Absinthe Pernod Fils — La Fée Verte — Belle Époque Vintage Poster — Remastered

Taste the true Green Fairy. The invitation is right there in the copy, and in Belle Époque Paris, it was one that artists, poets, and bohemians accepted with considerable enthusiasm.

Absinthe Pernod Fils was the most celebrated brand of la fée verte — the green fairy — the anise-flavoured spirit that became the defining drink of late 19th-century Parisian creative life. Van Gogh drank it. Toulouse-Lautrec drank it. Verlaine, Rimbaud, Wilde — the list of devotees reads like a who's who of the era's most interesting minds. Pernod Fils, founded in 1805, was the original and the finest, and their advertising reflected it: confident, beautiful, and entirely sure of its own mythology.

Absinthe was banned across much of Europe and North America in the early 20th century, which only deepened its legend. This poster is a document of the moment before the ban — when the green fairy was still very much at large in the cafés of Montmartre.

Every piece in this collection carries a history worth knowing. Read about the golden age of advertising art and the artists who made it.