Fragrance house

Hanae Mori

Hanae Mori opened her first design studio, Hiyoshiya, in Shinjuku, Tokyo, in 1951. During Japan’s 1950s film boom, Mori designed hundreds of film costumes; in 1963 she established VIVID Co. and entered ready-to-wear. She presented her first overseas collection in New York in 1965 and opened a haute couture maison on Paris’s Avenue Montaigne in 1977, becoming the first Asian designer to join Paris’s haute couture syndicate. Her work extended to major stage and screen projects, including costumes for La Scala’s Madame Butterfly in 1985 and the Paris Opera Ballet’s Cinderella in 1986. Mori designed Japan’s delegation uniforms for the 1992 Barcelona Olympics and Empress Masako’s wedding robe décolleté in 1993, then received Japan’s Order of Culture in 1996. Hanae Mori Fragrance launched in France in 1995; Butterfly, introduced that year, is a gourmand-floral fragrance. During financial difficulties, the main fashion operations were sold to Mitsui & Co. and the Rothschild group in 2002. Mori continued haute couture through a new company before retiring after her final autumn/winter collection in 2004. In April 2026, Sanyo Shokai announced a licensing agreement with MN Interfashion and HANAE MORI womenswear development planned from autumn/winter 2027.