Osmothèque - Conservatoire International des Parfums
Historic odours preserved at France's 'perfume library'
Since 1990, retired perfumer Yves Tanguy has held the keys to the Osmotheque scent library, set up near the Chateau de Versailles west of Paris as a repository of fragrances past and present. Duration: 02:20
The Osmothèque and Guerlain: A Perfume Pilgrimage to Paris
We spent a couple of days in Paris and Versailles smelling some special things, and here our some of the highlights.
In particular, we talk about out trip to the Osmothèque, the world's largest scent archive, where we we guided through the history of perfume by the lovely Anne-Cécile. Visits to the Osmothèque are arranged by appointment:
We then went to the flagship Guerlain store on the Champs-Élysées, and were shown around by the lovely Francoise.
Amongst the other perfume houses we visited, a real highlight was Orizia L. Legrand:
VYP - L'Osmothèque
Véritable conservatoire international des parfums, l'Osmothèque de Versailles conserve des fragrances parfois anciennes ou quasiment disparues. Découverte de ce lieu étonnant avec Sophie Irles, chargée de la collection et des développements de projets.
Elisabeth de Feydeau et les antiquaires de Versailles
RR0251/C France/UK: Perfume
SHOTLIST
Paris: Eiffel Tower; statue in Place Vendome; fish gushing water; Arc de Triomphe; Champs Elysees; Tripoli, Libya: Arab girl in head scarf looking in shop window, enters shop and tries on spray perfumes; Paris: catwalk show; Tom Ford for YSL autumn 2002; models walking down towards camera; celebrities in front row and press photographer; exterior of perfume school in Parisian suburb near Versailles; students outside door; SOT Annie Towhill, Lecturer at Institute of Perfume, Cosmetics and Food Flavouring or ISIPCA; laboratory where cosmetics are being prepared; students in white coats working with test tubes and elementary lipsticks; SOT Nana Mensah, Ghanaian student at ISIPCA; compounding laboratory; student mixing contents of small brown bottles; sniffing; Asian girl smelling compound using test swab stick; SOT Patrick le Bihan, Head of Commerce and Communication, ISIPCA; Ashford, Kent: exterior of Quest building; man sniffing white cloth in adjacent room; group of testers sniffing white cloths and quiet talking; SOT HeeSoon Oh, Korean nose at Quest; wig on model being combed; lab assistant sniffing strand of hair; SOT Mark Walsh, Vice President, category management, Quest; oil being poured in lab; equipment in use compounding liquid elements; medium of electronic mixing; SOT, Jessamy Blanford, PR, Quest International; automated factory: vats of perfumed liquid; fork lift truck going between different part of factory floor; opening large taps; liquid pouring out; near Paris: Osmotheque Perfume museum outside Paris; nose Jean Kerleo looking at exhibits in Osmotheque in small bottles; SOT Jean Kerleo, curator, Osmotheque; London: perfume section of Selfridges department store; crowds of shoppers at cosmetic counters; demonstration of perfume; SOT Gail Guyton, National Education Director, Estee Lauder; perfume purchase at Estee Lauder counter; Oxford street and Christmas lights (APTN)
STORYLINE
The world of fine fragrance is surrounded with glamour and images of French chic. But the reality behind this glitzy exterior is vastly different. The four biggest food flavouring and fragrance houses may have offices in Paris to liaise with designers, but the real work is done in places as unromantic as Ashford in Kent, England. Housed in vast vats, along with toilet cleaners and perfumes for shampoo, the prestige fragrances are developed from natural smells and over 30,000 other compounds. The noses creating these scents are as likely to be Korean, Romanian or African as French.
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Echange avec Francis KURKDJIAN Partie 1
Echange avec Francis KURKDJIAN Partie 2
#hdsb @emmanuelmaubert se balade dans Ville de #Versailles
Emmanuel vous emmène visiter : le théâtre de Marie-Antoinette ; la galerie des sculptures et des moulages du château ; les appartements de De Gaulle, l’osmothèque Samedi 7 mars à 16h15 sur France 3 Paris Ile-de-France
Versailles : le propre et le sale - Toute L'Histoire
Versailles : le propre et le sale - Toute L'Histoire
Le château de Versailles conserve l'image d'un palais sale, rempli d'immondices : des courtisans se soulageant dans les recoins des escaliers, un roi recevant sur sa chaise percée, et où chacun déverse son pot de chambre du haut de ses fenêtres. Pourtant dès la construction du château, Louis XIV a pensé aux commodités plusieurs latrines publiques ont été aménagées ainsi qu'un système hydraulique d'une grande modernité. Mais alors qu'en est-il de cette mauvaise réputation ? Les rois sont-ils aussi sales que le château puant ? Où se nichent les fantasmes et la réalité entre le propre et le sale dans le château du roi Soleil ?
