São Paulo – The history of Eastern perfumery will be the topic of the lecture The world of Eastern perfumes, which is scheduled for next Monday (12) at Espaço One, located inside Iguatemi shopping mall in the city of São Paulo. The speaker is business owner Julia de Biase, owner of Al Zahra, a store specialized in Arabian perfumes.
The lecture is part of a special event on niche perfumery organized by Caleche store. According to the executive, this was the first store to sell Arabian perfumes from brand Asgharali when Biase began to import the product from Bahrain to Brazil in 2013.
“I will start with the history of perfumes, which began in 3,000 B.C., in ancient Egypt, through India, the Semitic peoples, until it reached the Arab world in the 11th century, when Ibn Sina created the first perfume with essential oil as we know it today,” explains Biase.
“Before, those using perfume were the pharaohs and priests. Perfume was macerated and used as class distinction,” says the business owner. Many years later, Ibn Sina used distillation to extract rose’s oil, a process that was used as the basis for the creation of current perfumes.
Currently, Biase sells the perfumes by Asgharali and those by her own brand, which carries the same name as the store, Al Zahra. Asked about the main reference in the Arab world of the perfume industry, Biase said Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
“All the major perfume launches are held in Dubai to check how the market will react to them,” she says. “A French brand launching an Eastern perfume presents it in Dubai first to test the reaction. Dubai has become a reference for Eastern perfumery,” she says. Besides the emirate, she also mentions Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Qatar as places with significant perfume industries.
Two lectures focusing on French perfumery are scheduled for the event on Monday (12). Biase will also launch two new fragrances by Ashgarali, the unisex Asala Attar, with a price tag of BRL 1,876 (USD 557.50), and the Rennen, for women, costing BRL 2,150 (USD 638.93), plus a marketing action for the men’s fragrance Fursan Al Oruba, which was out of stock and now is back to the Brazilian market costing BRL 1,600 (USD 475.48).
Executives of the perfume industry and journalists interested in taking part in the event, open only to guests, should call 11 2122-6005. It will begin at 2 pm, with the lecture by Biase scheduled for 2:30 pm.
*Translated by Sérgio Kakitani
