The Grand Perfume Museum, located in a private mansion on the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré which housed the Christian Lacroix house, offers a sensory experience, claiming a “ different and complementary approach » from the International Perfume Museum in Grasse. Offering to the gods then medicinal water, instrument of seduction, now at the heart of a very dynamic industry: perfume, its history and its ingredients.
Kyphi, which dates back to ancient Egypt, is one of the first perfumes whose formula was known, explains historian Elisabeth de Feydeau, a member of the museum's scientific and cultural council. "This perfume was prepared by priests to honor the gods. They realized that in its preparation, they found a kind of appeasement, and they began to offer it as medicine." Kyphi (which means "twice-good perfume") combines woods, spices, and flowers for a very oriental scent. These perfumes, whose recipes were found on the walls of laboratories at the entrance to the pyramids, were burned, ingested, or even mixed with oils for massages.
Perfume linked to medicine
An ugly and paralytic septuagenarian queen who regains the health and beauty of her twenties thanks to an elixir concocted by a hermit: the legend of the Queen of Hungary's water is the best marketing concept ever invented, emphasizes Elisabeth de Feydeau. This water, which dates back to the 20th century, uses the distillation process developed by the Arabs, with scrubland plants such as thyme, marjoram, and rosemary. Perfume is then linked to medicine, hygiene, and the fight against epidemics that decimate Europe, as illustrated by the story of the vinegar of the four thieves. The four brigands robbed corpses during the Toulouse plague in the 14th century without being contaminated, thanks to a recipe based in particular on cloves and wormwood acting as an antiseptic.
The art of perfume
From apothecary, the perfumer became a creator from the end of the 18th century, when the art of perfume began to take shape in the 19th and even more so in the 20th century. The perfumer freed himself from formulas to create, finding in synthetic materials ingredients that enriched his palette and helped him surpass nature. Chemistry, for example, made it possible to reproduce the scent of lily of the valley, a flower too fragile to be able to extract perfume from it. Perfumery became linked to fashion. "This dress looks wonderful on you, but a drop of my perfume on its hem, and it will suit you perfectly," said Paul Poiret, the first couturier to market his own perfumes in 1911.
The design of the juice
The term "nose" doesn't capture the entire process of creating a perfume: "The nose is certainly present, but it's only a verification tool," explains Jean-Christophe Hérault, a perfumer at the American aroma and fragrance giant IFF, a partner of the museum. In his office, he begins by imagining a perfume, writes a formula, including the ingredients and their quantities, then has assistants weigh this recipe in the laboratory, which he gradually tests and refines.
Six hours: that's the ideal length for a perfume, according to Jean-Claude Ellena, former nose at Hermès, a house to which he now serves as an advisor. "There are thirty heavy molecules, those that will last a long time, that's all," explains the famous perfumer, citing "coumarin, musks, vanilla." "If you only use these molecules, the olfactory construction is very uninteresting; it repeats itself. With lighter molecules, there is more diversity of expression." "We often hear, it has to last on my skin. I say yes, but not for days! Beauty doesn't necessarily last."
(Source: AFP-Relaxnews)
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