In the 1920s, Coco Chanel came back from vacation with a tan. That was all it took. Women across the world wanted what she had ...the lifestyle, the glow, the feeling of a summer spent somewhere worth talking about. Tanning became a fashion statement overnight.
A Paris hairdresser named Monsieur Antoine was paying attention. In 1926 he trademarked an orange-tinted tanning gel called, Antoine de Paris, built for the bronzed, sun-soaked look Chanel had made desirable. Antoine was no ordinary hairdresser. Born in Poland, trained in Paris, he became the world’s first celebrity hairdresser. His clients were Chanel, Greta Garbo, Sarah Bernhardt. The formula smelled like the Riviera and felt like a vacation you hadn’t taken yet.
In the 1940s his wife Berthe brought it to New York and America fell for it. By the ‘60s it was the second-biggest tanning brand in the country. By the ‘70s and ‘80s it was iconic... in every beach bag, every magazine spread, every summer memory worth keeping. It passed through Charles of the Ritz, Revlon, Procter & Gamble, Pfizer, Schering-Plough, and finally Bayer, who discontinued it in December 2019.
Over 10,000 people have signed a petition to bring it back. Vintage tubes were selling for $400+ online.
One hundred years in and people are still talking about a tanning gel. That’s not nostalgia. That’s a legacy.
I started photographing these tubes before anyone knew they’d be gone. For everyone who has a memory tied to that smell and to summers well lived. The first tube belonged to my father. When he died, it was at the bottom of his beach bag. I picked up my camera and the collection grew from there. Each print a different tube, a different era of the same formula.
