print Archives - The Perfume Society

Last minute gift guide – Christmas presents you don’t need to post… (Sleigh what?!)

That moment of mounting panic when you suddenly realise – you’ve left it too late to post a gift! Uh-oh. But hey, it’s okay – people understand (especially this year with postal strikes and snow causing chaos). Don’t worry: sit back and relax, as we’ve got scent gift solutions you don’t need to post, and which last an entire YEAR…

Here are some ideas that you can ‘gift’ your recipient with immediately, no postage required – simply write them a lovely card and explain you’ve treated them to one of the following (with fragrant swag to follow). If they love to smell great, we guarantee they’ll be delighted…

Make them a V.I.P (Very Important Perfumista):

Give 365 days of fabulous fragrance with our Perfume Society VIP Status for only £12, and they’ll get…

• Exclusive member’s discount on our Perfume Society Discovery Boxes

• Event Tickets: Early access to events – virtually and in real life…meeting with leading ‘noses’ and key figures from the perfume world.

• Exclusive Competitions: just for VIPs.

Give them the gift of award-winning fragrance journalism:

For people who love print (we must admit to being partial – for longer features, especially), give them a year of fragrant reading with a Scented Letter magazine Print Subscription for £60. The multi-award winning magazine has won prestigious Jasmine Awards by The Fragrance Foundation, and been described as a ‘must-read’ by industry insiders and perfume-lovers alike. We are delighted that in addition to our digital magazine we can now offer this print subscription of The Scented Letter, delivered to their door.

Appearing seasonally, four times a year, this utterly beautiful magazine beguiles with at least 60 pages of in-depth features, perfume news, features and much more is bound to take you ever-deeper into the scented world. In addition, we feature all the breaking scent news, interviews with ‘noses’ and other creators, alongside fragrant features by the world’s leading fragrance writers. To be read time and again, and adorn their coffee table for years to come!

Treat them to a Seasonal Scents Subscription:

‘What are the best fragrances to wear for Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter?’ To answer this we created the Seasonal Scents Subscription, specially curated to help you get the best out of your fragrance and improve your all-important sense of smell. We’ll guide you on the power of trying and wearing perfume, via online Smelling Notes, Unboxing Video, Hints & Tips.

Each box contains fabulous fragrances for anyone to adore, no matter their gender or taste, chosen from leading fragrance houses beloved around the world. The sample sizes include gorgeous miniatures, and will land at your gift recipient’s door each passing season (approximately every three months) – so they will always have a new scent to make them feel fabulous!

You can choose a Quarterly (£18 every three months) or Yearly (£68) plan. We’ll keep the contents a secret until the day the box is launched – we just know they’ll love the surprises inside…

Left it too late? Last-minute gift ideas

That moment of mounting panic when you suddenly realise… you’ve left it too late to present them with a gift! Uh-oh. But hey, it’s okay – whether you’ve dropped the ball for Valentines day, an anniversary, birthday or any special occasion you absolutely meant to remember: we have the scent solutions!

Simply tick the ‘this is a gift’ box and give 365 days of fabulous fragrant activities with our Perfume Society VIP Cub Subscription for only £25, and they’ll receive the following exclusive benefits:

• Six issues a year of our online/downloadable digital magazine The Scented Letter – (virtually) the only publication in the world devoted to all things fragrant…

• Exclusive competitions with fab fragrant prizes – including bottles signed by perfumers.

• Early access to tickets for all our events – meet with leading ‘noses’ and key figures from the perfume world, attend in-store events, workshops, etc. (Our VIPs are first to hear about these.)

• A special member’s discount on our Perfume Society Discovery Boxes (normally £19 – but £15 to our VIPs)

• Plus choose a FREE Discovery Box when you sign up (so they’ll get an actual present to look forward to)

For people who love print (we must admit to being partial – for longer features, especially), give them a year of fragrant reading with a Scented Letter magazine Print Subscription for £75. This multi-award-winning publication has been described as a ‘must-read’ by industry insiders and perfume-lovers, so we are delighted that in addition to our digital magazine we can now offer this print subscription of The Scented Letter, delivered to your door and starting with the current edition. (For autumn 2017, we look at Fashion, Fabric + Fragrance.)

Appearing six times a year this utterly beautiful magazine, featuring at least 60 pages on perfume news, features and much more is bound to take you ever-deeper into the scented world. Click here for a sneak-peak at our taster issue!

In addition, we feature all the breaking scent news, interviews with ‘noses’ and other creators, alongside fragrant features by leading fragrance writers – from Thomas Dunckley (The Perfume Candy Boy) to Persolaise, via Viola Levy and our Senior Writer Suzy Nightingale. (If you’ve signed up as a subscriber, you will continue to receive access to the complimentary e-zine version.)

