To roll in the New Year, fragrance experts, friends and now regular Fume Chat ‘podcasters’ (think of podcasts as radio shows you can listen to online, if you’re new to the term!) Nick Gilbert and Thomas Dunkley (aka The Candy Perfume Boy) decided to look ahead to all things fragrant for 2017 and ponder on the perfumes we’ll all be using in the months to come.
In this sixth episode, the fragrant twosome muse on questions including…
– Who will release a perfume in a bottle of their face?
– Will oud ever die? – What scent can be described as ‘Rosa Dentata’?
[Photo via Olfactaria’s Travels perfume blog, showing Nick and Thomas on a previous perfume-sniffing outing…]
Presented in their trademark down-to-earth but entirely knowledgable way, it’s a great listen (as always!) and we think their friendly discussions definitely encourage an ever-growing list of perfumes to seek out and try for yourselves.
We suggest you settle down with a cup of tea, put your feet up and listen to the episode here. You can catch up with any shows you may have missed, too!
We’ve all done it. Clung like a limpet to a favourite fragrance because a loved one told us we smelled wonderful, or we happened to be wearing it on a particularly auspicious day and have come to believe it was blessed by the gods – but would you wear your favourite outfit every single day, whether rushing to work, attending a glamorous party or travelling to an exotic location in? You might adore a particular food, but would you want to eat the same meal for the rest of your life?
There’s nothing wrong in having a ‘signature scent’ per se – something you’re known for wearing and family members can smile as they smell – but constantly wearing the same fragrance can mean you get so used to it that you actually stop smelling it properly. Your nose becomes so attuned to that same old scent that it ‘skips’ over those once-glorious notes and moves on to more exciting things in your environment.
Perhaps you’re a little nervous about what to try – the choice these days can be completely overwhelming (even for us!) so you have our sympathy. But never fear. We have an ingenious way of gently nudging you out of your comfort zone and in to a whole new world of fragrant discoveries…
There’s no need to ditch that favourite altogether – simply type the name of it in to our Fragrance Editor program (named FR.eD for short) and it will whizz through thousands of possibilities to pick six new perfumes for you try!
The really clever thing is, these aren’t merely based on similar notes to your favourite fragrance, but emotions and words used in the briefs perfumers were given when creating them.
There’s a brand new favourite – maybe even several scents – out there with your name on it, just waiting for you to take the first spritz…
Whatever you choose, everyone here at The Perfume Society wishes you a very Happy New Year!
Written by Suzy Nightingale
What the giddy aunt is a ‘chypre‘?
Not exactly the most immediately evocative word to get your head around when describing a type of fragrance, but that’s what we’ve been landed with and so that’s what we continue to say. But how many people outside the world of perfumery could tell you what it actually means?
When touring the country talking to perfume lovers across the UK, our co-founders Jo Fairley and Lorna McKay asked this very question just to see, and out of the many hundreds who came to see them, only a couple of people put their hand up to venture an answer. Explains Jo, ‘…chypre is widely acknowledged as the most sophisticated (and beautiful) of fragrance families – and it’s a term the perfume world certainly believes is understood by all and sundry.’
In fact, we dedicated an entire feature in our magazine, The Scented Letter, just to explaining the mysteries surrounding this scent category – so clearly something is amiss and requires further explanation. Indeed, there are all sorts of terms bandied about in perfumery that baffle the best of us at times. And what’s more – nobody entirely agrees on the ‘rules’ of which perfumes belong in which fragrance family at all.
What about Fougere, Ambrée or Gourmand, Woody and Floriental – where to begin…?
Well, we’ve put together a handy guide to some of the most frequently used fragrance families, with a brief history of their evolution and some iconic examples of perfumes to try in those categories, to see which family you are most frequently drawn to and perhaps discover some new ones to try. So why not get your nose stuck in and give it a go?
Written by Suzy Nightingale
If you’re anything like us, you’ll have had just about enough of it all by now.
The C word.
