Embarrassing Smells

Embarrassing Smells

Visit Fragonard Perfume Museum

(Le Musee du Parfum)

39, boulevard des Capucines, 75002 PARIS

Metro : Opéra

This museum, housed in Napoleon III townhouse, features perfumery objects from various time periods. Take a free guided tour to learn about the history of perfume.

The word ‘perfume’ is derived from the Latin per (through) and fumare (to smoke) because, long before the use of modern techniques, the first perfumes were obtained by burning woods, resins and other complex mixtures.

From The Renaissance to The Enlightenment:

the art of concealing embarrassing smells

By the end of the 14th century, liquid perfumes were gradually replacing solid ones. Scented waters, tinctures to be swallowed, were sought after for their medicinal values.

Bathing was considered to be dangerous and unhealthy, and consequently aristocrats used increasing amounts of strong perfume, such as amber, musk, jasmine and tuberose, to conceal the embarrassing odors.

Strong demand for perfumed products, mainly imported from Italy, encouraged France to develop its own perfume industry. The Grasse region, in the south of France, which enjoyed a favorable climate began to specialise in both aromatic raw materials and the actual production of perfume.

The age of Enlightenment saw a major expansion in perfumery products. Scented waters gave way to toilet vinegars and bathing gradually came back into favour. As flasks adapted to these new products, vinaigrettes, handy recipients for sweet-scented vinegars, were produced.

France became the home of the greatest perfume makers and most innovative perfumes. While Paris was the capital of trade in perfumed products, the town of Grasse, with its extensive fields of jasmine and rose, became the capital of production.

In this small sunny town, perched in the foothills of the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, a few thousand people work to make womens perfume and aromas, generating a turnover of more than a billion per year, or 50% of the market for French perfumes and food aromas and 6% of the world market.