NB We are able to ship The Scented Letter overseas; please contact us for prices here

Who doesn’t like filling out some kind of personality questionaire? There are now a great selection of Scent-matching Personality Tests you can take for FREE online or in-store, so get them to do the quiz now and offer to buy a bottle later. Genius!

Molton Brown invite you to ‘Embark on an illuminating journey to discover the ideal match for your unique self.’ The profiling system, was created in tandem with trend forecasting and innovation agency The Future Laboratory, and you instinctively choose from a series of images, at the end of which you’ll discover which ‘psychological perfume profile’ you match. Everyone we know who’s tried it has found it an incredible experience, and it’s brilliant at selecting scents you may easily have overlooked yourself.

Penhaligon’s offer a visual feast to explore while answering simple questions, all illustrated in their delightfully quirky and so-iconic way, with prompts to choose between textures, places to visit and favourite thirst-quenchers. It’s fun and quick to answer the test, and somehow they really do expertly pinpoint your perfume personality type. At the end you’ll be presented with a selection of samples to choose from, which you can either purchase online or pop into a store to smell, before splashing out for a full bottle.

Experimental Perfume Club are brilliant at taking the worry out of picking a new perfume, and their recently launched LAYERS Lab in Selfridges features a fantastically acurate in-store app that allows you to create your own bespoke perfume! We wrote about the concept in more detail here, but basically, the LAYERS App asks questions before recommending 3 possible formulae. You can either choose from the selection or customise the fragrance further with the help of their Fragrance Curator. Once you choose your final blend, your unique fragrance is created in front of you. And, for the ultimate bespoke touch, you can choose a name for your fragrance and a personalised label for your 50ml bottle.

If they are really into perfume and want to learn more, we’re pretty sure they’d love to have a go at making their own on a Perfume Making Workshop. It really gives you an insight into how a perfumer works, and a new appreciation for their creations, and a number of courses offer differing experiences that make perfume perfume-lover’s gifts.

4160 Tuesdays offer a number of options for perfume lovers who want to go that step further and have a guided session of making their own, from an afternoon or full day workshops, right through to five day workshops for the really serious, and more technical courses for the more experienced and those who want to start their own house. They can travel to you if there’s a large enough group (great idea for a party), or you can visit their beautiful new studio in London.

Karen Gilbert is a perfumer who offers online workshops, live presentations and studio based courses for anyone interested in creating fine fragrances, natural perfumes or developing your own range of scented bath and body products. Signing up to her newsletter also gives you access to top tips on where to buy the best ingredients and materials you’ll need, and there are even free online taster sessions to get those creative juices flowing.

Cotswold Perfumery have been making perfume for over 50 years, run by chief perfumer John Stephens, who now invites the fragrance obsessed to indulge their passions in various courses and one-day workshops. Running throughout the year in a dedicated teaching room/laboratory at the Cotswold Perfumery in the beautiful village of Bourton-on-the-Water; ‘as well as learning the skills involved in developing and making your own perfume (to take home with you), you’ll get a unique insight into the life and work of John, one of only six independent perfumers in the UK.’

Whichever of these last-minute gift options you choose, it’s bound to be appriated by any perfume lover. Why not print out an I.O.U voucher to put in the card, as a reminder they will get an actual gift later on? Or you know, gussy up some lovely word to write in their card, add a bunch of flowers and put the date one week ahead in your diary for next year?

By Suzy Nightingale

We adore this A-Z of Perfume print – how many have you tried?

We fell in love with artist Mary Darch’s designs on Instagram, and when we saw she was working on an A-Z of Perfume print, we just had to alert our fellow perfume-lovers immediately!

Mary is clearly a lady after our own hearts, describing her greatest loves as ‘books, gin and perfume,’ and having previously been successful with her A-Z of Gin poster, the fragrance one seemed a natural next theme because, says Mary, ‘I love a little tot of Mother’s ruin, and a good read, and am perfume lover myself. Coming from a fashion/textile design background, I just adore the bottles and all the design detail that goes into to the packaging of perfume, and I love the alchemy involved in creating all the different scents.’

Although the perfume print was far trickier to finish (as the bottles as such hugely varying shapes and sizes), Mary says that she rather relished the challenge, even though it proved so fiddly, taking ‘at least 200 hours to complete,’ Mary explained, because ‘each perfume is drawn individually in mostly A4 size. I had some input from a fellow perfume lover who is a chemist to finalise the list and what should go in for each letter.’

