Perfume is a very subtle and complex mixture. It contains odorous substances derived from natural products of vegetable or mineral origins as well as synthetic chemical products. It also contains colourings, antioxidants to slow air oxidation and fixers to avoid deterioration.

Concerning the vegetable aspect, essential oils are a major component of perfumes. They are generally obtained through distillation and can have many properties as they constitute a blending of two to more than four hundred different molecules. For instance, these are some of the most largely used essential oils in perfumery...

What is a good perfume ?

A perfume is said to be good when the person wearing it is pleased by its smell which is also accepted by those around her. Anything else is a matter of personal taste. The art of composition in perfumery consists in incorporating fixers to a perfume in order to hold its most volatile components. Moreover, a good perfume has to be well filtered and stocked in a correct way.

How to buy one s perfume ?

Trying a perfume is often a difficult task. The ideal way would be to have the opportunity to use a sample for some hours, even some days, because a perfume changes after being applied on the skin. It must be allowed to reveal its deeper note which will remain for the whole day. Avoid rubbing your skin just after applying a perfume for it breaks its composition and makes it turn.

The word perfume is taken from Latin expression (per fumum), which means a smell obtained by fumigation. The latter is indeed one of the most ancient means of diffusing a smell. Its principle is very simple: a solid odorous substance is put on a source of heat - generally charcoal - This substance releases a perfume when heating.

As early as antiquity, Egypt represented one of the most important centers for perfumes. Egyptians beliefs compelled them to develop their knowledge about perfumes to embalm their Pharaohs mummies.

Greeks attached a divine origin to perfumes, and their dead, whose bodies were perfumed, were buried with their personal belongings, including the necessary perfume bottle.

The technique has gradually developed since these early times, as illustrated by the following important dates in the long history of perfume making...

With its seducing architecture, El-Oued is one of the most beautiful cities of the Sahara. In the middle of its weekly Souk, where the city’s heartbeat can be felt, stands the imposing mosque minaret, protecting the town with its tutelary presence. There, strollers, buyers and sellers jostle amid the perfumes of spices while evocable values are loaded with strong symbolic connotations. It is a form of dignity, deeply rooted in the local soil as well as a set of historical references.

As a witness, these friezes of four pages of history reminding the visitor of El-Oued’s glorious past, starting from the Neolithic and its mammoths to the national liberation war and its martyrs. As another witness, this modest museum of traditional art and ethnography displaying all sorts of little treasures ranging from Roman stones to the weaving loom, drawing us back to the past and its compelling presence...