The Scented Letter Issue 25

scented The

www.perfumesociety.org

letter

NO. 25 early summer 2017

How Colognes got cool (and hot)

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Joanne Harris’s scent memories Latest Launches

Splash A bigger

editor’s letter Colognes just got sexy. They sure have moved on from the dainty liquids dabbed by greataunts via lace-trimmed hankies as a cool-down on a hot summer’s day.

Today, perfumers are rediscovering – and reinventing – eaux de Cologne for our modern times. They’re giving this summer-perfect concentration of perfume a new twist via non-traditional ingredients, and in some cases turbo-charging what was always super-fleeting staying power. What’s more, these new Colognes are being decanted by perfume houses into larger and larger bottles, for generous application. Literally, ‘bigger splashes’ – hence the slightly tongue-in-cheek title of this edition of The Scented Letter. And who better to explore this than multi-award-winning writer and blogger Persolaise, whose feature on Colognes you can read on p.11….? It’s pure liquid refreshment.

Colognes wouldn’t be Colognes without citrus, of course. But even those of us at The Perfume Society have at times been challenged by the nuanced differences between neroli, orange blossom, petitgrain and bigarade. Once and for all, Suzy Nightingale puts us (and you) straight, on p.28.

We’re just emerging from a glittering awards season, for the fragrance world. We showcased the results of the Art & Olfaction Awards (for niche perfumes) on our website, giving a shout-out to Leo Crabtree for waving the flag for Beaufort London. And on p.23 of this magazine you can read a rundown of the winners of the UK Fragrance Foundation Awards, this country’s coveted scent ‘gongs’.

As we well know, the work behind launching any fragrance is intense and lengthy – and deserves this kind of recognition. Congratulations to each and every winner and nominee.

We’ve yet another award-winner, on p.26 – in this case, sharing her life in scents. Joanne Harris – author of over 20 books including the much-loved Chocolat – won a Fragrance Foundation Jasmine Award a couple of months back (and we happen to know she was chuffed to bits). After getting a whiff of Joanne’s absolute passion for perfume through her Memories, Dreams & Reflections we’ve just one request: won’t you please, please, please make the world of fragrance the subject of your next novel, Ms. Harris…?

© picsfive; Friedberg - Fotolia.com.

Last but not least, one of the most-fun parts of our jobs is meeting real-life scent collectors. I had the pleasure of interviewing vintage boutique owner Will Emmett for this edition’s #ShareMyStash, whose love for fashion is matched by that for fragrance. I left his East Sussex home swooning over this avid collector’s vintage and modern treasures – and if you turn to p.34, I think you will be, too.

It only remains for me to say: I hope you’re enjoying a fragrant summer. My advice is to splash generously, whatever you’re up to. If Richard Wagner could get through a litre of Cologne a month (see p.15), surely so can we…

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contributors

the master of modern femininity xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

scented Oranges letter The

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Did you ever sleep in a field of orange-trees in bloom?

The air which one inhales deliciously is a quintessence of perfumes. This powerful and sweet smell, as savoury as a sweetmeat, seems to penetrate one, to impregnate, to intoxicate, to induce languor, to bring about a dreamy and somnolent torpor. It is like opium prepared by fairy hands and not by chemists.

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Guy de Maupassant

are not the only (fragrant) fruit…

… But can you tell your neroli from your orange flower? Suzy Nightingale set out to solve the fragrant mystery of this indispensible ingredient, one of the most beautifully versatile plants in perfumery.

From the blossoms draped over the wedding dress of a young british Queen to an Italian princess who scented her gloves with the fragrant oil and gave rise to an entire industry, the bitter orange – Citrus aurantium (also known as the seville orange) – is surely one of the most generous trees in existence, offering up its flowers, leaves and twigs as prized aromatics for perfumes and ingredients for cooking, its sour fruit for the marmalade so beloved on our breakfast tables. this one tree has an astonishing bounty: orange blossom, orange flower water, neroli and petitgrain are all extracted from this one source. but how does one differ from another – and how on earth do you tell the difference between them? to begin, let’s travel to tunisia, where this beneficent tree now mostly flourishes, with just six villages in the Nabeul region providing the majority of the world’s crop. originating from Asia, the bitter orange was introduced to North Africa by Crusaders of the 12th Century – a particularly resistant species, it withstood whatever nature had to throw at it, burrowed its roots down and took hold.

Across 400 hectares of these six tunisian villages – one hectare being roughly equivalent to a rugby pitch in size – the squat, densely verdant trees are planted in long avenues, with their dark, glossy leaves and waxy white blossoms a stark contrast to the pale, dusty soil on which they grow.

With the subtle manipulations of skilled producers variously using water baths, hydro or steam distillation and enfleurage (pressing flowers in to odourless fat), the range of scents extracted vary from freshly aromatic through charmingly floral to the hip-swaying-ly, intoxicatingly

Samantha Scriven

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The

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Editor

Josephine Fairley jo@perfumesociety.org

Joanne Harris

Designer

Jenny Semple enquiries@jenny sempledesign.co.uk Advertising Manager

Lorna McKay lorna@perfumesociety.org Senior writer

Suzy Nightingale suzy@perfumesociety.org CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

Maggie Alderson HEAD OF SOCIAL MEDIA/ EVENTS

Carson Parkin-Fairley carson@perfumesociety.org HEAD OF MARKETING

Jodie Young jodie@perfumesociety.org JUNIOR BUYING assistant

Penny Sheard penny@perfumesociety.org EA to the Editor

COVER: Josephine Fairley

Amy Eason amy@josephinefairley.com Contact us info@perfumesociety.org 3rd Floor 30 Charing Cross Road London WC2H 0DE 07502-258759 The Scented Letter is a free online/downloadable magazine for subscribers to The Perfume Society; visit perfumesociety.org for more information

Persolaise Life-long fragrance aficionado Persolaise is a four-time Jasmine Award winning perfume critic and author of the Le Snob: Perfume guide.

He has written for a wide range of online and print titles, including Grazia, Glass, Now Smell This, Basenotes and, of course, The Scented Letter. His views on scent have been sought by the BBC, The Sunday Times and The Guardian, among others. He regularly posts reviews and interviews with the stars of the fragrance industry on his website, persolaise.blogspot.com – and you can follow him on Twitter and Instagram: @persolaise

Joanne Harris MBE was born in Barnsley, to a French mother and an English father. She was a teacher for 15 years, during which time she began her career writing novels, including Chocolat (1999), which was made into an Oscar-nominated film. In 2017, having previously been a judge herself for The Jasmine Awards, Joanne won their coveted Literary Award.

She admits on her own website – in a must-read list entitled ‘101 LittleKnown Facts’ about herself – that ‘I buy far too much perfume: Bois des Îles, L’Heure Bleue and Ô de Lancôme are among my favourites.’ For more, visit Joanne’s website: joanne-harris.co.uk

The Scented Letter is produced for The Perfume Society by Perfume Discovery Ltd. All information and prices are correct at the time of going to press and may no longer be so on the date of publication. © 2017 The Perfume Society All text, graphics and illustrations in The Scented Letter are protected by UK and International Copyright Laws, and may not be copied, reprinted, published, translated, hosted or otherwise distributed by any means without explicit permission.

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Samantha Scriven lives in South Wales with her husband, two sons and three cats. Four years ago, Sam started her blog I Scent You a Day: 1001 Days of Perfume and it currently stands at around 820 reviews.

Obsessed with both fragrance and writing, Sam was a finalist in the Best Digital Experience category at the Jasmine Awards in 2017. You can find her blog at iscentyouaday.com and follow her on Instagram @iscentyouaday

Jenny Semple Jenny Semple is our Creative Director, responsible for transforming words and ‘air’ – in the form of perfume reviews – into something utterly beautiful. She has been designing The Scented Letter since launch and describes it as her ‘most favourite part of the job’. Prior to the launch of JS Design, she worked in London for many years designing various high-profile glossy magazines, and latterly as Art Editor on The Mail on Sunday’s You Magazine. jennysempledesign.co.uk

contents the zest of life

instafriends

oh, what a night

A BIGGER SPLASH

AMERICAN ROSE, ENGLISH ROSE

AND THE AWARDS GO TO…

Persolaise dives into the world of Colognes to see how they’re being reinvigorated by today’s perfumers

When Aerin Lauder met Alice NaylorLeyland met via Instagram, friendship blossomed for this creative duo

We bring you the results of The Fragrance Foundation Awards 2017 – key highlight of the scent calendar

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an aromatic life

making scents of citrus

perfume is an obsession

MEMORIES, DREAMS, REFLECTIONS

ORANGES ARE NOT THE ONLY FRUIT

#SHAREMYSTASH

Author Joanne Harris shares a life in scents – and lets us in on the secret of her five favourite smells

Can you tell your neroil from your petitgrain? Suzy Nightingale explores the most versatile of plants

Jo Fairley positively swoons for an East Sussex vintage clothing dealer’s quite astonishing historic perfume collection

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EDITOR’S LETTER

NOSING AROUND

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latest launches

TAKES ME RIGHT BACK

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on the scent of news

nosing around From an exquisite music box/scent storage trunk through to innovative ways to apply fragrance to skin, we bring you news from perfume’s front line

Flower power For Bulgari’s dazzling new collection, Master Perfumer Sophie Labbé explores three multi-faceted floral cornerstones of perfumery with Splendida Rose Rose, Splendida Iris d’Or and Splendida Jasmin Noir. Every one a gem. £97 each for 100ml eau de parfum johnlewis.com

Baies-watch

Fans of Diptyque’s eternally popular Baies fragrance have yet another way to fill the home with its cool, super-green aromatic scent of bay leaf and blackcurrant leaf, adorned by armfuls of roses. This just-launched 1500g three-wick candle can be burned inside – or outdoors, to fragrance your garden. £190 diptyque.com

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Brand new ways to scent yourself…

From Chanel, a trio of gel perfumes, offering just the prettiest pastel way to grace your skin with subtly lightweight, shimmering scents in Eau Tendre (pink), Eau Fraîche (green) and Eau Vive (Peach), which melt when massaged into pulse-points.

