Until the middle of the 20th century, factices were often crafted by luxury glassmakers including Baccarat and Lalique to be exact replicas of their regular-sized counterparts, filled with colored water or alcohol to mimic the look of actual perfume. They grew bigger and bolder through the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, but by the early 2000s, their production had begun to peter out. Not only were they prohibitively expensive to produce, but the whole culture of retail had begun to shift.
Gupta’s obsession with factices began like something from a fairy tale. When he immigrated to the United States from India in the early 1990s, he took a job at a perfume wholesaler on Canal Street in New York City, hoping to earn enough money to save for a master’s degree in engineering. One fateful day, he was sent to the basement to clean—and that’s where he saw his first factice. “It was sitting on a shelf, covered in dust,” he says. “I had no idea what it was, but it felt as though it was calling to me.”
Gupta asked his boss if he could buy the bottle, and the man laughed at him: “He told me it was none of my business. But I kept asking, until finally he said he would take $2,000 for it.” It took Gupta a year to save the money on his meager salary, visiting the basement every day to gaze upon the treasure. “I didn’t know why I wanted the bottle or what I was going to do with it. I just loved it. That was the start of my journey,” he says. “Thirty-three years ago.”
