South African Alishia van Deventer was in Egypt visiting her daughter when she came across some exquisite vintage perfume bottles. “I am obsessed with perfume oils and also find it very hard to walk past a beautiful perfume bottle. So, I went and found 10 luxury oils that I know women will love and combined it with a range of the most beautiful vintage perfume bottles I could find,” she explains. And just like that, Tapputi Luxury Perfume Oils was born.
Why perfume oils instead of perfumes? According to the brand’s ‘About Us’ page, “We have always been obsessed with perfume, especially perfume oils – which have a luxe skin feel. They melt into your skin and take longer to evaporate than traditionally manufactured cologne. As it lingers on your skin’s surface, the velvety texture deepens throughout the day. Perfume oils have a highly concentrated scent and are free from synthetic preservatives.”
Tapputi Luxury Perfume Oils officially launched online on October 24, 2022, with 10 unique scents, each in special, vintage-inspired bottles. These fragrances range from Dark Gem, a spicy floral scent with top notes of ginger, pepper, and cardamon mixed with coconut, gardenia, orange blossom and peony, and finished with musk and sandalwood; to Kirei, a fruity-floral affair with notes like wild berries, juicy mandarin, orange, jasmine, caramel, vanilla, amber and sandalwood. Another notable scent in the collection is White Oud, whose top note of ylang ylang gives way to the warmer tonka beans and patchouli, and ends up with base notes of white musk and cypriol.
But being a female-owned, African luxury fragrance business that houses its scents in vintage bottles isn’t its only significant standout feature: the name ‘Tapputi’ is actually derived from Tapputi Belatekallim, the world’s first recorded female chemist and perfume maker whose works date back to 1200 BCE in Babylonian Mesopotamia according to archaeological finds. Not only was she the head of her household (this is what the word ‘Belatekallim’ literally means), but she was also the official overseer of perfumery in the royal palace and may very well be the author of the first perfume-making treatise.
The first collection from Tapputi Luxury Perfume Oils is available to shop on their website, and in-store if you live in South Africa or would be visiting anytime soon.