History of perfumery

Perfumes and their use dates back to the dawn of time, developing alongside civilizations.

Modern perfumery began in the late nineteenth century with the first use of synthetic products, developed in the twentieth century from real creations, based on discoveries of odorant products through research in organic chemistry and brought together with irreplaceable natural products from new technologies. Houbigant and Guerlain were the first to use synthetic products: Fougère royale in 1884, Jicky in 1889, considered the first modern perfume, celebrating the advent of vanillin. They paved the way for the great works of the twentieth century. François Coty, the father of modern perfumery, a pioneer and industrialist, commonly used natural "Absolutes", from the development of the extraction technique using volatile solvents, that he used with new synthesis products. The technique became the slave of creation and thus the perfumer could recreate the scents that are so inextricably linked to them.
Globalization went hand-in-hand with the development of the fragrance industry and created uniform customs and standardization, in all of the big cities. France played a predominant role in this "Grand Siècle" due to the combined and complementary action of Grasse, the world's largest center of natural raw materials for Perfumery and their derivatives, and Paris, the world's fashion capital. In the City of Perfume, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the perfume industry was characterized by the treatment of natural products and had a virtual world monopoly. After a flurry of creation without any real price limits, through an elitist distribution, the second half of the twentieth century was marked by the provision of fragrances in greater quantities resulting in a lower factory cost and so a lower price. There were more launches with more or less success. The average life of a product was restricted. With few exceptions, perfume changed from being exceptional to every day and from super selective to have mass-market appeal.

Some civilizations were not – and are still not – affected by the globalization of perfume; it is the same today. In Oceania, people rubbed their bodies and hair with plants selected for their fragrance. Asia is still synonymous with floral offerings, as fresh flowers are everywhere in secular and religious life. Scent has the power of seduction and purification. Bodily practices associated with fragrance constituted a model for social life in the UAE. Gradually, in China, scents played a role as a personality marker as was already the case in the West. Perfume was a product with therapeutic, aesthetic, and ritual value. It was an accessory for seduction or eroticism, a way to celebrate the gods, a method of purification.
In eighteenth-century Africa, the art of perfumery was linked to the major coastal towns of East Africa but also an "ambiguous Africa", mysterious and primitive. Perfumes and preparations based on odoriferous plants still contributed very differently to magical and therapeutic strategies in both rural and urban areas. In the twentieth century, perfume imported in bottles became increasingly fashionable, becoming synonymous with social success, in large cities and the most remote villages.

Citation: Musee Grasse