Alfred Van Cleef, the son of a Dutch diamond dealer married Estelle Arpels, daughter of a gem trader in 1896.
The dynasty began with several generations sharing the founders' love of gems. Charles and Julien, brothers of Estelle, began their partnership with Alfred Van Cleef and established Van Cleef and Arpels in 1906 at the now historic location - 22 Place Vendôme.
In the 1970s, Jacques Arpels took a passionate interest in a totally new idea: creating a jeweller's fragrance. This was another way of making feminine beauty and charm more sublime with an invisible and yet very present ornament. This first jeweller's fragrance was created in 1976, and was named, appropriately, "First".

Fragrances seem ephemeral, yet they live on forever in our memory. To Van Cleef & Arpels, they were a new means of self-expression and creativity: after the language of precious stones comes the endless vocabulary of scents.