Chanel Chance Three Moods Collection £60 for the set chanel.com Meanwhile, Zarko’s dropper applicator dispenses a sinks-infast lightweight serum, packing a surprisingly powerful punch and

long-lasting trail. The three fragrances – Oud Couture, Buddha Wood and Supercharged Molecule – have been created by the only practising perfumer in Denmark, Zarko Ahlman. £95 for 100ml eau de parfum serum spacenk.com

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Read all about it…

Say ‘I do’ to a fragrant wedding

© shunevich24 - Fotolia.com

Take one ‘multi-sensory experience designer’.

Introduce her to a lawyer-turned-wedding planner. And the result is Design in Scent (launching July 2017) – four masculine fragrances (for the groom), four feminine fragrances (for the bride), plus ‘union’ ambience scents that fuse the two, offered as candles and mists which can be used to perfume the air, confetti, linen – and perhaps even that garter?

From £12-120 designinscent.com

Hot off the press: Jo Malone London now has a new way to stay in touch with all their scented news. Sit down with a cuppa and check out The Talk of the Townhouse section of their website, to read Bay Garnett and Sophie Dahl on friendship and fragrance, info about ingredients, Karen Elson’s Summer Groove playlist and more. (Print copies were alas only for perfume writers – though feel free to lobby JML!) jomalonelondon.co.uk/magazine

Comme again Over 75 different perfumes have been created by Comme des Garçons since 1994. Many have since disappeared – but now 10 are being relaunched (with others to follow), exclusive to Dover Street Market. If you loved (and lost) Calamus, Sticky Cake, Tar or Garage we suggest you run, don’t walk, to their new location on Haymarket. £70 each for 50ml eau de parfum At Dover Street Market

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Wake up and smell the coffee… … or toast. Or peppermint, chocolate, seaside, croissants – or maybe cut grass…? Those are your options for the Sensorwake Olfactory Alarm Clock, which eases you into the day with a three-minute scented burst – followed by a little electronic tune, if the lure of a cappuccino fails. £95 (£4 for refill capsules) delyss.com

#perfumepioneers Perfumers are taking over historic Somerset House from 21st June to 17th September 2017 for a major, multi-sensory exhibition featuring 10 extraordinary perfumes and their pioneering creators. Prepare to be taken on an exciting olfactory journey via a series of rooms featuring artistic instillations reflecting the inspirations behind the scents – from a Catholic confessional through to the Moroccan desert via a water theme park and a lover’s boudoir (ooh la la!) it promises to be a fragrant feast for the senses.

(And do check out the many accompanying events.) somersethouse.org.uk

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The beauty of fragrance is that it speaks to your heart… and hopefully someone else’s.

Elizabeth Taylor

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The tweetest thing This should be right at the top of an affluent perfumista’s lust list: an exquisite music box created to celebrate the 10th birthday of indie perfume house Memo – complete with automated singing birds (and drawers for your scented stash). Just 10 are being created, with one exclusively available in the UK via Harvey Nichols. The price? £10,000. memoparis.com

Floris gets a makeover For the first time in 100 years, Floris have renovated their historic Jermyn Street store – a building from 1730 that’s not only still standing, but finds their house perfumer working in the back. You’ll love exploring their mini museum – complete with handwritten letters from Florence Nightingale (Floris White Rose was her favourite) – while marvelling at the stunning Spanish mahogany cabinets (first used at the Great Exhibition of 1851, lifting up cloches as you go to discover the beguiling scents beneath.

89 Jermyn Street, London SW1Y 6JH florislondon.com

a whiff of history

Lives of the great noses:

Jean Carles (1892-1966) The legendary perfumes created by French nose Jean Carles (1892-1966) included Shocking, Tabu, L’Air de Temps, Miss Dior and Ma Griffe. But his influence has extended far beyond his own oeuvre – indeed, you could almost say he’s had a hand in every major launch since 1946, via his method of teaching the art of perfumery.

The Jean Carles Method remains the industry standard for learning how to become a professional perfumer. (To give you an idea of his level of influence, he trained Chanel’s Jacques Polge.)

Carles started his career in Grasse in the early 20th Century working as a perfumer at fragrance house Roure, establishing the Roure Perfumery School in 1946 – which later became the Givaudan Perfumery School after the two companies merged. Since 1997, this has been based in Paris (and in 2015 a second school opened in Singapore). While the course at this ‘Harvard of perfumery’ now includes marketing and other modern essentials, its basis is exactly what Jean Carles taught over 70 years ago – which is training the nose to distinguish between a palette of 500 or so raw ingredients (naturals and synthetics), to the point where the trainee perfumer can ‘smell’

combinations in their head, before they so much as touch a pipette.

Today, just as in Carles’ time, the school day always starts with a ‘smell off’, the perfumer’s equivalent of practising scales. As he described in his treatise A Method of Creation and Perfumery, from 1961: ‘Our own perfumers make it a strict rule to test daily their knowledge of perfume materials and this is why a half-hour is set apart for this exercise, which we all perform in a truly competitive spirit…’

By this method the nose can be trained not only to recognise individual ingredients, but to judge exactly their quality, concentration, volatility and evaporation rate, enabling the perfumers to understand how each will affect the full development of any blend.

Carles’ great contribution to perfumery was understanding this created the mental equivalent of ‘muscle memory’ – a solid base for the all-important creative impulses to take off from. But while he believed in a rigorous training – just as for musicians – he did not subscribe to the idea of perfumery as a pretty form of chemistry.

‘Perfumery is an Art, not a science,’ he always maintained.

‘A scientific background is not necessary for the perfumer; scientific knowledge may even sometimes prove an obstacle to the freedom required in perfume creation.

The creative perfumer should use odorous materials in the same way that a painter uses colours.’

Carles was a living testament to his own technique. In his later life he lost his sense of smell, but keeping it a secret, carried on his work as a perfumer, creating both Miss Dior and Ma Griffe entirely in his head, earning him the soubriquet ‘the Beethoven of perfumers’.

Until very recently the details of Jean Carles Method were a perfume insider secret, but his ideas were never patented – and now you can read his essential treatise at this link: shop.perfumersapprentice.com/ perfumersworkshop/carles.html

By Maggie Alderson

Jean Carles’ iconic creations include (from left) Schiaparelli Shocking, Miss Dior, Carven Ma Griffe and Dana Canoe

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the zest of life

A bigger

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Š koten_ok - Fotolia

Colognes are pure liquid refreshment. But are they also happiness in a bottle? At a time when we all need a lift, Persolaise dives into this area of perfumery, which is being rediscovered and reworked – more than 300 years from its inception

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Here’s

a curious paradox of our times. Most of us in the socalled developed world have never had it so good. We live longer than our ancestors.

We enjoy more leisure time than they did. And our pockets are filled with higher levels of disposable income which we can spend on an unending array of material possessions.

But it would seem that we’re not happy.

There’s no better indication of this than the fact that primary schools across the UK have decided to teach their pupils about mindfulness. The Powers That Be have become so worried about increasing levels of anxiety and distress amongst young people that they have started instructing children on how to calm down and empty their minds of the din with which the world attacks them.

Across the nation, over 2,000 people have trained as ‘mindfulness teachers’, with the potential to reach around 200,000 individuals in need of guidance. University students are being encouraged to slow down and make conscious efforts to reduce the stresses in their lives. And app developers – always quick to pick up on trends – have got in on the game, of course; according to The Guardian, the Headspace app, one of several successful smartphone methods of tackling this 21st Century concern, has over 700,000 subscribers.

But that’s just the tip of the misery iceberg. All you need to do is flick through the pages of a Sunday paper to realise that the need for some measure of inner peace has never been greater. Meditation classes. Yoga retreats. Mental detox courses. An entire industry designed to help us feel better about ourselves. It’s enough to make you wonder how we managed without it. But then, a few decades ago, the world was a different place.

Now, I am loath to suggest that any of these all-too-real

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problems and issues could be solved by perfume. But I do also believe that our bodies have ways of seeking out what’s best for us. Citrus oils – as well as those extracted from certain herbs – have been proven to aid concentration, to improve clarity and to enhance our mood. So perhaps it isn’t too bizarre a leap to assert that our collective ‘happiness shortfall’ could account for an astonishing rise in the popularity of that most humble of fragrance families: the eau de Cologne.

