by czarist Russia early in the nineteenth century.

As a child, he read Jack London's exciting stories about fleets of windjammers going to Alaska and the wilderness of the Klondike, so he decided to become a naval officer. In 1918, he graduated from the Imperial Naval Academy, Petrograd. He then returned to his native Georgia, which declared independence on May 26, 1918, and worked with the Allied High Commissioner, Colonel William N. Haskell in Tiflis until being forced into exile by the Red Army invasion of Georgia.

In 1921, he escaped from the Bolsheviks to Constantinople, he was penniless, but had a good understanding of the English language where he was able to get work for American Relief Administration from 1923-1941, as well as a $13-a- week book-wrapper at Macmillan. By 1926,  he got a job as a buyer in the fine jewelry department of Saks Fifth Avenue and B. H. Macy and Co.

In 1934, he worked for Prince Matchabelli Perfumes as a sales promotion and advertising manager. Matchabelli died the following year while Tarsaidze was organizing a London office for Serge Obolensky.  In 1937, he severed his connections with Prince Matchabelli Products Corporation, New York, as treasurer, a director of the American and French companies, director of sales, advertising, promotion and publicity.

Together with a fellow friend, Prince Serge Obolensky, he started Parfums Chevalier Garde in 1937. They were joined by fellow Russian émigré Baron Serge de Gorin, who served as the firm's representative and may have been involved in the creation of the Chevalier Garde perfume and cosmetics lines. Parfums Chevalier Garde was intended to be a company that produced a small, but complete line of French perfumes, cosmetics and other toiletries. He was president of Parfums Chevalier Garde until 1940, when the war cut them off from French imports.

After his business closed, he worked for other retailers in cosmetic and jewelry businesses. Tarsaidze actively assisted two of the annual White Russian social events, the Allaverdy Ball and the Russian Naval Ball. He was a member of the Association of Former Russian Imperial Naval Officers, a member of the Georgian Society in the U.S.A.  The Director of the Caucasian Society "Allaverdy".

From 1941-1944 he worked for U.S. Army intelligence. During 1945-1958 he was the Director of Public Relations for Serge Obolensky Associates.

He married Madeleine Black, the daughter of the late A. Van Lear Black, publisher of The Baltimore Sun., on May 18, 1940, but the two divorced in 1945. In 1947, he married the German-born Elisabeth Wladimirovna Sverbeev.

In the 1950s, fearing that much material in the Soviet Union on the Imperial family had been destroyed or lost, Tarsaidze scoured the world to find all the film clippings he could of the Imperial family. Then in 1956 he put them together into a full-feature film (approx. 50 minutes long) called "Emperor Nicholas II; Last Czar of Russia". His monarchist colleagues were still showing it to groups in the 1980s.

He wrote many important books on Russia's Imperial history. He still remembered the excitement the day Stalin robbed a bank in Tiflis.

In 1958, Tarsaidze published a fascinating study of the friendly relations which existed between the Russian Empire and the USA before the Revolution. It's called: "Czars and Presidents, The Story of a Forgotten Friendship".

From 1959-1978 he worked as a freelancer for public relations.

All three of his marriages ended in divorce. When he passed away at his home, located at 520 East 76th Street, New York, in 1978, at the age of 77, he left no immediate survivors.

Biographical Note

• 1901 Born, Tiflis, Russia into family of old Georgian nobility
• 1918 Graduated, Imperial Naval Academy, Petrograd
• 1918-1921 Worked with Allied High Commissioner, Col. W. Haskell, in Tiflis
• 1921 Escaped from Bolsheviks to Constantinople
• Worked for American Relief Administration
• 1923-1941 Emigrated to the United States
•  Worked for Matchabelli Perfumes, R.H. Macy Co., Parfum Chevalier Garde and other retailers in cosmetic and jewelry business
•  Member, Association of Former Russian Imperial Naval Officers
•  Member, Georgian Society in the U.S.A.
•  Director, Caucasian Society "Allaverdy"
• 1940 Married Madeleine Black 
• 1941-1944 Worked for U.S. Army intelligence
• 1944 Author, Morskoi Korpus za Chetvert' Veka, 1901-1925, N.Y.
• 1945 Divorced from Madeleine Black
• 1945-1958 Director of Public Relations, Serge Obolensky Associates
• 1947 Marries Elisabeth Wladimirovna Sverbeev
• 1958 Author, Czars and Presidents
• 1969 Author, Chetyre Mifa
• 1977 Author, Katia: Wife Before God
• 1959-1978 Freelancer, public relations
• 1978 Died, New York City

Prince Serge Obolensky's involvement:

Prince Sergei Platonovich Obolensky Neledinsky-Meletzky was born in Tsarskoe Selo, Russia in 1890 to Prince Platon Sergeyevich Obolensky-Neledinsky-Meletzky and Maria Konstantinovna Naryshkina. 