It’s lovely and everything – don’t get us wrong – but as it’s been building up for what seems like half the year and we are now all completely exhausted, we think it’s time to sit down, grab a cuppa and wrap your nose around something utterly glamorous (and with nary a mention of tinsel, trees or flippin’ turkeys.) Photo credit – carolinehirons.com
In our extensive library of pages to explore here at The Perfume Society, we have filled some of them with the concise histories of perfume from Ancient Egypt to the modern day. But for now we’re going to have a brief flit to the ultra glamorous world of the 50s and 60s perfumes for now – do you happen to know which famous perfume began life as a bath oil…?
Well, as the one and only Estée Lauder told our co-founder, Jo Fairley, one afternoon over afternoon tea at New York’s Plaza Hotel: ‘Back then, a woman waited for her husband to give her perfume on her birthday or anniversary. No woman purchased fragrance for herself. So I decided I wouldn’t call my new launch “perfume”. I’d call it Youth Dew,’ (a name borrowed from one of her successful skin creams).
Launched in 1953, Youth Dew had a clever dual-purpose: ‘… a bath oil that doubled as a skin perfume to buy, because it was feminine, all-American, very girl-next-door to take baths. A woman could buy a bath oil for herself without feeling guilty or giving hints to her husband.’ And when Mrs. Lauder declares that women’s status got a boost when ‘a woman felt free to dole out some of her own dollars for scents,’ who can argue with that…?
Fashion designers really began to wake up to the world of perfumery in this vibrant era: the ‘boy wonder’ Yves Saint Laurent unveiled his ‘Y’ in 1964, and Rive Gauche in 1968. And then came mini-skirts. The Beatles. Pop Music. The Pill. Parents everywhere lay awake at night worrying about their daughters’ virtue in ‘Swinging London’ and beyond – and things would never be the same again: it was as if the whole focus had shifted, through this ‘Youthquake’. And did they wear perfume? You bet…
Fashion maven Mary Quant launched a range of fragrances – including the aptly-named Havoc. ‘I wanted a truly modern scent. Most of the perfumes are so old-fashioned, I wanted something frankly sexy,’ she said.
And by the sounds of the ‘men found panting’ in the tongue-in-cheek advertising copy, she got it…
Fancy a scent-skip to Ancient Greece or the Roaring 20s…? Step into our fragrant time machine right here!
Written by Suzy Nightingale
The special guests for the Christmas edition of Love to Smell are Thomas Dunkley, freelance fragrance consultant and blogger a.k.a ‘The Candy Perfume Boy‘ and… us (well, our Senior Writer Suzy Nightingale) and we couldn’t have been more thrilled to be invited! Scroll down to see the episode right here…
We’ve been watching Love to Smell since it began, hosted by the long-time friends and now business partners Nick Gilbert and Pia Long teaming up to air their views, news and fragrant expertise in a chatty, sometimes (deliberately) silly but overall completely encouraging way. And that was the inspiration, really, behind the whole show – a way to present perfume as friends talking, recommending their favourites and discussing new launches.
Basically, Love to Smell is all about what we believe in: getting people to go and smell more perfumes, to widen their comfort zone of spritzable smellies and not to be afraid of the oft’ confusing lingo of the fragrance world – the very reason The Perfume Society was set up by our co-founders Jo Fairley and Lorna McKay in the first place: bridging the gap between brands and the people actually buying the perfumes, of bringing perfume alive in a (hopefully!) deeply fascinating yet completely accessible manner.
And so of course when Nick and Pia asked if we’d like to be one of the special guests for the festive fragrance extravaganza, we donned tinsel (not usually a hair accessory we favour, but hey, we went with it,) jumped on the train with two of our current favourite perfumes (as requested) and a soft toy we’ve had since childhood (we didn’t refer to these in the the episode, but if you look carefully you can see Suzy’s sadly ragged Rabby Rabbit all crumpled and shabby on the shelf behind) and spent a day as their guests.
We really hope you enjoy the episode – our shopping list certainly grew after we sniffed the fragrances Thomas had chosen – and you can view the whole thing by clicking the link below…
And if that’s whetted your appetite, you can watch all of the back episodes on the Love to Smell YouTube channel, too.