Mention the term in a room full of people and invariably someone will come up with a story about a favourite aunt or grandmother who always carried a bottle of 4711 in her handbag and pulled it out at moments when the soul needed a bit of a lift. The smell seemed to cut through the fog, they report, bringing the world into clearer focus, making colours brighter and more vivid. As Christine Nagel, in-house perfumer at the Cologne-loving brand Hermès says, the composition conjures ‘immediate pleasure and a universally shared register of emotions.’

It’s a trick that Cologne has been pulling off for more than 300 hundred years. Back at the start of the 18th Century, the Italian barber and entrepreneur Gian Paolo Feminis moved to Cologne, Germany (hence the name ‘eau de Cologne’, which we still use today) – and began selling a blend of bergamot, neroli, lavender and rosemary oils diluted in grape spirit. This product was such a success that Feminis summoned other members of his family to northern Germany to help develop the business.

His nephew, Giovanni Maria Farina – a.k.a. Jean Marie Farina – tweaked the formula, committed it to writing and, crucially, began advertising the product as a miracle potion not just for scenting one’s person but also for drinking and combating all sorts of ailments, including skin, stomach and gum problems. ‘This perfume refreshes me,’ Farina

There’s a willingness on the part of perfumers to play fast and loose with the original ‘citrus + herb’ structure

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1 Annick Goutal Eau d’Hadrien Yellow lemon meets yellow rose and yellow sunshine in this wink of Austen-like sprightliness.

2 Acqua di Parma Bergamotto di Calabria A stone wall. An arched window. A beam of sunlight. In the distance, azure waves lapping against rocks.

3 Atelier Cologne Orange Sanguine Bloody is the colour of this particular orange, oozing crimson juices over peacefully white jasmine petals.

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4 Mugler Cologne Slide along a wormhole into an alternate reality where lemons brandish aluminium leaves and herbs wrap themselves in velvet cocoons.

5 Carthusia Mediterraneo Somewhere over the rooftops of Capri, in a moment of blissful tranquility, the wind is sighing mint, bergamot and wildflowers.

6 Odin 02 ZAMM! POW! KERSPLOOSH! Watch those citrus laser beams ping across the room, electrifying your comfort zone.

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Opposite: labels from some of the many different heritage Colognes which were sold by the gallon – and splashed with abandon – across Europe, from the 18th Century onwards, including one from Cologne pioneer Jean Maria Farina

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7 Chanel Bel Respiro Look further.

No, further still. There, beyond the horizon, where the blues merge and your future is just beginning.

8 Guerlain Aqua Allegoria Pamplelune Clocks slow down.

Pulses relax. The globe slips into a siesta gear. And the jolly grapefruit just keeps grinning.

9 Tom Ford Neroli Portofino Forte The gleaming tan of a stallion’s body contrasted with the vernal greens of a Neapolitan orchard.

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Frederic Malle Cologne Bigarade The zest of many colours – red, yellow, green, brown, scarlet, ochre and peach – fizzing with handclapping vitality.

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11 Cartier L’Heure Vertueuse Lie down. Let the grass reach up over your ears. Sink beneath the lavender.

And fill yourself with light.

12 Ulrich Lang Apsu A droplet of water poised on the very tip of a blade of grass, perfectly content with its place in the world.

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Right: another example of Jean Marie Farina’s packaging – this time in glorious technicolour. In its time, Eau de Cologne was used not just for refreshing the mind and body but imbibed to combat skin, gum and digestive ailments

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wrote to his brother, ‘and stimulates both my senses and imagination.’ When travellers and soldiers began taking what they called ‘eau de Cologne’ back home with them, its reputation spread, causing high-profile figures to take note.

Madame du Barry is reported to have spent a fortune on the fragrance. The composer Richard Wagner once wrote in a letter that he expected to use one litre of the stuff per month. And no less illustrious a figure than Napoleon was a fan. After washing with England’s Brown Windsor soap (not to be confused with the similarly-named soup!), he would apparently get through several bottles of Cologne each day.

Perhaps because of such endorsements, the traditional Cologne – always based on an exuberant interplay between citruses and herbs – has enjoyed a history that has taken it all the way from courtrooms to imperial palaces and the finest shops in the world. Eager to cash in on the public’s thirst for this ‘wonder water’, several figures popped up during the course of the 18th Century saying that only they possessed the bona fide recipe.

Their claims were given a shred of plausibility by the fact that the original formula had changed hands a few times.

Indeed, Giovanni Maria himself sold the recipe to someone who then passed it on to Roger Et Gallet, the brand which now legitimately calls itself the true purveyor of ‘Parisian Eau de Cologne’. However, when the legal arguments were settled, it was decided that Farina HQ - at Jülichs-Platz in Cologne – was the only establishment permitted to call itself the birthplace of the original Cologne, a distinction which it enjoys to this day.

Throughout the 20th Century, the classic Cologne appeared in the portfolios of several brands – notably Hermès, Acqua di Parma and Dior – as there was always a supply of customers seeking its weightless, approachable personality. But in recent years, this demand has stepped into a higher gear.

According to Sylvie Ganter, co-founder of Atelier Cologne, a brand whose raison d’etre is to produce longlasting Cologne-style compositions, one reason for this increased popularity is that traditional, heavy perfume ingredients are ‘not necessarily perceived today as the most elegant way to wear scent.’ She believes that Colognes – especially the modern, more tenacious varieties – ‘are never too strong or disturbing for people around you.’

This notion of ‘keeping the peace’ isn’t miles away from the idea of mental wellbeing I suggested earlier. Indeed Roja Dove, whose new Elysium scent is a high-powered version of a Cologne, agrees that scentusiasts may now be turning to such compositions as a means of coping with the world. ‘There is a definite need for the Cologne,’ he says, ‘in these difficult times when consumers are looking for purity and authenticity in many areas of their lives.’

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Citrus oils – as well as those extracted from certain herbs – have been proven to aid concentration

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A fascinating glimpse of tall, slim early Cologne packaging, above, for Jean Maria Farina’s early Cologne – its virtues extolled in a pamphlet from 1811

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Composer Richard Wagner once wrote in a letter that he expected to use one litre of Cologne per month Nathalie Vinciguerra echoes his sentiments. Formerly at Penhaligon’s, she has now founded her own brand, Anima Vinci, whose debut range includes a long-lasting Cologne-like release which she’s called Lime Spirit. ‘I’m not surprised Colognes are back,’ Nathalie says. ‘In the current environment, which is so depressing, I think people need to have light, happy scents. And Colognes are perfect for giving you clarity and a lift.’

But apart from being less fleeting, what makes modern Colognes different from their predecessors? Nagel believes the answer lies in a sense of freedom: a willingness on the part of perfumers to play fast and loose with the original ‘citrus + herb’ structure and find new ways of expressing the theme. In her case, this entailed turning to rhubarb, whose sour, fruit-like character took centre stage in Hermès Eau de Rhubarbe Écarlate. But all ingredients are now fair game, including coffee (Mugler’s Hot Cologne), guaiac wood (Francis Kurkdjian’s Aqua Vitae) and modern musks (Frederic Malle’s Cologne Indélébile). It’s no longer so easy to discern where Colognes end and where, say, purely citrus perfumes begin, not to mention green fragrances, fresh woods or light florals.

However, Zürich-based scent-creator Andy Tauer insists that the results of this relaxed approach to the rules ‘aren’t Colognes in the real sense. They are surrogates or “wannabes”. They are a metamorphosis of an old-school scent that was never meant to last beyond a moment.’

Indeed, Tauer suggests that this transformation of the genre has been prompted at least in part by perfume industry realities. As there are currently strict restrictions on the usage of certain natural citrus oils in perfumery – not least the all-important bergamot – it simply isn’t possible legally to produce exactly the same Colognes our ancestors used to enjoy.

Still, as Dove explains, a challenge often sparks innovation. ‘There is a myriad of altered and fractionated notes that can be used,’ he says, ‘as well as many ways to play with the existing raw materials. A creative perfumer will be able to present something that isn’t necessarily a true Cologne, but an interesting interpretation or invention.’

But whatever the reason for their current high profile, it looks as though Colognes will be floating around for quite a while. And who’s complaining? As Christine Nagel observes, ‘they improve everyday life, they turn a simple gesture into a moment of intense personal pleasure and they succeed in bringing people together. And that’s what we need right now.’

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Above and opposite page (see also previous page): the beautiful labels for historic Colognes are definitely works of art in their own right

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13 Calvin Klein ckone Coiled springs of energy waiting to be unleashed, like scented sprinters soaring towards the finish line.

14 Tauer Perfumes L’Eau Finely chop peel. Sprinkle with lemon blossom. And serve with cooling steam. Bon degustation.

15 Dior Escale à Pondichéry A few grains of cardamom fall into the cup of Darjeeling as the jasmine blossoms festoon the verandah.

16 Hermès Eau de Narcisse Bleu That singular line where the urban landscape ends and the wildness of the countryside unfurls.

