2023-10-28 07:00:08
Dozens of Damascus rose petals flutter in a glass dome, propelled by the visitor’s breath alone, diffusing their delicate honeyed aroma into the air. The installation, named The Flight of Flowers, is one of the eight olfactory devices imagined by the Magique creative studio for “Parfums d’Orient”, the exhibition of the Institute of the Arab World which is held until March 17, 2024.
The event, organized under the direction of Hanna Boghanim and Agnès Carayon, responsible for collections and exhibitions, allows us to see and feel what we had almost forgotten: since the most distant Antiquity, the Orient is the cradle of perfumery. No other civilization expresses such a taste for smells in every moment of daily life, from the kitchen to the alcove and even sacred places.
This is the first time that oriental perfume has been celebrated in this way, with all the scenographic splendor it deserves. Having waited so long constitutes something of an anomaly if we consider that this style has irrigated the imagination of modern Western perfumery since the beginning of the 20th century.
François Coty, the precursor
It is considered that the first so-called oriental perfume was L’Ambre antique by François Coty, created in 1905. Although this timeless masterpiece ceased to be marketed thirty years later, no perfumer or perfume lover still remembers it. have never forgotten. Since then, many classics have drawn from oriental fiction a word, an image, a smell or an entire story: Shalimar (Guerlain), Coco (Chanel), Poison (Dior) or more recently The Lion (Chanel).
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According to Eugénie Briot, a specialist in the history of perfumery, there are two landmarks in the recent history of perfume: Opium, by Yves Saint Laurent (1977), which launched a global perfumery and considered perfume as a whole – a juice, a bottle and a story –, and Féminité du Bois, by Serge Lutens (1992), homage to the Atlas cedar, which sets the codes of niche perfumery. Two perfumes that belong to the large oriental family. “Perfume is devoid of any materiality. It was therefore necessary for it to be embodied in a strong imagination in order to exist in a world where communication occurs through images. adds Eugénie Briot.
As far back as we can go back, the regions stretching from the Middle East to the Mediterranean basin have nourished perfume composers and served their creations. Honoré de Balzac understood this well. In his novel César Birotteau, published in 1837, this key character of The Human Comedy, petty-bourgeois perfumer, will draw on the oriental repertoire to create a lightening product for the hands which he calls the Double Paste of the Sultanes, taking inspiration from an alleged Arabic book. The shopkeeper on Place Vendôme is obviously not unaware of the subliminal magic that these words exert on the customer’s brain.
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