Nº 42 - The Osmoteca
The Osmoteca is the first perfume archive in the world and in the history of mankind.
It is located in Versailles and contains over four thousand perfumes, eight hundred of which no longer exist. This fragrance archive was created with the intention of preserving world heritage and a body of knowledge for anyone interested in the world of fragrances.
It was created in 1988 by Jean Kerléo and other perfumers to reconstruct and preserve perfume formulas that had been lost over the years. The name Osmothèque comes from the union of two Greek words: smell and conservation.
The museum has succeeded, thanks to the scientific and technical skills of the technicians and perfumers working there, in recreating in 2007 the perfume that Marie Antoinette of Habsburg-Lorraine used; the perfumes recreated from her formulas are stored in special aluminium containers and kept in the museum's air-conditioned cellar at 12 degrees Celsius.
Osmothèque also regularly holds numerous conferences on its theme related to public understanding of the industry, trends and the art of the perfume world.
Written by Adele