How to Store Perfume: Lessons from the World's Largest Perfume Archive
- , by Shushanik
- 4 min reading time
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The Osmothèque in Versailles keeps 4,000 perfumes at 54°F, in the dark, under argon. You don't need a cellar to follow its rules.
In Versailles, the Osmothèque keeps 4,000 perfumes, including 800 that can no longer be found. It is often called the world's largest scent archive, and the way it looks after those bottles is a lesson for anyone with a shelf of fragrance at home.
54°F. No daylight. Argon.
The archive keeps its collection at a constant 12°C, about 54°F, away from daylight, under a protective layer of argon, an inert gas that keeps air away from the perfume. Three conditions, each one answering a threat: warmth, light and air. Chanel names the same three: "The classic enemies of perfume are heat, air and light."
At home, your argon is simply a closed cap. Chanel's advice is to keep your bottle "tightly sealed."
You don't need a cellar
The principles travel even if the equipment doesn't. Cool, dark and steady is the whole brief, and a bedroom drawer or a closed cupboard covers most of what Versailles does. Perfumer Sylvaine Delacourte, formerly director of creation at Guerlain, points to your bedroom, "your coolest and darkest room," with the bottle kept in its original packaging.
Out of the bathroom
The bathroom shelf is where a lot of perfume lives, and it's the hardest place for it. The room heats up with every shower and cools down again, day after day. "The bathroom is a hostile environment for storing your perfume," Delacourte writes. Radiators and sunny windowsills do the same, which is why she adds: "Avoid sudden temperature changes." Steady matters as much as cool.
The box is the dark
Daylight is the other enemy. The box your bottle came in is the simplest protection there is, and Chanel recommends keeping fragrance in its original packaging whenever the room is bright. Threw the box away? A closed cupboard keeps the light out just as well. If you love your bottles on display, keep the display for the ones you wear every day and give the rest the dark.
Wear it on a Tuesday
There's another way perfume goes to waste: saving it. A bottle kept for a special occasion mostly gets kept. The fragrance you love is at its best now, and an ordinary morning is occasion enough. Wearing it often is also how you really get to know it: how it opens on a cold morning, how it settles by lunch, how it lingers on a scarf.
The right size
How much you buy matters as much as where you keep it. A daily signature earns the full bottle, because you'll finish it while it's fresh. A scent you wear twice a month, or one of several in rotation, is happier in a smaller size. Delacourte's rule for anyone who changes fragrance often is to "favor smaller bottles."
That's the thinking behind our 8ml travel sprays and 10ml glass decants: enough to wear a fragrance properly, small enough to get through while it's at its best.
Formula and storage decide how long it lasts
Perfume doesn't run on a countdown. How long a bottle stays true depends on two things: what's in it and how it's kept. With the right storage, Chanel says, "you can make your fragrance last several years."
Composition matters too. "Fresh perfumes (citrus, aromatic, Eaux de Cologne) deteriorate faster than oriental and leathery perfumes," Delacourte notes. So a bright cologne deserves to be worn sooner, while a warm amber can take its time. Trust your nose, not a date.
Three things to do tonight
None of them costs anything:
- Move your bottles out of the bathroom.
- Put them back in their boxes, or into a closed cupboard.
- Pick a spot where the temperature stays the same all year, away from radiators and sunny windows.
Start small
A smaller size is also the easiest way to meet a new fragrance. It's enough to learn whether a scent is really yours, and to wear it now and then without a full bottle aging on the shelf. Find yours in Travel, or start smaller still with a sample. It's how we'd build a fragrance wardrobe, too: a few scents in rotation, each in a size you'll actually finish.
Sources: Osmothèque, The collection; Chanel, Fragrance & Beauty FAQ; Sylvaine Delacourte, How to Store Perfume? Golden Rules for Shelf Life.