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17 Hermès Eau d’Orange Verte Sink your teeth into that orange segment, feel the sweetness on your tongue, lick up those mini-explosions of flavour.

18 L’Artisan Parfumeur Histoire d’Orangers A feast of citrus blossoms, filled with the hopes, dreams and passions of honeymoon vows.

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instafriends

When an

American rose met an English rose When Aerin Lauder and Alice Naylor-Leyland started following each other on Instagram, who imagined that it would lead to a blossoming friendship – and a beautiful fragrance collaboration? Jo Fairley reports

We’d all like Aerin Lauder as our best friend. She’s beautiful, from one of the US’s most fascinating families – a granddaughter of Estée Lauder – and rarely sets an immaculately-shod foot outside without a handbag-ful of ‘work in progress’ perfumes which (if you’re lucky) you’ll get to smell, if you’re in sniffing distance. (Aerin has an enviable dual role, as founder of AERIN and Image and Style Director of Estée Lauder.)

So, what do we have to do to attract her attention? Well, as it turns out, a beautiful Instagram feed helps…

Friends had begun commenting on Aerin (@aerin) and Alice NaylorLeyland’s similar style aesthetic on Instagram. Alice Naylor-Leyland – @mrsalice – is a contributing editor for UK and American magazines and websites (including vogue.com), with a lifestyle as swoonworthy as Aerin’s.

Georgian country house? Tick.

Designer wardrobe? Tick. Invites to all the best parties? Tick, tick, tick. In fact, Alice is described by Vogue thus: ‘A style-loving mother of two blueeyed babes. Splits her time between a charming English country house and kooky flat in Chelsea. Always in search of the perfect frill, table setting and adventure.’ With almost 90,000 followers, she’s become known for her eye for fashion, design and her 18 The scented Letter

Alice in her bedroom at home, with its Chinoiserie wallpaper – a taste she shares with Aerin Lauder

creative flair – to the point where you could say that Aerin and Alice almost live parallel lives on opposite sides of the Atlantic. A firm friendship was surely predestined…

It began when Aerin re-grammed a picture of Alice’s 30th birthday party, complimenting Alice on her style. The front of Alice’s house had been festooned with balloons, there were pastel-sprayed llamas and a herbaceous border’s worth of cut flowers. That simple repost

led to Alice and Aerin becoming Instafriends – followed by afternoon tea in Aerin’s Manhattan office during New York Fashion Week. As Alice reports: ‘I walked into literally the most immaculate space I’ve ever seen. I was completely blown away by Aerin’s attention to detail – her wallpaper designs, the way tea was beautifully laid out – and we chatted for a long time.’ Both mothers-of-two, it emerged that they also equally adore Chinoiserie wallpaper, fresh flowers and gardens – most especially roses.

In Aerin’s case, that love had already been poured into the development of a trio of rose-inspired Colognes, which have now launched: the petal-perfect, very wearable Linen Rose, Bamboo Rose and Garden Rose, in generously splashable sizes. As she observes: ‘Roses are my favourite flower. The scent alone relaxes me, energises me or inspires me...’

A collaboration was soon dreamed up, based on Alice and Aerin’s shared rosy passion, with Alice designing a special bottle for Garden Rose – aptly, the most English rose in the collection, exploring our countryside via armfuls of different rose notes: white Bulgarian rose, the classic Rosa centifolia, Bourbon rose and a rose called ‘Bouton Sauvage’. Garden Rose wraps these in geranium, smooth

sandalwood, amber and musk.

‘Garden Rose Cologne was inspired by English gardens – which my grandmother was very fond of,’ explains Aerin. ‘I love Alice’s pretty and unique style, and how she always looks timeless yet modern. So with her love of flowers, that made her the perfect person to collaborate with to bring the story of the scent alive.’

Alice’s rose swag design has now been hand-painted each of the limited edition bottles, which are also finished with a flourish of the ‘Mrs Alice’ signature, hand-engraved in gold – and come presented in a special AERIN and Mrs Alice Box. As if that wasn’t rose-tastic enough, the box is filled with real roses and a scented postcard, featuring a portrait of Alice in her garden at home.

Aerin Lauder and Alice NaylorLeyland aren’t the first friends to meet in real life, after becoming Insta buddies. It’s becoming A Thing – putting the social into social media, with Instagrammers engaging in conversations that lead to meet-ups.

So next time you’re playing with filters or cropping a photo you’re pleased with, maybe put in a little extra effort. Because you just never know when it might lead to your next creative project – or simply a beautiful Instafriendship…

The limited edition Aerin x Mrs Alice Garden Rose Cologne Box, £135, is exclusively available at selfridges.com and esteelauder.co.uk/aerin @aerin @mrsalice

“

I was completely blown away by Aerin’s attention to detail

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“

Roses are my favourite flower. The scent alone relaxes me, energises me or inspires me

�

instafriends

An American rose talks roses…

Please tell us about your connection to rose, Aerin.

The rose is timeless – it epitomises femininity and elegance. I’ve always been drawn to the colours and the beautiful scent. Roses are a big part of many of my fondest memories so it is the perfect bloom to thread the AERIN Beauty Collection together.

What is your earliest memory of rose?

My earliest memories are related to scent. I remember walking into my grandmother’s house always greeted by a large arrangement of fragrant white flowers – often roses or tuberose. Later on I learned that we both shared a passion for flowers, especially roses.

What is your favorite rose memory?

My wedding was set in the country with tons of fresh flowers. I can still remember the scent of the fresh garden roses during the ceremony – they were all around us.

Where is your favorite place in the world to see/smell roses?

Summer is my favourite season of the year. I always know it’s arrived when the rose garden at my home on Long Island is in full bloom. I love to see flowers everywhere I go. When travelling, I usually make a point to stop by a local flower market or stroll through botanical gardens.

Tell us about your rose garden.

My home on Long Island used to belong to my grandmother. She kept a beautiful white rose garden that I still maintain and enjoy today. I recently enclosed an outdoor porch space overlooking the garden so I could enjoy the view in any weather. It’s a beautiful space for entertaining over dinner or enjoying a coffee. I also look forward to planting more roses around a little lunch spot by the pool where

we like to sit outdoors as a family, in summer.

particular memory when I smell each of the individual Colognes.

Do you have any tips for using rose in the décor of a home?

There are many ways to incorporate rose into home décor, beyond placing fresh cut flowers in a space. Since I was a little girl I always gravitated to floral print fabrics for my bedroom wallpaper and bed linens. Art is another one of my favorite ways to incorporate florals in a less literal way.

What are your various inspirations for the rose fragrances?

Each fragrance embodies my love of roses in a different way. Bamboo Rose is inspired by the more formal gardens you see in Japan. With the moss gardens of Kyoto and the bamboo groves of Arashiyama in mind, we created a very feminine and delicate fragrance with touches of Sicilian bergamot and mandarin blossom.

Garden Rose is my way of capturing the lush garden roses you see in the English countryside. The combination of white Bulgarian rose, Bourbon rose and Rosa centifolia brings back great memories of trips to the country.

Linen Rose brings me to summers past – back to the Eastern shores of Long Island. Long summer days at the beach wearing summery linen dresses alongside salty skin and sandy feet is captured with notes of ylang ylang, white Bulgarian rose and vetiver.

Why did you decide to create Colognes within the rose collection?

I wanted to share the different rose notes I have enjoyed throughout my life in a collection of scents which offer a lighter, luxurious fragrance for every day, every mood and for any reason.

What inspired you to create three different rose Colognes rather than starting with just one?

There are so many varieties of roses, each with their own scent and unique beauty. I was excited by the possibility of developing a collection of Colognes that could capture different facets. Each is tied to a very specific memory and I experience that

What time of year or day would you wear a Cologne?

Colognes are great for the summertime or casual days since they’re lighter than a parfum or eau de parfum. I wear these every day, especially on hot days when wearing a heavier parfum doesn’t feel right.

Do you apply a Cologne differently than perfume or parfum?

Because Colognes incorporate a lighter fragrance concentration, you can apply them more liberally than a parfum. We made these in a simple, yet elegant 200ml size, knowing how easily they can be worn. These scents are perfect for hot summer days.

AERIN Bamboo Rose, Garden Rose and Linen Rose Colognes are priced £120 for 200ml at esteelauder.co.uk

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perfumed promotion

Marine fragrances

the new wave The launch of Molton Brown Coastal Cypress & Sea Fennel is making quite a splash in the fragrance world – reinvigorating the senses while totally revolutionising our expectations of what ‘marine’ actually means Sea breezes. Cliff-top walks.

Happy times. That’s certainly what we want a ‘sea-swept’ fragrance to deliver – and Carla Chabert has done just that with Coastal Cypress & Sea Fennel.

Following in her father’s footsteps – Jacques Chabert created Molton Brown’s iconic Black Peppercorn and was once an assistant to the perfumer Henri Robert at Chanel – Carla is the brilliant nose behind this new composition. And for her, it was a journey into uncharted waters.

Not always a fan of old-school and often overpowering ‘marine’ fragrances, she set her creativity free to wander the olfactory shore.

