The Louvre in Paris has asked two of France’s top “noses”, Ramdane Touhami and Victoire de Taillac, who co-created their French perfume company Officine Universelle Buly five years ago, to come up with specific scents inspired by eight of its most famous works of art and greatest treasures.
Both experts jumped at the chance to manage the project as soon as they got the call from the Louvre and quickly went about finding eight perfumers for the highly specialised task. As Touhami reiterated he wanted to gather the very best noses for the job and “it is about adding an old factory dimension to a visual experience. I chose eight perfumers, all stars and gave them 100-percent freedom, with no limit on their budgets.”
Among the artworks chosen were the statues Venus de Milo, Winged Victory of Samothrace and Lorenzo Bartolini’s Nymph with Scorpion. Paintings included La Baigneuse and Grande Odalisque, both by French Neoclassical painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, as well as Thomas Gainsborough’s Conversation in a Park, Jean-Honoré’s The Lock and Georges de La Tour’s religious painting Joseph the Carpenter.
Dorothee Piot, who works for Robertet house in the French perfume capital of Grasse, chose Gainsborough’s 1745 masterpiece. “I wanted to create something fresh and delicate to go with their bucolic exterior scene,” she said of the self-portrait of the artist with his wife Margaret in a Elysian English landscape. “I loved the candour and the grace of the two of them, so I came up with a perfume inspired by roses that have just come out surrounded by greenery.”
Museum spokesman Adel Ziane said the idea of the perfumes was “to help wake all the senses of visitors as they view the work at the Louvre. “I think that the scents have a lot to say on the collections, particular the ancient works,” he said.
The eight different fragrances will go on sale at a pop-up shop near the Louvre Paris from July 3 until January next year.