The final list was necessarily ‘determined by shape of bottle and colour, to create the most pleasing composition. Fortuitously Kenzo’s Flowers was just the right shape to slip in on the second line as 26 perfumes and 5 lines don’t mathematically compute!’ And Mary had some extra support from her son, who ‘helped out with the tech part of reducing all my images, and getting them just so! He deserves a medal for his patience as it was a trial and error exercise to finalise it to my satisfaction.’

All that work was so worthwhile, we think you’ll agree, and as soon as we received our print it took pride of place on The Perfume Society office wall (see below!)

For perfumistas with a particular favourite – fear not, Mary has you covered, too. Individual bottle prints are also available, and if your all-time love isn’t represented, you’ll be happy to hear that Mary also accepts personal commissions.

So what, we wondered, would Mary’s own choice be? ‘My favourite perfume is Angel,’ she revealed,’ I wear it every day and it feels like my secret armour I spray on each morning to face the world!’

We all know that feeling (hopefully. Read my previous feature on how to find your fragrant armour if you’ve not yet discovered yours).

We can see this print gracing many people’s Christmas gift wish lists – and perfume boutiques and all fragrance lover’s walls – can’t you? And in the meantime, if you haven’t read our own Scented Alphabet edition of The Scented Letter Magazine (for which we were thrilled to win a Jasmine Award for journalism, earlier this year), be prepared to for a whistle-stop tour of all things fragrantly fascinating, from A – Z…

By Suzy Nightingale

The Scented Letter Perfume & Culture issue launches

Perfume & Culture is the theme of the just-published edition of The Perfume Society‘s The Scented Letter magazine, in which we explore the many exciting ways fragrance is crossing over into the arts – infusing theatre, literature, ballet and art installations with its sensory magic – and at the growing trend for artists to launch perfume ranges of their own.

In this issue you can expect to find…

• For Lights, Camera, Aldehydes!, award-winning blogger and author Persolaise was inspired by his twin passions for film and fragrance

• The Scent of a Novel is the article which won Julia Berick the ‘Rising Star’ Jasmine Award – and now you can read it in full

• Suzy Nightingale lifts the velvet curtain on the actors and film directors who use fragrance as a tool to create a mood or get into a role in Perfuming A Part

• Bottle design is an art in itself – so we report on the exquisite fragrance flacons which broke all records in The Perfume Bottles Auction 2019

• Novelist Jane Thynne – who weaves perfume into her bestsellers – shares her olfactory life in Memories, Dreams, Reflections

And of course, as usual, we bring you all the Latest Launches, news, events – and so much more!

Our 60-page multi Jasmine Award-winning magazine is your very best way to keep up to date with all that’s happening in the scented world. Described as an essential read by industry insiders and perfume-lovers alike, the 60-page magazine is available FREE for our VIP Club Members online (sign in to view) or to purchase the coffee-table worthy glossy print version, you can order your copies here for £15 (£12.50 for VIPs)

The Scented Letter Magazine

Well you’re here, so we’re going to take it as read that you enjoy reading about fragrance! But now imagine a glossy magazine filled to brimming with the very latest news, reviews, full-length features and exclusive one-on-one interviews with the best noses in the world.

Described as ‘a must-read’ by industry-insiders and fragrance-lovers alike, we are proud as punch of The Scented Letter Magazine, and it seems the feeling’s mutual…

With multiple Jasmine Awards (the fragrance industry’s ‘Oscars’, awarded by The Fragrance Foundation) and guest articles by fellow award-winning journalists, we take a theme for each issue and explore it in gorgeously unashamed detail.

Our ethos is that fragrance should be open to everyone, and so our readers range from people around the world who adore perfume, perfumers themselves, founders of fragrance houses and PRs hungry for news they just don’t get to read anywhere else.

Expert opinions, breaking news, fragrant reviews, stunning photographs and in-depth interviews – your glossily beautiful 60-page PRINT edition of The Scented Letter – The Perfume Society‘s acclaimed magazine will open the doors to the world of fragrance no matter what your experience.

A niche-lover who’s amassed hundreds of bottles in their collection or a perfume newbie: you’re all included, and welcome to explore this exciting world that’s just waiting for your fingertips…

Our latest magazine is The Alphabet Issue, taking an A-Z look at everything from Aldehydes to Madame Zed (Lanvin’s mysterious perfumer, who nobody can trace). Take a sneak-peek here!

All issues of The Scented Letter can be purchased individually for £15 (£12.50 for VIP Club Members) or back-ordered if you fancy a catch-up. But don’t risk missing out, treat yourself or loved one to an Annual Print Subscription – an entire year of fragrant reading for £75 (including P&P), to be read, referred to and admired many times (so we’re told!)

Written by Suzy Nightingale

Tag: print