Perfume History

Our profession is so rich in history that a few hundred words, on a web page, would not even resume the first few thousand years of the relationship of humans and fragrances.

In fact, our history starts about 5000 years ago, when the Egyptians started to use odoriferous materials, during their religious rituals, as gifts to the Gods. Later on, the Greeks became the first ones to use perfumes for medical and aesthetic purposes and also the first one to open “perfume shops” where all the artists and intellectuals met to discuss the arts.

The Assyrians and then the Romans used perfumes in considerable quantities anointing, not only the body but the hair, the clothes, the bed, as well as their favorite slave or horse!

The Islamic, later on, became also very found of perfumes as well. Rose and Rose water were symbol of purity with the Sultans as they had the walls of their palaces washed with rose water. The Moorish brought their knowledge to Spain and then to France. The Italian of the Renaissance discovered the art of perfumery through the Venetian merchants who were doing commerce with Spain. The 15th century saw the birth of modern perfumery, when Florence was the cultural center of the western world. Florence kept that status for about 100 years until the daughter of a rich Florentine banker, Catherine de Medici, went to France to marry Henry the Second.

She moved to Paris, with her personal perfumer, and certainly was instrumental to the development of the perfume industry.

500 years later, our industry is flourishing, it became a global industry and we find every day new and different uses for our fragrances.

This is one of the reasons we organize the World Perfumery Congress: To meet our peers from around the world, to address issues and try to resolve them. The time where perfumes were used, as an offering to Gods is gone; the time where perfumes were used without limitations on bodies, hair, clothes, beds and horses is also gone as international regulation became stricter and our industry is more scrutinized than ever. And because all of these reasons, it is why the WPC and its new edition of 2010 is the major international event where all these questions are addressed and hopefully, most of them answered.