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The lingerie brand Scandale was founded in Paris in 1932 by Robert Perrier. A great connoisseur of rare fabrics, as well as a songwriter and art collector, he supplied high-quality silks to Coco Chanel in the 1920s, an activity he continued for more than thirty years — until 1967 — providing some of the most sought-after luxury fabrics to the houses of Dior, Yves Saint Laurent, Balenciaga, Jean Patou and Givenchy. Several of his silks are today held in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Musée de la Mode et du Textile in Lyon, and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

He also introduced synthetic fabrics into French haute couture, a major innovation at the time, which he developed in particular for women’s lingerie. This was the birth of Scandale: before the postwar advent of Lycra, Robert Perrier pioneered the transformation of liquid latex into fiber, giving rise to the first elastic girdle and helping free women from the constraints previously imposed by corsetry. Bold and sensual, “Scandale red” had a considerable impact on the fashion industry and on the way women wore undergarments.

The brand was the first to use illustration in advertising, entrusting the poster artist René Gruau with the design of its emblematic logo, then Pierre Couronne, Diaz and Jean Jacquelin (between 1950 and 1960) with the direction of several advertising campaigns in France and the United States. Scandale was recently relaunched, in 2021.

This gouache was used for one of the visuals in the campaign launched by the brand in the United States in 1955.