Oriental

You may not know this, but a century ago, the base of oriental perfume was animal-derived. Indeed, ambergris (or marine ambergris) was collected from sperm whale excrement, which, in contact with the sea and sun, acquired such a delicately spicy scent that the great ladies of the world coveted it at exorbitant prices! In order to synthetically reproduce this mythical raw material, numerous chemists worked on synthetic amber notes and thus produced the famous ambrein.

Perfumer François Coty used ambreine from chemist Samuelson to release one of the first great oriental perfumes: Ambre Antique in 1908. Building on his success, the perfumer created other perfumes of the same type such as Emeraude in 1921.
However, the first major and undeniable success of oriental perfume was achieved by the famous Shalimar by Guerlain in 1925. From then on, the seductive, captivating and exotic fragrances of oriental perfumes have never left us.