CHENNAI: Decorated crystal bottles and colourful decanters are lined up neatly inside a glass shelf. The strong fragrances coming out of these pretty little bottles are heady. attar, also known as ittar, is highly concentrated perfume and its origin can be traced back to ancient Egypt.
For the uninitiated, attar is nothing but the essence of flowers and plants that’s refined with essential oils along with other ingredients.
“There are customers who use body sprays and perfumes as well, but attar is still popular. From teenagers to old people, everybody still prefers it,” says Mohammad Sulaiman, Elite Attar, Parrys, which began as a family business 20 years ago. “There are many buyers for attar because just one dab on your wrist makes the entire room fragrant.”
Many shopkeepers attribute its popularity to its ingredients. “Attar has no alcohol, and hence doesn’t evaporate. They are concentrated essences that’s used to make the perfumes,” says Mohammed Saad, Dawood Attar, Tambaram.
Fragrances
Just like perfumes and body sprays, attar comes in as many as 2,000 fragrances. And these are available as roll-ons, sprays and premium. Some of the most popular fragrances are classified as: wood (such as sandalwood, oodh), floral (rose, jasmine, orchids, violets), oriental (a blend of everything), plant (patchouli), Arabian, Indian etc. “My personal favourite is oodh (oudh). It is the extract taken from the Agarwood tree, and can be used by both men and women,” explains Amaan, Maas Perfumes, a third generation trader.
Recalling the fragrances that her grandmother used to buy, Soundarya P, a city-based theatre artist, says, “My grandmother would always carry these tiny bottles of attar whenever she’d visit us. And that’s when even my fascination towards attar began. My favourite flavours are oodh and jasmine but I prefer the latter because it reminds me of her.”
Benefits
Since attars are made out of concentrated raw materials, these are usually oil-based. “Its smell is long-lasting and the intensity is the same throughout,” says Mohammad Aashiq, JK Perfumes, Mannady.
Attar is also said to have medical values, and is usually classified as warm and cool attars, for summers and winters respectively. “Flower-based fragrances are usually used during summers to cool the body temperature, whereas fragrances such as oodh, musk and saffron, etc are mostly preferred during the winters to regulate body heat,” explains Dawood Ghani, AKS Perfumery House, Mannady.
Prices
“They start from `30 and go on to lakhs,” says Mohammad. Though most attars are sold in small bottles, prices vary depending on the brand, concentrate, purity of the extract and the fragrance. “A cheaper attar has chemicals in it that may harm to the skin. Whereas, an expensive attar bottle will contain more of the concentrate, and chemicals in it will not cause harm,” explains Dawood Ghani.
Another factor that influences price is the essence or the fragrance that it is made out of. For instance, oodh is supposedly the most expensive and can cost up to `3 lakh. “Oodh is rare, and hence expensive. The agar trees are not commonly cultivated. So the extracts are usually taken from the few that are left, and this increases the price,” points out Mohammad Aashiq.
“We usually import from different parts…mostly from Dubai, because these will be of a better quality as its used there mostly,” adds Dawood.
While a majority of the shops in Chennai export the supplies from Mumbai, Kolkata, Dubai, Saudi, etc, there are some who prefer to produce these in their own factories and stores.