Molton Brown Coastal Cypress & Sea Fennel £39 for 50ml eau de toilette moltonbrown.co.uk

And as Carla told The Perfume Society at the press launch for Coastal Cypress & Sea Fennel, what sprang to mind was ‘…something fresh and tonic with unexpected elements.’ Looking to interpret the colour blue, Carla chose ‘classical marine notes with cold spices,’ adding ‘Australian sea fennel meets the land with intriguing, salt-sprayed cypress finished with waves of aromatic cardamom and jasmine.’

Sourced from the unspoiled shores of Australia’s Cape York, that cypress extract (also known as ‘blue gold’) is the world’s only naturally blue essential oil distilled from a tree.

So how does it smell? Just imagine standing calf-deep in the cool sea, feeling smooth pebbles as you wiggle your toes, the wind whipping your hair as the salty mist clears

and crystal blue waters beckon you forth to wade deeper still.

Behind you, fig trees sway, salt crystals cling to warm skin as camphorous cardamom rises to meet the zest of bergamot and you breathe a huge, satisfying chest-ful of fresh air.

But it’s not all about the sea itself – somehow, the entire shore has been captured – mossy rocks with their mineral greenness, sun-warmed sand and mellow jasmine blossoms dancing on the breeze. If the joyful exuberance of a holiday can be bottled, Carla has brilliantly accomplished it for Molton Brown. And there’s glamour along with the wild adventuring, an ambiguous floral heart so cleverly tempered with a shimmer of violet leaf and that tantalising salted cypress setting this apart as unique.

For perfumistas who prefer paddling before taking the plunge, you’ll be thrilled to hear there’s a whole range of matching products in the Coastal Cypress and Sea Fennel Collection. From quite the most sumptuous Bath & Shower Gel (that vivid blue!) to a pleasingly long-lasting deodorant, we invite you to join us and dive on in…

oh, what a night

And the awards go to‌ These Lalique trophies are what every perfumer, every fragrance house, every bottle designer longs for: the acknowledgment that their creation is the best of its kind in a given year.

Overleaf we bring you the results of The Fragrance Foundation Awards 2017, recently presented at a glittering ceremony hosted

by Natasha Kaplinsky.

Cue drumroll‌

AWARD WINNER

2014

oh, what a night

★

People’s Choice for Women: Best New Female Fragrance AND Ultimate Launch

Chanel No.5 L’EAU

★

People’s Choice for Men

Hugo Boss Boss Bottled Intense

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Best New Female Fragrance in Limited Distribution

Alexander McQueen McQueen Parfum

★

Reader’s Choice for Women

Michael Bublé

By Invitation

★

Best New Male Fragrance in Limited Distribution

Tom Ford Neroli Portofino Forte

★

Best New CelebRITy FRAGRANCE

Sarah Jessica Parker Stash

★

Best New Home Fragrance

The Perfumer’s Story by Azzi Fig Ambrette

★

Best New Female Print Campaign

Alexander McQueen McQueen Parfum

★ ★

Best New Male Fragrance

Prada Prada L’Homme

Retailer of the Year Harrods Retailer of the Year (outside London) The Perfume Shop Best New Male Commercial Versace Dylan Blue PARFUM Extraordinaire Roja Parfums Britannia Best New Independent Fragrance Marina Barcenilla Black Osmanthus Best New Male Print Campaign Gucci Guilty

★

Best New Female Design & Packaging

Missoni Eau de Toilette

★

Best New Male Design & Packaging

Cartier L’Envol

Best New Female Commercial Stella McCartney POP For more information about the Awards and The Fragrance Foundation’s many activities, visit: fragrancefoundation.org.uk

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an aromatic life

memories, dreams, reflections This year, novelist Joanne Harris won a Jasmine Award for her Good Housekeeping article ‘Every Scent Tells a Tale’. And since her books are so brilliant at conjuring up smells, it came as no surprise to discover that this bestselling author is as scent-obsessed as we are

What’s the very first thing you remember smelling?

The sea, and the pungent, sulphurous smell of the salt flats at my grandfather’s house on the island of Noirmoutier, where I spent all my childhood holidays.

When did you realise that scent was really important to you? When I realised that I could smell things that other people didn’t – including colours. (I have colour-scent synaesthesia).

What’s your favourite scented flower? The wallflowers that grow in my garden. They have a marvellous warmth and spiciness.

What was the first fragrance you were given? Yves Rocher Chèvrefeuille, a fresh, green honeysuckle scent that my mother used to buy from their catalogue (and in fact she still does).

What was the first fragrance you bought for yourself?

Guerlain Chamade – although the perfume was too expensive for me, and I used to buy the bath oil instead (its lasts a long time, and costs less).

Have you had different fragrances for different phases of your life? My adolescence featured Chamade, Charlie, Ô de Lancôme, Penhaligon’s Bluebell. My twenties were Yves Rocher Rose Ispahan, Joy, Mitsouko. Many of my memories are connected with scents, although I’ve never stuck to the same one for very long.

The smell that always makes me feel happy is…

The bluebells in my garden. I live in a wood, so in April and May everything smells of them.

The smell that always makes me feel a bit sad is ... The scent of my grandfather’s Clan pipe tobacco. Its fruity-vanilla scent is unmistakable. If I ever smell it in the street, I always remember him.

From above: Guerlain Chamade; wallflowers; some of Joanne’s muchloved scents, down the decades – from Yves Rocher, Revlon and Penhaligon’s

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The scent that I love on a man is…

Cut grass and woodsmoke.

Sandalwood. Oudh. I also think rose works terrifically as a masculine fragrance – I wish it were used more often.

JOANNE’S FIVE FAVOURITE SMELLS 1 English lavender I grow a lot of it in my garden, and I use it to perfume my clothes, and to help me sleep. To me, it’s the comforting scent of home.

The scent I love to smell on a woman is…

Chypre. Mimosa. Lily of the valley. Patchouli. Cedar. I really enjoy darker feminine fragrances: too many current ones are over-heavy on the vanilla, and end up smelling like the sweets counter at the cinema.

The fragrance from the past that I’ve always wanted to smell is… Jacques Fath Iris Gris, because I’ve heard so much about it, and this iconic creation seems to embody a whole era of scent.

© okanakdeniz; mates; Timmary; Carly Hennigan; Anneke - Fotolia

What is your favourite book about fragrance?

Perfumes – The A-Z Guide, by Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez. I’ve bought it at least 20 times for friends, and I love its erudition and its subversive, witty style.

Author of 20 books, Joanne Harris’s most recent book is Different Class (Transworld), in which the Latin master narrator is fond of Licorice Allsorts and smokes Gauloises...

Above: a bluebell wood and Joanne’s favourite perfume book. Below: Clan pipe tobacco and lily of the valley alongside other fragrances she has worn over time

2 Olbas Oil When all else fails, this is the scent to which I turn when I’m feeling ill, or sad, or under the weather. It was my mother’s cure-all, and now I associate the eucalyptusgeranium-clove-wintergreen scent with wellbeing.

3 Sandalwood I use this scent in winter, to help me feel warm and to remind me of sunny, exotic places. Chanel Bois des Îles is my go-to winter sandalwood: creamy and lovely and warm.

4 Figs It’s the smell of summertime, and of my greenhouse at home, of my grandfather’s garden in France, and of long, leisurely meals in the sun.

5 Petrol For some reason I’ve always loved it, even when I was a child. People still give me funny looks in petrol stations, when they see me sniff the nozzle of the petrol pump.

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making scents of citrus

Oranges are not the only (fragrant) fruit…

… but can you tell your neroli from your orange flower or your petitgrain?

Suzy Nightingale set out to solve the fragrant mystery of this indispensible ingredient, one of the most beautifully versatile plants in perfumery

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From the blossoms draped over the wedding dress of a young British Queen to an Italian princess who scented her gloves with the fragrant oil and gave rise to an entire industry, the bitter orange – Citrus aurantium (also known as the Seville orange) – is surely one of the most generous trees in existence, offering up its flowers, leaves and twigs as prized aromatics for perfumes and ingredients for cooking, its sour fruit for the marmalade so beloved on our breakfast tables.

This one tree has an astonishing bounty: orange blossom, orange flower water, neroli, bigarade and petitgrain are all extracted from this single source. But how does one differ from another – and how on earth do you tell the difference between them?

To begin, let’s travel to Tunisia, where this beneficent tree now mostly flourishes, with just six villages in the Nabeul region providing the majority of the world’s crop.

Originating from Asia, the bitter orange was introduced to North Africa by Crusaders of the 12th Century. A particularly resistant species, it withstood whatever nature had to throw at it, burrowed its roots down and took hold.

Across 400 hectares of these six villages – one hectare being roughly equivalent to a rugby pitch in size – the squat, densely verdant trees are planted in long avenues, with their dark, glossy leaves and waxy white blossoms a stark contrast to the pale, dusty soil on which they grow.

With the subtle manipulations of skilled producers variously using water baths, hydro or steam distillation and enfleurage (pressing flowers in to odourless fat), the range of scents extracted vary from freshly aromatic through charmingly floral to the hip-swaying-ly, intoxicatingly provocative – an alchemist’s dream made reality for

“

Did you ever sleep in a field of orange-trees in bloom?

