Osmothèque

The Osmothèque the world’s only serious perfume museum, had a heart-warmingly huge stand at Esxence, featuring a row of resurrected 1920s fragrances presented in bottles from which you could pick up the glass stopper to smell it. The concentration of the fragrance was just right (low) to smell it distinctly without tiring the nose. I smelled the original Emeraude (drop dead beautiful and much greener and fresher than later versions) and other 1920s marvels. The Osmothèque, long housed by the ISIPCA perfume school, is moving to new premises in Versailles. I have revered their work from the days thirty years ago when they were a refrigerated basement room in an old Versailles villa. Anne-Cécile Pouant (see vid) explained that they are the memory of perfumery, and that she hoped that the new generation of creators would smell the old perfumes the way film directors watch old movies.

Transcription: What can you do to help us? You can say that we need to make the Osmothèque known to the whole world. It is the basis of culture for anyone who loves perfume, who works in perfume, who is interested in perfume, whether professional or general public. We are a post between the perfume industry and the general public who are passionate about perfume culture. So a bit like the Cinémathèque. And so we need to remember so that the Osmothèque can remain independent, can live on the scale of the work of perfume heritage and make them known to the greatest number of people, because it is the basis of culture, it is the memory of today's perfume. So we need to know the past to be inspired, to produce, to register, to be able to propose perfumes for the future.