Obolensky emigrated to London and graduated with honors from Christ Church, Oxford University. He put use his knowledge of agriculture, which he intended to apply to the family estates. He first worked with an agricultural machinery firm, then changed to a brokerage business. But, he rushed back to his native country when war was declared, enlisting as a common trooper in the Russian army, and came out as an officer of the Chevalier Guard. He won the Cross of St George for heroism three times. He once served as Russian ambassador to Poland. 

He met his first wife while he was a patient in Yalta. Princess Catherine Alexandrovna Yurievskaya, the youngest daughter of Russian Emperor Alexander II. She was the widow of Prince Alexander Vladimirovich Baryatinsky with two children and working as a war nurse. They were married on October 6, 1916, but their marriage did not last long and they divorced in 1924 without producing children of their own.

Unfortunately for Obolensky, the Bolshevik Revolution put an end to the family fortune and to his life in Russia, he escaped to back England and went to work on the Stock Exchange. 

In London on July 24, 1924, he married Ava Alice Muriel Astor, the daughter of famous Titanic victim and millionaire John Jacob Astor IV. After his second marriage, they came to America, and he worked for three solid years at the Chase National Bank learning the ways of American business, and then worked in real estate and other business ventures with his brother-in-law, the real estate entrepreneur Vincent Astor. Before divorcing in 1932, Obolensky had two children with Ava. In 1935, he was at the bedside of his good friend Prince Matchabelli while he was dying of pneumonia. He also attended the funeral service for the late prince.

In 1937, he started a business, Parfums Chevalier Garde, with Aleksandre Tarsaidze. Tarsaidze served as president of the firm until 1940. It seemed that the perfume business screeched to a halt at the start of the Second World War as they were unable to obtain the necessary ingredients from their French suppliers. Not one to shy away from duty, and always willing to stand up for his country, in this case, his new American home, Obolensky served as a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. paratroopers and a member of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), forerunner of the CIA. Due to his success in the military, he was made a Major in the United States Army in 1942 and made his first five jumps in 1943 at the age of 53. In recognition of his service, "Serge Obolensky Room" was created as a tribute at the Soldiers', Sailors', Marines', Coast Guard and Airmen's Club in Manhattan.

Serge Obolensky became known as a rejuvenator of hotels using a combination of his good looks, the prestige of his aristocratic background, and keen sense of taste. In one instance, in 1936, he was director of the Maisonette Russe in the Hotel St. Regis, said to be one of the most beautifully appointed night clubs in Manhattan. The Maisonette Russe incorporated all the trappings of imperial Russia and it was reported that more champagne is drunk there than any other restaurant in New York. The menu featured dishes that were part of the cuisines of famous Russian homes and imported Russian singers to add a final touch of glamour to the atmosphere, unlike any other in America at the time. Prince Serge was assisted by Count Alderberg, whose father was once the military governor of St. Petersburg.

Another instance was his involvement in the resurrection of the El Morocco from a night club to a members only social club, but keeping its historic name.  He was made vice chairman of the board of Hilton Hotels Corporation in 1958. 

In 1949, he started his own public relations firm in New York City, Serge Obolensky Associates, Inc., handling clients ranging from department stores and social clubs and resorts to liquor companies like Piper-Heidsieck champagne.  

On June 3, 1971, he married for the third and final time to Marilyn Fraser-Wall of Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan, with whom he did not have children. Obolensky died in 1978. You can learn more about that man in his 1958 autobiography, One Man In His Time. The Memoirs of Serge Obolensky.  

Serge de Gorin's involvement:

As I mentioned earlier, Tarsaidze employed another fellow Russian émigré Baron Serge de Gorin as a representative for Parfums Chevalier Garde. I believe he also assisted in the creation of some perfumery and cosmetic products for the company as well. 

