Vallée des Rois
Название переводится как «Долина царей».
Создан женщиной, английским египтологом, как аромат, приближенный к тому, который носила фараон Клеопатра.
90% составляющих ингредиентов использовались в Древнем Египте.
Продавался эксклюзивно в Хэрродс в Лондоне и в Галерее Лафайет в Париже.
A Tragic Launch:
The perfume was to be officially launched in 1990 at the six story Heliopolis Sheraton, northeast of Cairo, Egypt, organized by PR party specialist Mercia Watkins of MW Publicity. Mira Takla invited 24 British beauty and fashion writers for an elaborate five day adventure including a night's stay at the hotel providing first class airfare and luxury cruising down the Nile to visit various ancient temples from Luxor to Aswan. An island in the middle of the Nile was specially furnished with white sand and transplanted bulrushes in which bottles of the perfume, named for the ancient goddess Nephtys, were to have been buried to be discovered by guests at sunrise. The promotional event which came at a cost of $1.3 million dollars, was to have climaxed in a lavish banquet in the Aida ballroom of the Marriot in Cairo. Guests at the dinner would have been showered with free gifts including the perfume.
Before the trip was scheduled, Mercia Watkins went to Egypt to check out the comfort of the cruiser which would jaunt lazily down the Nile, including the quality of the food and the safety of the bottled water. She also insisted that all guests have their tetanus, polio, typhoid and hepatitis shots as well as the sunscreen and malaria tablets.
However, four hours after checking into the hotel, the writers and hundreds of others had to flee as a fire erupted accidentally at the hotel's Nubian tent restaurant where bellydancing and other entertainment was offered. The bread oven was meant to create Arabic dishes for the guests. Sparks from the clay oven to the ceiling of the cotton canvas tent and whipping desert winds of nearly 25 mph quickly fanned the flames towards the main building where 1,000 guests and 300 workers were inside. The wooden poles holding up the canvas canopy crashed through a glass pane dividing the restaurant from the hotel and subsequently set the lobby ablaze. The disco and the reception area were destroyed before the entire building was engulfed.
A London-based journalist told a writer from UPI that she saw flames coming out of rooms below her through the window a few minutes after returning from the bar. "There were flames shooting out of rooms on every floor of the hotel," said Paula McWalters, 30. "I still haven't found my friends." "There were no ambulances, but Egyptian people were brilliant ... they took me and some others to hospital and gave us their clothes," she said. "One of my friends is bad with bronchial damage after inhaling a lot of smoke but she wasn't burned." She went on to say that "it was a bit of a scramble at the back,the fire exits were very clearly marked but the lights went out so we had to crawl in the dark. One man broke his leg jumping out from the third floor. There were many others injured jumping out. Some Egyptian Air crew were screaming hysterically because they lost people.'"
Marion Hume of The Sunday Times, one of the fashion writers staying in the hold, said nobody she spoke to had reported hearing a fire alarm. “Neither had anyone I spoke to seen sprinkler systems in
operation and fire engines took about an hour to arrive. “I was woken when a fellow journalist who ... banged on my door."
To read another survivor from the press junket's story, Anthea Gerrie, click here.
Unfortunately, sprinkler systems and smoke detectors were not mandatory at the five star hotel, and the disaster ended up killing 19, including three members of the press party, while injuring 70 more guests, who suffered mostly broken bones incurred from falls. Takla's daughter Karima was one of the attendees who survived the fire along several others who survived by belly crawling through smoke filled corridors, shimmying down bedsheets tied together and leaping out of high windows. The blaze broke out around 1 am and burned for nine hours, leaving much of the 630 room hotel, its restaurants and lobby destroyed.
The three journalists who perished were named as Janet Parker, 42, editor of the trade journal Cosmetics International, Sally Tate-Gilder, 32, writing for the magazine Expressions, and Jackie Moore, 59, a freelance writer and Observer contributor.
The lives of the three journalists, the hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of lost possessions and the investment of more than $3 million dollars in the perfume by Mira Takla meant that the launch of the fragrance had to be deferred for years or permanently cancelled.
Fragrance Composition:
[/size][/font]Vallee des Rois was created as an approximation of the perfume that the ancient pharaoh Cleopatra herself wore, containing 90% of ingredients used in Ancient Egypt.
So what does Vallee des Rois smell like? It is classified as a floral oriental fragrance for women with a mixed floral bouquet layered over a woody, resinous and powdery drydown.
Top notes: fruits, green notes, citruses, nasturtium, basil, corianderMiddle notes: honey, lily, rose, jasmine, orange blossom, tuberose, ylang-ylangBase notes: benzoin, heliotrope, labdanum, patchouli, sandalwood, styrax, tonka bean, vanilla, vetiver, frankincense
Vallee des Rois is heavy, velvety and quite intense. Personally, I think it smells very close to Yves Saint Laurent's Poison. The ambrosial fruity top notes and the marriage of narcotic orange blossom and tuberose are very prominent in both perfumes. In Poison, the fruity note is a sweetened melange of plum, wild berries and peach, and this is exactly what I smell in Vallee des Rois as well. It is quite intoxicating and very long lasting. Vallee des Rois has more of an incense and spice kick to it than Poison, which I find very luxurious.
Bottles:
Continuing the Egyptian theme, the bottles, designed by Serge Mansau and created by Pochet et du Courval, are a beautiful shade of teal blue and are decorated with ancient Egyptian motifs. The footed demilune parfum flacons are adorned with a gilded metal collar with painted jewels. The elliptical bottle for the eau de parfum is circled by a gilded belly chain printed onto the glass, while a smaller, 7.5ml purse size bottle of the eau de parfum is a spiral shape. The eau de toilette bottle is molded with a lotus blossom design and features a gilded metal frieze of stylized lotus blossoms at the top. The rarest bottle of all is the factice, the 9" tall display bottle, which contained no scent at all.
The fragrances are packaged in stunning turquoise blue boxes printed with a repeating pattern of the same stylized lotus and papyrus plants as the ones molded into the eau de toilette bottle.Egyptian Archaeology, 1991:"A unique perfume at once combining the mystery and opulence of ancient Egypt with the chic elegance of an haute couture French perfume. Vallee des Rois is the creation of Mira Takla - sophisticated, intelligent, born and raised in Cairo.."
Fate of the Fragrance:
Discontinued, date unknown.
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