The air which one inhales deliciously is a quintessence of perfumes. This powerful and sweet smell, as savoury as a sweetmeat, seems to penetrate one, to impregnate, to intoxicate, to induce languor, to bring about a dreamy and somnolent torpor. It is like opium prepared by fairy hands and not by chemists.

�

Guy de Maupassant

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making scents of citrus

Clockwise from top left: harvest-time in Tunisia; a young woman harvester; the tight buds of orange blossom; a morning’s harvest – generally around 10 kilos; the Princess of Nerola, after whom neroli is named; just-picked buds beginning to open

a whole cabinet of fragrant delights.

Women do most of the harvesting, the pickers swathed in headscarves climbing treacherously high-looking ladders to reach the very tops of the trees, typically working eight hours a day and gathering around 20,000 (approximately 10kg) of flowers each per day. Patience is a virtue, for they must wait until exactly the right moment of maturity has been reached – at spring time when the the flower is still in bud form, miniscule grey dots just visible on the tightlyfurled petals showing reservoirs of essential oil. It’s that precious material the perfumers are after.

As buds are tenderly plucked from the tree, the balmy air is filled with the heady fragrance of the trees and the joyous ululations of the women as they drop the buds to sheets laid on the ground beneath them. From there, the flowers are carefully sorted by hand to exclude the leaves, gathered into jute bags and carried to the collector’s office.

Harvesters come on foot or by truck, their harvest piled in carriages led by horses, in sacks tied to the back of bikes or atop a donkey. The collector sits at a desk, carefully watching the scales as each sack is weighed and the price discussed; this varies daily depending on the availability of the flower and the current demand. By midnight, the floor 30 The scented Letter

of the warehouse is ankle-deep with a carpet of fragrant flowers waiting to be processed, filling the room with their narcotic aroma like something from a fairy tale.

But how does one bud manage to produce neroli, orange blossom absolute and orange flower water? The magic is entirely dependent on the way they’re handled…

When the blossoms are hydro-distilled – soaked in water before being heated, with volatile materials carried away in the steam to condense and separate – the extracted essential oil is called neroli, and the by-product water that’s left is orange flower water. This is widely used around the world to flavour sweet pastries, as a fragrant hand rinse, to treat upset stomachs and as a beautifying facial toner.

Treated with solvents, these same flowers offer up orange blossom absolute.

Just like roses and jasmine, orange blossom can be solvent-extracted to produce what’s called a concrète.

The extractor contains several levels of perforated trays, allowing solvent to circulate freely between them and prevent the delicate buds being crushed and spoiled.

When the solvent is poured in, the extractor is sealed and the solvent bathes the flowers for several hours – a little like a washing machine. The liquid is then drained, placed

Best of the zest A sliding scale from decorous to decadent: the many fragrant faces of the bitter orange tree

Clarins Eau Dynamisante Freshly pressed white linen shirt worn open to the waist, golden skin gleaming.

“

Will someone, at the scent of orange blossom, think of me when I too am a person of long ago?

”

Fujiwara no Shunzei (1104-1177)

in a concentrator and steam-heated until the solvent evaporates. What’s left is a sticky, viscous residue known as the concrète – far darker in colour (and deeper in smell) even than the essential oil of neroli.

Later this concrète will be shipped to Grasse, mixed with alcohol and filtered to eliminate the waxes – but only when the alcohol has then evaporated are we left with the precious orange flower absolute.

But wait. Because there are yet more uniquely scented ingredients harvested from this same tree. Petitgrain (‘little grain’) gets its name from the tiny, unripe fruits that offer up a sharply green, spikily scented oil when they’re cold-pressed. The leaves, twigs and branches of Citrus aurantium are also steam-distilled together to produce bigarade – sometimes referred to as ‘petitgrain bigarade’) – which is widely considered to have a soothing, sedative effect. It’s used by aromatherapists to calm anxieties and prevent insomnia – and is also, of course, a key ingredient in many of the original Colognes (see p.11), which have been delicately daubed for medicinal properties throughout the centuries.

But how do they smell? Bright and light in character, neroli is generally used as a (fairly fleeting) top note.

Annick Goutal Néroli Les Colognes Glorious armfuls of blossoms thrown in joyous celebration of the bride’s long-sought happy ever after.

Mizensir White Neroli Succulent segments nibbled on sunny balcony overlooking verdant greenery and, somewhere beyond, the sea.

Diptyque L’Eau de Neroli Classy, grassy, a picnic of marmalade sandwiches proffered to guests indulging in sophisticated flirtations.

Tom Ford Neroli Portifino Shiny, happy people holding hands at glam Ibiza after-party.

Paul Schütze Cirebon Burnished citrus blossoms shimmer with an orchestra’s sound as candles flicker and your heart melts.

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making scents of citrus

Maison Francis Kurkdjian APOM Femme A golden halo of comfort, sunshine diffused through honeycombs, your lover’s skin nuzzled.

Boucheron Neroli d’Ispahan Gilded light as the sunsets is most becoming to the ingénue wearing pearls, a charming smile and little else.

Walden Perfumes The Solid Earth Sheltering beneath a canopy of trees, a downpour leads to laughter, hot kisses on drenched soil, licentiousness.

L’Artisan Parfumeur Séville à l’Aube The molten wax of church candles delicately dripped onto eager skin as virtue meets vixen.

Serges Lutens Fleur d’Oranger Sultry, sweaty and writhing with unabashed decadence: a pure heart gone awry, wreaking revenge.

Marlou L’Animal Sauvage Disgracefully debauched, snarling with feminine fury – you’ll long to stroke her fur coat, but beware: she bites to kill.

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From top left: try to imagine the scent of the blooms, laid out in the orange blossom warehouse; steam distillation; The Language of Flowers book The Perfume Society would like to thank LMR Naturals/International Flavors & Fragrances for permission to use their images of orange blossom production

You might think of it as smelling ‘citrusy’ – but this isn’t the eye-widening freshness of just-peeled oranges. You can’t even really call it ‘zesty’; when smelled in isolation, this delicious nectar is really quite complex. Yes, there’s a definite whiff of the fruit it originates from, but it’s sweet and honeyed with a cool, metallic green facet that adds a lightly-spiked sharpness to spicier undertones which emerge the longer you inhale.

Orange blossom absolute, meanwhile, is heady and indolic – most definitely an opulent heart note. Petitgrain is ultra-green, quite bitter. And bigarade? The very essence of marmalade-iness.

Describing the differences between the essences the bitter orange tree can extract from a perfumer’s perspective, IFF (International Flavors & Fragrances) perfumer Veronique Nyberg explains that ‘the orange flower epitomises the complexity of femininity. While the absolute is sensual, warm and animalic, neroli oil is bright, radiant, sparkling. Two facets of one flower, two aspects of one woman.’

And if you’d ever wondered how neroli got its name, it started with a 17th Century Italian noblewoman, MarieAnne de la Trémoille Orsini, Princess of Nerola – a small town near Rome. She used the oil to scent her gloves and bathwater. It became such a fashion among the nobility aching to ape her stylish scent that the essence was named neroli in her honour. Considered an iron fist in scented gloves, Anne Marie wasn’t the only royal who looked to the orange tree to lend its fragrance to the manifestation of her womanly wiles, however – see ‘The Blossom Queen’, right. But this Italian trendsetter took the exotic headiness of the blossom itself and enshrined it as a symbol of pure virtue, honour and chastity.

But while the primly perfect buds might visually convey

The Blossom Queen

a sign of innocence, their heady scent can also bring a man to his knees with longing. In his novel The Leopard, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa chronicles crossing an orange grove in full flower, describing ‘…the nuptial scent of the blossoms absorbed the rest as a full moon does a landscape… that Islamic perfume evoking houris [beautiful young women] and fleshly joys beyond the grave.’

What a marvellous depiction of the animalic naughtiness orange blossom absolute can evoke. In this intense form, it’s a floral that veritably snarls with sensuality, similar to the narcotic warmth of jasmine and with something of tuberose’s potency – but none of that cold, grandiose standoffishness. With pure orange blossom, it’s all warm, come-hither sassiness that can verge on the medicinally camphoraceous in high quantities – and because of the laborious way it’s extracted, it is one of the most costly ingredients in perfumery.

From fragrant tonic to becalm the skittish to a charming floral full of girlish glee, the bitter orange truly offers a scent for every mood. It can be a good luck charm and symbol of purity – or a salacious seducer who smacks her lips as she devours men’s souls.

Maybe it wasn’t an apple tree Eve succumbed to in the Garden of Eden, after all…

When Queen Victoria married her beloved Prince Albert on 10th February 1840, she chose only one flower for her wedding ensemble: orange blossom. She decorated her dress with sprigs of it, carried it in her bouquet and even wore a circlet of the blossoms fashioned from gold leaves, white porcelain flowers and green enamelled oranges in her hair. Long steeped in bridal mythology, and within the language of flowers carrying a meaning of ‘chastity’ and ‘betrothal’, Victoria cherished her love of orange blossom through the years, with Albert later giving her a precious necklace, brooch and earrings crafted to resemble delicate sprigs of her favourite flower, which she proudly wore for every wedding anniversary. When Victoria elected to wear that one blossom to mark her marriage, she firmly planted the fashion for blushing brides being associated with orange blossom – a tradition that continues to this day.