Finally, we hope your scented Santa brings all the perfumes on your list, and wish all our fellow fragrance addicts a very Happy Christmas!
…literally. BeauFort London, for those who don’t know, are a ‘fiercely independent’ British niche fragrance house inspired by tales of derring-do, nautical history and literature, and for those wishing to take a small paddle in the perfumes before deciding on a headlong plunge, they have produced a hand-made, oil-tanned leather roll of five 7.5ml sprays.
The Come Hell or High Waterdiscovery set includes their infamously explosive 1805 Tonnerre – a smoke-filled melee of gunpowder, salt and lime; the ink-stained pages of leather-bound books in a dusty library of Coeur de Noir; George Bernard Shaw’s assertation that ‘Emotional excitement reaches men through Tea, Tobacco, Opium, Whisky and religion’ made manifest in Vi Et Armis; Lignum Vitae‘s addictive juxtopisition of pepper berries, Madeleine cakes, juniper and salted butter; and their latest – the humongously green, tousled bouquet of flowers tossed into roiling waves of Fathom V.
Produced and manufactured in Great Britain by hand, the fantastically tactile set arrives in a black presentation box embossed with the BeauFort London logo, and leather is of course a natural product, so every single piece will have its own characteristics of colour and texture.
What’s more, each vial is refillable from their 50ml bottles and – being protected in the leather roll – even more perfect for buckaneers to take adventuring… BeauFort London Discovery Set £85 for 7 x 7.5ml eau de parfum
Buy it at beaufortlondon.com
Written by Suzy Nightingale
M.A.C are renowned for their luscious, highly pigmented lipsticks and have now created a range of scents inspired by some of those all-time best-selling shades.
We’ve long been aware that colour and our perception of scent are closely entwined – in fact, we dedicated an entire issue of our magazine, The Scented Letter, to exploring the relationship between sight and smell – so how wonderful to see this fully realised in M.A.C’s fragrant ‘ShadeScents’ collection. And having had a sneaky sniff of them, we’re convinced fans of the makeup colours will go wild for these, too…
Is there anything as satisfying in these cold, dreary days, as settling by the fireside, reclining on a chaise lounge (or lounging on the sofa in your favourite old pyjamas – however the mood takes you!) while sipping a cup of hot chocolate (or, y’know, gin) and getting your nose stuck in a good book? When the tome you’ve chosen is all about fragrance, all the better – and a great add-on gift for your fellow ‘fumeheads, too.
You can find an entire library in the Fragrant Readssection of the website – but these top this booklist of our seasonal, perfume-themed recommendations. (Click on the blue book titles to find them on-line.)
Under the premise of ‘every perfume has a tale to tell’ the wonderful olfactive adventurer, Lizzie Ostrom, explores signature scents and long-lost masterpieces while waxing lyrical about the often wildly wacky characters and campaigns that launched them. Lizzie tells each tale with her trademark wit, yet filled with fascinating facts. We were glued to the pages from the moment we first held a copy, and this completely charming, totally accessible book is a real treasure trove of memories to savour.
More than a history of fragrance, this book brilliantly looks behind the scenes at the evolution of fragrance-making, and packs plenty of info about essential oils and their attributes. A ‘natural’ perfumer herself, working only with botanical essences (and with her own fragrance line, based in California – Aftelier – and in the closing chapters it segues into a how-to book that’s a good place to start if you want to become your own ‘perfume mixologist’, and deepen your understanding and love of perfumery by having a go at making fragrance yourself…
This one can be difficult to get hold of, but is often available on Amazon’s second-hand marketplace. Do find it if you can – Ackerman’s writing is exquisite – we’d call it poetic, actually – exploring and explaining not just the sense of smell, but all the senses. In the first chapter – Smell – she looks at scent and memory, at roses, at sneezing, at the way our health (and what we eat) impacts on our body odour. You’ll learn answers to questions you never knew you had, and though this book is over 20 years old, it’s timeless…
A quiet and thoughtful man who works in his own hilltop atelier well away from the hustle and bustle of the commercial perfumery world, this chronicles Jean-Claude Ellena’s thoughts, inspirations and global travels while working on new launches. Most fascinating to us is the short section at the back in which Jean-Claude shares some of the harmonies and accords he’s perfected over the years: his aim is to create a specific scent with the minimum of notes. Who knew that you could conjure up the scent of sugared almonds with just vanillin, benzoin and benzaldehyde…?
