Muscat - 31st October 2013
"A woman who doesn't wear perfume has no future" - Coco Chanel. Some may agree or may not agree on this quote but perfume seems to be a woman's best friend. Studies carried out, nearly 80% of all women will make a perfume purchase at least once each year. The reason of purchasing perfumes could vary to everybody but it's mostly just to make us woman smell great and feel better with ourselves. Not only does smelling great make women feel good about themselves, but it will make them feel attractive also.
We buy perfume and wear it daily but not many of us really know how perfumes are made. Because of that Perwakilan Muscat on the initiative from Puan Sofia has organised a tour visit to the famous luxury local perfume factory house - Amouage.
The Perfume House was founded by His Highness Sayed Hamad bin Hamood Al Busaidi, a senior member of the Omani Royal family and established by Oman’s Sultan Qaboos bin Said. At the moment Amouage operates three major global offices, in Kuala Lumpur- Malaysia, Muscat- Oman and London- United Kingdom and three sales offices in Dubai –UAE, Riyadh- Saudi Arabia and Doha- Qatar. Behind the wheel we find Mr. David Crickmore as CEO and Mr. Cristopher Chong as Creative Director for the company.
Amouage - a word created from "amour" with an Arabic word meaning "waves" uses the traditional materials such as frankincense and myrrh. There are 120 different natural ingredients used - silver frankincense is one of the main ones.
Our tour started from the briefing of all types of ingredients used in the perfume. We were being introduced to each of the ingredients that were displayed in the jar. Little that we know, some of the ingredients that we can find in our kitchen are actually used to make perfume!
We then learned how the perfume was processed traditionally where flowers and plants are placed on odourless vegetable fat in a room temperature to capture the fragrant compounds. In 1983, Amouge had only 6 tanks in possession to make only 4 different kinds of perfumes. Today, the perfumes are created in Grasse, France and the last process of manufacture and bottling are done in Amouage's factory in Oman.
Amouage produces maximum 2500-3000 bottles daily and sometimes 5000-1000 bottles daily production depending on demand. Our last tour stopped at the Gift Shop. We sampled each of the perfumes.. first on the wrists and then on the paper wands. As to represent an Omani image with its Arabic touch, the bottles and caps of men fragrances carry the familiar Omani symbols which is the shape of Khanjar, the traditional Omani dagger. As for the women fragrances, it is a dome shape of Ruwi mosque in Muscat.
Amouage produces not only perfume but also creams, lotions, bath oils, candles and room sprays. Not only that, but Amouage also sells impressive leather goods as well. Leather is an Italian cow skin and is made in the same factory produces of the Gucci and Salvatore Ferragamo products.
We spent an interesting hour long informative tour in the factory. Each of us walked out smelling good with the perfumes tested on us, plus the free sample gifts which everybody loves!