A 1938 newspaper article in the Palm Beach Daily News reads:

"A new perfume, called Chevalier Garde, is being introduced by Saks Fifth Avenue Shop, the representative being Serge de Gorin, who is a visitor in Palm Beach. 

An old Roman custom was that of attaching dripping vials of scent to birds that were released to fly over the scene of a great festival, and when the Chevalier Garde scent was launched, following out of this pagan custom, a flock of white pigeons with tiny vials of this perfume tied to their legs were set free over New York. 

Its creator is Alexander Tarsaidze, formerly with the firm of Prince Matchabelli, while in his native Russia, this new perfumer was an officer in the Czar's Imperial Navy.  

His perfume is beautifully bottled, and inspired by the helmet of the officer, with the Naval insignia, an Imperial eagle delicately etched in crystal."

Baron Serge de Gorin Goriani, born in Kieff, Russia in 1898, a captain of artillery in the Imperial Guard in the Russian Army which was composed of the highest Russian nobility up to the time of the revolution, and served at the outbreak of the first World War. He fought with General Denikin's Great White Army and with General Wrangle. He was a one-time attache to the Russian embassy in Bucharest. He was later transferred to both the French and British Army aviation forces because of his knowledge of color photography and aerial map making, de Gorin was a pioneer in the making of maps from air pictures. After the entry of the United States into the war, he was attached to American forces in the intelligence corps and received decoration of the Military Order of the World War from the United States. He was also a member of the Russian Order of St George and was decorated by France with the Crown of Charlemagne.

He immigrated to the US in 1923, in 1933, he became a card-carrying member of the Russian Nobility Association in America, which provided assistance to members of the former Russian Nobility who had fled the aftermath of the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Russian Civil War of 1917–1922, and the Stalinist purges of the 1930s. Looking to make a life for himself in America, he decided that an occupation in the world of cosmetics was in his future and went to school to obtain the skillset he would need for such a specialized position. 

Chemistry formed an important part of his college curriculum, and this was later supplemented by more intensive study, it was this knowledge combined his military experience of chemistry and physics that helped to form his enterprise. He studied the way light and color affected the skin to become a cosmetician, and took a special interest in refining the technique of dramatic eye shadow effects. His talent for blending colored face powders to suit individual complexions was unparalleled in his field. 

He toured the United States on behalf of various department stores and large drug store chains where he would demonstrate makeup applications and analyze complexions of customers, diagnosing each particular skin type and advising its proper care. His methodology for determining the perfect shade of makeup for each woman would be to observe the color of her skin, the hair, the eyes then the unique contour of the face. He would then choose the cosmetics tinted with the complement colors to the individual's coloring. Then, according to differing light variations in daylight, twilight and evening, he would prescribe three customized cosmetic harmonies for each person. 

It was this mastery that landed him a coveted job working as a makeup artist in Hollywood for the Techni-Color Motion Picture Corp, making up the beautiful faces of the glamorous stars of the movie industry such as Norma Shearer, Greta Garbo, Gloria Swanson, Marion Davies, Ilona Massey, Hedy Lamar, Rita Hayworth and Jennifer Jones. He also provided his masterful talents to the theatrical stages for the famous Ballet Russe and the Paris Opera Comique during the 1930s. 

He had written quite extensively for some of the leading beauty culture magazines of the era. He worked as a representative for the House of Lu-Ray (in 1930) and the Kurlash Company (in 1936) prior to his involvement with Chevalier Garde, Inc in 1938. 

During the second world war, when importation of French supplies was halted and business could not continue as usual, he took a break from beauty and joined the American forces again working as an intelligence officer. His fluency in French, Russian, English, Serbian and Romanian came in handy when engaging in counter-espionage work in both Europe and Asia. After the war, he went back to the world of beauty without going back to work with Chevalier Garde, instead, he worked for Helena Rubinstein as a dermatology consultant (in 1939) after this stint, he peddled perfumes for Rigaud (in 1948) and Robert Piguet (also in 1948) before finally working for Coty (in 1951) developing a distinctive complexion analyzer called the Coty-Scope. Virtually unknown today, Serge de Gorin died in 1969. No further information has been found on him.

ASTA Travel News, 1948:

"PIERRE ROUSSELLE, receives from Serge de Gorin, a presentation bottle of Rigaud's perfume for a lucky Paris-bound passenger on the Air France's Golden Comet."