The orange blossom jewellery given to Queen Victoria (above) by Prince Albert

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perfume is an obsession

#ShareMyStash Will Emmett is co-owner – with his partner Nick White – of The Dressing Room at Emmett & White, a new must-visit boutique for vintage-seekers in Alfriston, East Sussex. But his passion for fashion, we discovered, is rivaled by a love of perfume.

Words/photos: Jo Fairley

‘Perfume collecting is my grandmother’s fault,’ smiles 31-year-old Will Emmett, who began amassing fragrances almost two decades ago at the precocious age of 12. ‘She would give me perfumes she’d bought and didn’t feel suited her – like Miss Dior, because it was too “old-fashioned”. I was also on the receiving end of a bottle of Chanel No.19 very early on; she’d asked my grandfather for No.5, and he got it wrong – and she was so cross, she gave it to me instead.’

Joan was a glamorous figure, muchloved by Will and clearly influential.

‘She always wore perfume, even if she was only gardening – and I never smell No.5, or Estée Lauder Youth Dew, without thinking of her. We shared a mutual love of the nicer things in life…’

His grandma couldn’t have realised quite what she’d started, at the time. But today, as we sit in the Nancy Lancaster-inspired ‘butter yellow’ attic bedroom of his home in Alfriston (opposite), an easy ‘commute’ from his vintage boutique, Will’s collection – from teensy bottles to giant factices (display dummies) – covers almost every surface. (Or at least, those that haven’t disappeared under bright orange Hermès boxes.)

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“

My perfume obsession began about eight years ago. And it’s all eBay’s fault

”

He swings open the door of a corner cupboard, and it turns out to be rammed with both fragrances and vintage cosmetics (another passion), all perfectly displayed.

But it isn’t the bottles which attract him. Or even the smells, at least initially. It’s the history of these fabled perfume houses, which Will spends lots of his time researching – when he isn’t surfing the internet finding out about a devoré velvet coat, a sequined flapper dress, a Norman Hartnell couture suit or any of the other extraordinarily high-quality fashions which he retails at The Dressing Room, that is.

At the age of 18, Will began a ‘sort of apprenticeship’ at an auction house in Bourne End, near his home in Marlow. ‘I had to teach myself everything about antiques, researching via books and on-line. It began for work, but that approach definitely helped when I started to collect. My very first collection was of Bakelite [an early plastic], which morphed into an interest in Art Deco.

Since then I’ve had lots of collections.’

With fragrance, it began slowly – soon after Will learned to drive. ‘I started going to antique fairs and picking up things that nobody wanted. My favourite thing would be to pick

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perfume is an obsession

A fragrant corner of Will’s yellow bedroom

up a bottle, bring it home and find out the history of the house, the bottle designer, the period it came from – and I invariably discovered that the perfume turned out to be a total reflection of the tastes of that time.’

Will once stumbled upon a bottle of Grossmith perfume at a boot fair.

‘It was empty, but the smell in the bottle was still strong – and delicious.’

Another find which got his heart racing was found to date back to 1797. ‘The bottle itself was in a really bad state.

I thought: I can either just look at this and forever wonder what it smells like – or what the hell? I could open it.’ Curiosity won – and Will invites me to try a drop of the juice now, which is oily, unctuous, and with an odd white sediment in the bottom. Astonishingly for something well over 200 years old, it smells divine: sweet, Oriental, and really rather sexy.

The perfume obsession properly kicked in about eight years ago. ‘And it’s all eBay’s fault. I’d get into bed, start scrolling – and hours later my eyes would have gone square.’ A few days later, his Jiffy-bagged quarry would arrive via the postman. Today, Will’s modus operandi is generally to find a vintage bottle – usually online – and try it against the current version.

‘Guerlain Mitsouko, for instance; I’ve got a 1920s bottle, and a modern one.

Bellodgia, by Caron, ditto, and their Nuit de Noel.’ Rarely is he drawn to contemporary perfumes – ‘but I think I’m ready to start exploring Frederic Malle’s collection, because I’m fascinated by his approach and I love 36 The scented Letter

what I’ve smelled on friends, so far.’

With immaculate manners, and exquisitely groomed, it shines out that Will grew up in a very stylish family.

His mother worked as the principal dressmaker for Hardy Amies, creating couture clothes for Princess Margaret and celebrities of the day. ‘Once she’d finished the dress for the princess, she’d make it up in another fabric for herself.’ While loving that glamour, Will had never imagined making a living out of vintage fashion, though, until a life-changing e-mail came from a relative. ‘It said: “Do you know anyone who’d be interested in a lot of old clothes?” I didn’t really know how to help, but I offered to check it out and discovered six whole dressing rooms of clothes, from the 1920s onwards, belonging to a great-aunt.

“

As far as I’m concerned, women’s perfumes smell great on men – and vice versa

”

I offered to start selling them myself, and moved on from vintage fairs to a pop-up in Alfriston, where we’d recently moved.’

The Dressing Room found its permanent home on Alfriston’s high street late in 2016; by then, almost 70% of that great-aunt’s wardrobe had already been sold. Despite only being open since last October, The Dressing Room has fast become a magnet for vintage-seekers who are happy to make the pilgrimage to this picture-perfect Sussex village – and, cheeringly, Will makes a special project of trying to find clothes in sizes that comfortably fit the women of today, rather than the typical stick insects of yesteryear.

However, perfume is a private passion, rather than something he retails (and it’s likely to stay that way).

Lately, Will’s has also begun to collect factices – the oversized dummy bottles used for display. ‘Nick’s brilliant at finding them for birthdays and Christmas.’ (The day I first visited Will’s shop, a stunning giant-sized Miss Dior Original had just landed on his desk.)

What’s clear, though, is that – in common with those of us at The Perfume Society (and many of today’s niche perfume houses) – Will isn’t in the least concerned about the ‘gender’ of a perfume. ‘As far as I’m concerned, women’s perfumes smell great on men – and vice versa.

There didn’t used to be any rules in perfume-wearing and I certainly don’t observe any. Nick usually likes oudhs and woods, but when we went away recently he hadn’t packed any perfume, so he sprayed my Chanel Coco. It smelled fantastic on him.’

Will’s also a fan of layering. Top tip? ‘L’Heure Bleue and Old Spice!

It was always the cheap splash your grandfather wore – but I’ve rediscovered it and love how it ramps up the spice factor of L’Heure Bleue.’

And like everything else in Will Emmett’s wardrobe, you can be sure: he wears it well…

The Dressing Room at Emmett & White, Candy Cottage, High Street, Alfriston, West Sussex, BN26 9UF emmettandwhite.com

Giant display bottles of perfume sit alongside an impressive, perfectly-aligned Hermès box collection

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will’S TOP 10 ‘These are mostly fragrances that I own in vintage form and as modern versions. I really enjoy exploring the contrasts – or smelling how something has “aged”, often more successfully than you’d think.’

1 Caron Nuit de Noel ‘It still there the morning after I apply it. I love how it catches people’s attention because it’s so heady.’

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3

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2 Chanel No.5 ‘Chanel No.5 mixed with Elnett hairspray is the true scent of my grandmother! I wear No.5 when I want to think of her.’

3 Teo Cabanel Oha ‘I have an obsession with the Duchess of Windsor, and I Googled “What perfume did the Duchess wear?” Oha was a private commission, publicly released only after her death: a classic aldehydic floral which I tracked down in a wonderful old-fashioned perfumery in Amsterdam.’

4 Lanvin Arpège ‘I wear this in winter, as it’s quite a cosy smell.’

5 Caron Bellodgia ‘I prefer the old Bellodgia to the new Più Bellodgia version, which doesn’t have the same heavenly carnation spiciness.’

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Miss Dior ‘The original only…’

7 Guerlain L’Heure Bleue ‘I like how old-fashioned and romantic it is.’

8 Chanel Gardénia ‘Smells so incredibly like a real gardenia.’

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9 L’Artisan Parfumeur Velours de Roses ‘I buy roses for the house and I actually love the fragrance when they start to decay. This smells just like that – in a good way!’

10 Jean Patou Joy ‘Someone at work gave me my first bottle; they’d been given it for Christmas, sprayed it once, thought it smelled awful – and knew I’d love it! My favourite thing is to put on a perfume like this – from the 1920s or 1930s – and picture the type of person who’d have been wearing it, and where they’d have worn it…’

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first whiffs

latest launches Summer’s new fragrances span everything from airy Colognes through to heady Orientals and leathers released now to delight the senses of Middle Eastern perfume-lovers who head for the cool of London at this time of year

THE MEN’S EDIT DISCOVERY BOX

✶

Did you know that one third of our readers and customers are men?