Dedicated to the fascinating history of British Fragrance (dating back to the 16th Century), this stunning book takes you on a journey through the esteemed heritage of The British Society of Perfumers, their famous clients (including royalty) and follows the scented trail right through to the great British houses carrying the fragrance flag today, and in to the future.
Formed in 1963, the British Society of Perfumers came together as a way of helping individual perfumers improve their status and deserved recognition as leading lights of the creative output this country offers the world. Celebrating the profession past and present while marking their own 50th anniversary, the book was conceived by their President – John Bailey – working with contributors Helen Hill, Yvonne Hockey and Matthew Williams. Beautiful, packed full of facts and endlessly delve-in-able, we think it’s definitely one to place on a coffee-table to have your guests swooning…
Writing about perfume really is an art all of its own. (If we do say so ourselves!) So from these fragrant reads. we are sure you’ll find something to set your senses alive – something to gift to a fragrance loving friend or to keep for yourself.
What other scent-centered books have you been getting your nose stuck into, lately? Do get in touch by emailing [email protected] and let us know if there’s anything missing from our ever-expanding bookshelves…
At The Perfume Society we’re all about helping people discover and explore the fascinating and ever-changing world of fragrance. And for Christmas this year we’ve created the ultimate perfume starter pack to choose for anyone interested in all things that smell fabulous, no matter their age or level of scent knowledge…!
Anyone you gift with an ‘Explore Perfume’ Gift Package will not only receive one of our fabulous Discovery Boxes (personally picked by you – see our helpful guide, below), but ALSO a copy of our indispensable book, The Perfume Bible.
VIP price £30 / Non VIPs £35 / FREE P&P FOR ALL!
Featuring a wide range of incredible fragrances chosen by us, each box is themed and features beautifully written postcards describing the perfumes individually, with information about the history of the house, the perfumer’s inspirations and questions inviting them to think more deeply about their experience of what they’re smelling. An intriguing exploration, indeed… 1. Begin by personally choosing one of the carefully curated Discovery Boxes from this beguiling list:
For the Fashionistacrazy about designer brands and luxury beauty, choose… Catwalk Collection Discovery Box
For theTravelista yearning for faraway places and the adventure of travel, they’ll love a… Jetset Discovery Box
For the Individualista with an interest in hard-to-find, cult ‘niche’ fragrances, it has to be… Secret Scentsations
For the Floralista who adores the romance of bouquets, pick our Beautiful Blossoms Discovery box 2. We will then add a copy of our book The Perfume Bible (RRP £25 alone!)
Co-written by The Perfume Society‘s Founders, Jo Fairley and Lorna McKay, and based on their combined (countless!) years of experience in the industry, this wonderful book is a must-read for every fragrance lover. An encyclopaedia of all things fragrant – from how to build a perfume ‘wardrobe’, to a line-up of the simply-must-sniff ‘100 perfumes to try before you die’ – the wealth of knowledge combined with stunning photographs makes for a truly incredible tome they’ll love having their noses buried in.
For VIP Subscribers the ultra-special price for the ‘Explore Perfume’ Gift Package is £30 – be sure to log in to receive your exclusive price!
For non-subscribers, the price is £35, but both options come with FREE POSTAGE AND PACKAGING. Hurrah! (Alas we can’t ship to Ireland or overseas, because of ‘hazardous materials’ restrictions.)
The unique ‘Explore Perfume’ Gift Package is only available for a limited period – so, we suggest ordering yours now to avoid that sinking feeling of disappointment…
Written by Suzy Nightingale