Tous les dimanches à 19h la chaîne Toute L'Histoire vous propose de découvrir un nouveau documentaire:
A repository of humanity's olfactory memory
(31 Dec 2016) LEAD IN
Perfumes have exerted power on people the world over for thousands of years, evoking memories and inspiring feelings.
Many fragrances of recent decades have now disappeared, but at a special place in France their olfactory memories live on.
Original perfumes old and new are stored at the Osmotheque of Versailles, the first and only historical world library of scents.
STORY-LINE
Perfume: it fills the air and lingers for minutes or hours, present yet impossible to see or touch.
A fragrance's magic is evanescent and can only be captured in a bottle under special conditions.
The Osmotheque of Versailles, located 20 kilometres (12 miles) from Paris, does exactly this: it keeps for posterity perfume originals, either those still existing or those no longer on the shelves.
This French association is the only international archive of perfumery and includes a collection of 4,000 scents created from the mid-1800's until today.
L'Osmotheque was founded in April 1990 by Jean Kerleo, a French perfume maker for the maison Jean Patou.
Kerleo remained at the helm of the organisation until 2008, when Parisian perfumer Patricia de Nicolai succeeded him.
De Nicolai, owner of the French niche perfume house Nicolai that she created in 1989, says that the archive works relentlessly to keep up with new perfume editions.
The Osmotheque is an archive, a world archive of perfumes. It's a living archive because we have old perfumes and also perfumes (launched) very recently.
We ask companies to entrust us as soon as they can with the new perfumes that they launch on the market because once the perfume is kept at the Osmotheque we know we have it and we can continue to piece together this history of perfumery. If we don't do it regularly companies forget to send us their perfumes and we end up with holes, de Nicolai says.
The Osmotheque keeps the original formula of hundreds of perfumes; the formula is a list of all 20, 30 or even 40 chemical ingredients that put together in very specific doses create that particular scent.
The Osmotheque is never the owner of this recipe, but its custodian; perfume companies remain the formulas' proprietors.
Whenever a formula is available to the Osmotheque, its perfumers recreate that perfume according to the exact ingredients and doses listed on the recipe.
In most cases, though, the formula remains a closely guarded secret, so the Osmotheque asks companies to send a bottle of the original perfume that it will then keep in the so-called perfume cellar, as de Nicolai explains.
When the stock diminishes or when a perfume is a bit damaged it's easy for us to remake those perfumes of which we have a formula: we go, look for the formula and do it again at the Osmotheque. For all other fragrances (for which the Osmotheque doesn't have a formula ) we turn to the companies and ask them to make them for us exactly as in their original version, de Nicolai says.
The perfume cellar is housed in a room next to the Osmetheque's main office in Versailles.
Fragrances are stored there under special conditions so that their original scent can last as long as possible. Like artworks in museums that are kept under a certain light and temperature, perfumes require enormous work if one wants to guard their fragility, de Nicolai says.
The original perfumes are stored in a dark glass bottle at 12 degree Celsius, with a layer of argon gas, inside a wine fridge.
Although the Osmotheque features hundreds of fragrance bottles on its shelves, it stands out from private collections of vintage perfumes.
The Osmotheque follows similar procedures: whenever it's entrusted with a fragrance's formula it stores it in a bank in Versailles and has set up a strict procedure to access it.
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Find out more about AP Archive:
VYP - Elisabeth de Feydeau, historienne de parfums et écrivaine
Elisabeth de Feydeau, à l’occasion de la sortie de son ouvrage : “Le roman des Guerlain”, aux Editions Gallimard.
MICHAL GIZINSKI on Fougere Royale ~ Guest Review
Fragrance Specialist Michal Gizinski gives us his views on Fougere Royale by Houbigant.
Link to The Osmotheque perfume museum in Versailles France.
L'Actu - Les Petits Nez de l'Osmothèque
Un atelier autour des parfums proposé aux enfants de 8 à 11 ans. Cela se passe à l'Osmothèque de Versailles. Un atelier intitulé « Les petits Nez » qui se déroule pendant et hors des vacances scolaires.
DSC0002
Entre jardins et parfums, lecture chez les Antiquaires de la Geôle à Versailles: 'Alain Baraton et Elisabeth de Feydeau.
Le 7/8 - Saint-Valentin : un moment de douceurs et de senteurs
Saint-Valentin : une affaire de douceurs et de senteurs. Elisabeth de Feydeau, écrivaine, historienne et spécialiste des parfums évoque un gâteau conçu pour la journée des amoureux. Nous parlerons également des différents parfums. Il sera aussi question de l'initiative d'un entrepreneur pour déclarer sa flamme autrement.