Set to delight the senses of all those male followers, then, is our third masculine Discovery Box (although we’ll be borrowing many of these ourselves...) The box inlcudes two fabulous duos from Escentric Molecules and Clive Christian plus a full-size eye treat from The Refinery worth £31, and is priced £19 at perfumesociety.org/SHOP

new

● DUNHILL ICON ELITE ● MILLER HARRIS FEUILLES DE TABAC ● JIMMY CHOO MAN ICE ● PARFUMS DE MARLY LAYTON ● CRISTIANO RONALDO LEGACY

● INITIO PARFUMS MAGNETIC BLEND 7

THE FRAGRANCE FAMILIES

DY O W O

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NTA

ORIE

AL NT

E RI

O FL

FLO

CHY PRE

As scentophiles know, fragrances fall into different ‘families’. So we’ve used the same classification system for launches as on our perfumesociety.org website. Just look for the coloured strip above the name of the perfume, which is your visual clue to the families. These are listed below. Most of us are drawn to a specific family/families: once you know which you fall into, that colour can act as a cue – and help you take a short-cut to the ones you may want to try first.

FRESH

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M UR

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FOUGERE

ABEL GOLDEN NEROLI

AEDES DE VENUSTUS PÉLARGONIUM

BERDOUES MAASAÏ MARA

Lusciously balmy, the softest waft of neroli and matcha tea accord intrigues here from the get-go as the narcotic exoticism of jasmine sambac is tamed by a lithe sparkle of petitgrain. As the honeyed hush of ylang ylang sinks to a soft sandalwood base, we find ourselves looking up flights to New Zealand – the home of this exciting new (100% natural) brand, and birthplace of their only professional perfumer, the demonstrably incredibly talented, Isaac Sinclair. £98 for 50ml eau de parfum roullierwhite.com

Perfumer Nathalie Feisthauer’s first outing for this Greenwich Village perfume house is based around geranium, ‘an old school flower everyone thinks they know – even though no one really knows it’, as she puts it. AdV’s signature incense notes beautifully accent that Pelargonium graveolens­­, alongside light-filled Calabrian bergamot, amber-like clary sage, green cardamom, smooth, buttery orris, elemi resin and a heavenly haze of musks. £210 for 100ml eau de parfum selfridges.com

The pyramid of chamomile, labdanum and buchu (a South African aromatic herb) in this fragrance – inspired by Kenya’s national park of the same name – seems deceptively simple. But the result is far from it; Philippe Romano manifests a complex, spicy and resinous scent, with a honeyed dry-down that has an air of vanilla to it – sweet, moreish and subtly soft. The wonderfully African printed flacon would be a bright and colourful addition to any scent stash. £60 for 100ml eau de parfum harveynichols.com

BY KILIAN BLACK PHANTOM

CALVIN KLEIN CKONE SUMMER

CARTIER LES HEURES VOYAGEUSES OUD & SANTAL

The mischievous Kilian Hennessy is back – proffering quite the sexiest black lacquer treasure ‘Momento Mori’ box, adorned by a skull and locked with a key. You’ll definitely want to keep anyone else’s hands off this stunning woodsy gourmand creation, which opens with a great slug of ‘shin shin’, a fiery drink of strong coffee laced with Caribbean rum (the favoured tipple of pirate kings), and finishes with a sexy swagger of sugar cane and sandalwood. £245 for 50ml refillable eau de parfum houseoffraser.co.uk

Anticipation for ckone’s annual summer edition is always hot, hot, hot – but 2017’s is the perfect antidote, bottling lime, citron and cucumber in its cooling introduction, before the temperature is allowed to rise again. A trio of fiery pepper notes blaze in the heart, before saffron, creamy musk and guaiac wood drift slowly in. The signature flask is reinvented with a sunrise design on the flipside– and we know collectors will bag two: one to splash, one to stash. £33 for 100ml eau de toilette debenhams.com

In-house nose Mathilde Laurent brings a touch of her cool/glam aesthetic to some of the bestselling scents in Les Heures Voyageuses collection, now available in bottles emblazoned with an Arabic-inspired pattern taken from a precious brooch that nestles in the Cartier archives. For Oud & Santal, the all-enveloping woodiness is juxtaposed by sandalwood planed as soft as silk. Sophisticated yet still edgy, it definitely takes us on a nomadic journey we never want to end. £218 for 45ml parfum harrods.com

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CLINIQUE AROMATICS ELIXIR PREMIER

DEAR ROSE COMME UNE FLEUR

DOLCE & GABBANA LIGHT BLUE EAU INTENSE POUR FEMME

It’s most definitely not every day that there’s a new incarnation of the ultra-classic Aromatics Elixir. To bag this quarry, then, fans need to make a bee-line for Harrods, which has the worldwide exclusive on the clear crystal prestige edition, engraved with the iconic flower, its stopper top allowing for languid application of citrus, clary sage, jasmine, tuberose, rose – and those much-loved signature Chypre resins, oakmoss, vetiver and woods. £88 for 25ml parfum At Harrods

Any newness from talented mother/ daughter duo Chantal and Alexandra Roos is worth a fanfare – so we’re giving a blast on the trumpet for this feminine addition to their exclusive collection. To quote: ‘Dream No.10…

Dear Rose... and you like a flower emerging from the ground, you in the light, and this scent that makes you dream...’ Reveries will be beautifully scented via petitgrain, orange blossom, patchouli, rose Turkish delight, ambergris and cashmere wood. £155 for 100ml eau de parfum selfridges.com

D&G invite us to dive deep into azure seas with this super-refreshing yet intensified version of their 2001 bestseller (it’s partnered by a men’s version , see p.44) – and they certainly pushed the (speed)boat out, enlisting the renowned Olivier Cresp for the task. Fresh at first spritz, with lemon, apple and aromatic marigold, the jasmine heart soon unfolds, delivering a dry-down (or should it be a toweldown, in this case?) of sexy amber woods and musks.

From £42.30 for 25ml eau de parfum johnlewis.com

ELIZABETH ARDEN GREEN TEA MIMOSA

ESTÉE LAUDER BRONZE GODDESS EDP

FLORIS CHYPRESS

So on-trend with the blooming of mimosa as a fragrance note (which was the focus of our last edition of The Scented Letter), Elizabeth Arden’s much-loved green tea scent has been softly dusted with this powdery floral element, in an edition designed to evoke ‘the sense of a secret garden full of intrigue and surprise, touched by the first rays of summer sunshine.’

Sicilian lemon, grapefruit, osmanthus, musk, ambrette and heliptrope make up the rest of the bouquet. £15 for 100ml eau de toilette elizabetharden.co.uk

Summer isn’t summer without ice cream, sand between our toes – and the unmistakable, holiday-perfect scent of Bronze Goddess. For 2017 this bestseller is offered up in an eau de parfum just begging to be spritzed after sundown, vibratilng zestily with mandarin and bergamot, an electric flash of ginger, delectable creamy coconut and the sun-drenched floralcy of jasmine sambac absolute, with vanilla absolute, cashmere woods and amber offering a final exotic embrace.

From £38 for 50ml eau de parfum esteelauder.co.uk

A personal project for Floris’s ninthgeneration family member Edward Bodenham, this is a stunning addition to the realm of Chypres, with their unrivalled sophistication. Neroli, sweet orange, lemon and bergamot sparkle energetically before elegant osmanthus, rose, jasmine and ylang ylang unfurl their petals. But it’s the wonderfully tenacious end-game which reveals Chypress’s timeless Chypre-ness, via vanilla, amber, musk and patchouli.

From £60 for 50m eau de toilette florislondon.com

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GALLIVANT TEL AVIV

GIORGIO BEVERLEY HILLS GLAM

GIVENCHY EAUDEMOISELLE ESSENCE DES PALAIS

Into this stunning collection of four fragrances inspired by world travels, Gallivant founder Nick Steward (previously creative director for L’Artisan Parfumeur) pours two decades of industry experience. Here it’s all bright sunshine, warm skin, gold jewellery glimmering – and the crazy intensity of a beach-bound city that lives to party. Clementine and blackcurrant buds float nonchalantly before the floral heart gets down and smoky for the setting sun. £65 for 30ml eau de parfum roullierwhite.com

Giorgio Beverley Hills was the scent of the 1980s, tagged by some ‘the scent of the century.’ We certainly always loved it – and welcome the innovation of a ‘new’ Giorgio, exclusive to The Perfume Shop in celebration of their own 25th birthday. Alongside a flourish of dewfruit, Glam supports the sparkling white floral signature of the original (including jasmine and magnolia) with a smoothly sexy base of sandalwood and golden amber. We say: welcome back. £45 for 100ml eau de parfum theperfumeshop.com

What seems like a surprising number of rich, intense Oriental and woody launches each summer is actually driven by the influx of Middle Eastern visitors to London seeking respite from the heat of home – and who love to add to their scent collections. But this will delight any lover of mysterious compositions: a woody floriental aswirl with myrrh, benzoin, rose, saffron, patchouli and amber. We adore the satin gold and matte black take on the classic Eaudemoiselle flacon, too. £105 for 100ml eau de parfum At Harrods

GRENSON + HAECKELS ELIZABETH STREET

GUERLAIN DIMANCHE À LA CAMPAGNE

ISSEY MIYAKE L’EAU D’ISSEY SUMMER EDITION

Could there be a more perfect partner to create signature scents for the so-British shoe brand Grenson than Margate-based Haeckels, who are famed for capturing the essence of specific locations? