The Osmothèque in Versailles: where lost perfumes are kept alive

The Osmothèque is the international perfume archive in Versailles, just outside Paris: it keeps fragrances that are on sale today and fragrances that have been discontinued, and it remakes the lost ones from their original formulas so that people can still smell them. The Osmothèque's About page describes a nonprofit that opened on 26 April 1990, its name built from the Greek "osmè", odour, and "theke", storage.

If you have ever heard someone say a perfume "isn't what it used to be", this is the institution that can put both versions side by side. Perfumes vanish for ordinary reasons: a house stops making them, the juice in the bottle wears out, an ingredient runs out or becomes illegal. The archive answers each of those with a specific tool. This Class walks you through them, then shows you how to sit in a session and smell a 1917 chypre for yourself.

What is the Osmothèque in Versailles?

The Osmothèque began as a perfumers' project. According to the Osmothèque's workshop booklet for the fragrance trade, the technical commission of the Société Française des Parfumeurs, the French society of perfumers, spent years weighing the idea of a "Maison des Parfums": a place where professionals and fragrance lovers could rediscover the perfumes they had loved, and the only place where lost fragrances could be reproduced, classified and archived.

The same booklet names Jean Kerléo as the founder. It says the pioneers gathered some 400 fragrances, 70 of them already discontinued, and that two institutions backed the project: the Comité Français du Parfum and the Versailles chamber of commerce. Today the collection is in the care of established perfumers known as osmocurators, who also lead the sessions.

What does the Osmothèque keep, and how does it keep it?

The Osmothèque holds 4,000 perfumes, 800 of which can no longer be found, according to the archive's collection page. They come from the houses that created them, from fragrance companies that sometimes hold the formula of a lost perfume, and from a few heirs of houses that have closed. Formulas are entrusted, not donated: they remain the property of the lender, cannot be used for commercial purposes, and are kept in a bank vault.

The bottles live in a room the archive calls the "cellar": no daylight, a constant 12°C, a protective layer of argon, which is an inert gas, and regular assessment by the osmocurators. Those precautions hint at what wears a perfume down: light, heat and air. A perfume evaluator interviewed for Euronews' report on the Osmothèque put it plainly: the juice "will get spoiled, deteriorate and disappear one day or another", while the formula remains. The Class on storing fragrance at home applies the same three enemies to your bathroom shelf.

About a hundred of these perfumes are called "treasures": famous fragrances, gone from the shops, whose original formula is archived, so that identical remakes can be made for the public to discover, "which, of course, are never for sale", as the Osmothèque's article on its treasures puts it. Some go back a long way, such as L'Eau de la Reine de Hongrie, which the archive dates to the 14th century, or L'Eau de Cologne de Napoléon à Ste Hélène (1820). For the long view, the Class on the history of perfume, milestone by milestone starts in ancient Egypt.

Why do perfumes disappear from the market?

A perfume disappears for one of four reasons, and the Osmothèque answers each one differently. The table runs from the most ordinary cause to the most recent.

The first three causes come down to time. The fourth is recent, and oakmoss is the clearest example. Oakmoss, Evernia prunastri, is the base of the chypre family: Wikipedia's article on chypre traces the bergamot, labdanum and oakmoss accord to François Coty's Chypre of 1917, now preserved at the Osmothèque.

Oakmoss extract naturally contains two molecules, atranol and chloroatranol, which Commission Regulation (EU) 2017/1410 bans from cosmetic products: from 23 August 2019, products containing them could no longer be placed on the EU market, and from 23 August 2021 they could no longer be made available at all. The EU's Scientific Committee on Consumer Safety had named them among the fragrance allergens behind the highest number of contact allergy cases. The regulation allowed a longer transition than usual, citing "the exceptionally complex and lengthy procedure for fragrance reformulation" and "consumers' concerns over the change of the olfactory properties of fragrances". The law itself takes seriously the worry that a reformulated chypre may not smell the same. The Class on allergens and label rules goes into the detail.

How does the Osmothèque remake a lost perfume?

The Osmothèque remakes a lost perfume by following its original formula to the letter, or it does not remake it at all. The collection page is clear: when one or more raw materials are not available, the fragrance is not reconstituted. Nothing is updated, nothing is swapped.

The big houses take part. The treasures article says Guerlain handed over its own remakes of several lost perfumes, including Fleur qui meurt (1901), Sillage (1907), Chypre de Paris (1909) and Coque d'Or (1935), and that Chanel reweighed Bourjois's Kobako for the archive. Reweighing means measuring out every material in the formula again to rebuild the juice.

A remake is not a relaunch. What the Osmothèque recreates is there to be smelled, not sold. A house that brings an old perfume back to the shops has to meet today's rules, which brings you straight back to oakmoss and atranol.

Aldehydes and oakmoss: two materials that explain the collection

Aldehydes belong to the chemistry that changed perfume, and the Osmothèque presents them in its raw-materials workshop, whose stated aim is to "smell the great discoveries of the organic chemistry that have widened the olfactory palette". The International Perfume Museum in Grasse writes that contemporary perfumery was born in France in the early twentieth century thanks to François Coty, and that it was there that Coco Chanel "launched the fashion for aldehyde rich perfumes". The Osmothèque booklet lists Ernest Beaux's N°5, dated 1921, in its workshop on the pioneers of perfumery.

Watch out for namesakes: the treasures also include Le Numéro Cinq by Molyneux, a different perfume from a different house. Sorting out names like these is half the fun of a session.

Oakmoss, for its part, is what you meet in the archive's chypres. The collection page lists Coty's Le Chypre (1917) among the masterpieces it lets you smell, alongside Houbigant's Fougère Royale (1884), Le Fruit Défendu from Parfums de Rosine (1914), Millot's Crêpe de Chine (1925) and Jacques Fath's Iris Gris (1947). Remade from its original formula, a 1917 chypre keeps the oakmoss its formula called for, a version that EU rules would make hard to sell unchanged today.

How can you smell a lost perfume today?

The simplest way to smell a lost perfume is to book one of the Osmothèque's sessions: the collection is visited during a fragrance talk, on the history of perfumery or another subject. The About page counts about 150 sessions a year, led by the osmocurators, and mentions a specialised bookstore and a private library for research.

If the dates do not suit you, the archive can arrange an appointment with its team or with an osmocurator, and groups of 15 or more get preferential rates. If French is a hurdle, ask: the workshop booklet says its trade sessions can be given in English, French and Italian. One tip from the club: pick a family before you go. Smelling three chypres in a row teaches you more than ten perfumes chosen at random. If you go, tell the story in the History, Bottles & Houses circle.

Exercise: build a tiny cellar and watch a smell age

This exercise borrows the logic of the Osmothèque's cellar, using three strips of citrus peel. You need one lemon or orange, two jars, a saucer and a few days. Nothing goes on your skin.

1. Cut three wide strips of peel from the same lemon or orange, leaving the white pith behind.
2. Peel A goes in a closed jar at the back of a kitchen cupboard. That is your cellar: dark, cool, little air.
3. Peel B goes on a saucer, uncovered, in the same cupboard. Only the air changes.
4. Peel C goes in a closed jar on a sunny windowsill. Here, light and heat change.
5. Smell all three after two days, then after five. For each, write three words: fresh, sharp, candied, waxy, flat, whatever comes.
6. If you own a perfume, spray two blotters or strips of plain paper: one into a closed jar, one left in the open. Compare them the next day, then three days later.

Keep your notes and compare them with other members'. Your three peels are a very small version of the regular assessment the osmocurators carry out on a collection of several thousand bottles.