A repository of humanity's olfactory memory
(1 Jan 2017) LEAD IN
Perfumes have exerted power on people the world over for thousands of years, evoking memories and inspiring feelings.
Many fragrances of recent decades have now disappeared, but at a special place in France their olfactory memories live on.
Original perfumes old and new are stored at the Osmotheque of Versailles, the first and only historical world library of scents.
STORY-LINE
Perfume: it fills the air and lingers for minutes or hours, present yet impossible to see or touch.
A fragrance's magic is evanescent and can only be captured in a bottle under special conditions.
The Osmotheque of Versailles, located 20 kilometres (12 miles) from Paris, does exactly this: it keeps for posterity perfume originals, either those still existing or those no longer on the shelves.
This French association is the only international archive of perfumery and includes a collection of 4,000 scents created from the mid-1800's until today.
L'Osmotheque was founded in April 1990 by Jean Kerleo, a French perfume maker for the maison Jean Patou.
Kerleo remained at the helm of the organisation until 2008, when Parisian perfumer Patricia de Nicolai succeeded him.
De Nicolai, owner of the French niche perfume house Nicolai that she created in 1989, says that the archive works relentlessly to keep up with new perfume editions.
The Osmotheque is an archive, a world archive of perfumes. It's a living archive because we have old perfumes and also perfumes (launched) very recently.
We ask companies to entrust us as soon as they can with the new perfumes that they launch on the market because once the perfume is kept at the Osmotheque we know we have it and we can continue to piece together this history of perfumery. If we don't do it regularly companies forget to send us their perfumes and we end up with holes, de Nicolai says.
The Osmotheque keeps the original formula of hundreds of perfumes; the formula is a list of all 20, 30 or even 40 chemical ingredients that put together in very specific doses create that particular scent.
The Osmotheque is never the owner of this recipe, but its custodian; perfume companies remain the formulas' proprietors.
Whenever a formula is available to the Osmotheque, its perfumers recreate that perfume according to the exact ingredients and doses listed on the recipe.
In most cases, though, the formula remains a closely guarded secret, so the Osmotheque asks companies to send a bottle of the original perfume that it will then keep in the so-called perfume cellar, as de Nicolai explains.
When the stock diminishes or when a perfume is a bit damaged it's easy for us to remake those perfumes of which we have a formula: we go, look for the formula and do it again at the Osmotheque. For all other fragrances (for which the Osmotheque doesn't have a formula ) we turn to the companies and ask them to make them for us exactly as in their original version, de Nicolai says.
The perfume cellar is housed in a room next to the Osmetheque's main office in Versailles.
Fragrances are stored there under special conditions so that their original scent can last as long as possible. Like artworks in museums that are kept under a certain light and temperature, perfumes require enormous work if one wants to guard their fragility, de Nicolai says.
The original perfumes are stored in a dark glass bottle at 12 degree Celsius, with a layer of argon gas, inside a wine fridge.
Although the Osmotheque features hundreds of fragrance bottles on its shelves, it stands out from private collections of vintage perfumes.
The Osmotheque follows similar procedures: whenever it's entrusted with a fragrance's formula it stores it in a bank in Versailles and has set up a strict procedure to access it.
You can license this story through AP Archive:
Find out more about AP Archive:
Osmothèque : le conservatoire international du parfum fête ses 25 ans
À Versailles l’osmothèque fête ses 25 ans. Le conservatoire international du parfum se visite avec l’odorat, il veille sur plus de 3000 fragrances de tout temps, dont 400 disparues du marché.
7/8 Le Journal - Edition du vendredi 1er juillet 2016
Le « Brexit » une semaine après
La sortie du Royaume Uni de l’Europe. Depuis une semaine les réunions se multiplient. Les élus tentent de rassurer. Invité pour commenter cette actualité : Pierre Lequiller, Député des Yvelines, Conseiller Régional d’Île-de-France, Président « Île-de-France Europe ».
L’Osmothèque de Versailles a 25 ans
À Versailles l’osmothèque fête ses 25 ans. Le conservatoire international du parfum se visite avec l’odorat, il veille sur plus de 3000 fragrances de tout temps, dont 400 disparues du marché.
L'essentiel de la semaine
Et puis que faut-il retenir de cette semaine ?
Rendez-vous en deuxième partie de journal pour le zapping de l'information locale. Entre la hausse du pass navigo, les innovations du site Bouygues Challenger à Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines qui impressionne les ministres et l’ouverture du 100ème Open National de Golf.
Et aussi :
• La communauté portugaise face à son 1/4 de finale de l'Euro ?
Versailles , le bus a l' allez .
Excelente la video . Coup de Coeur .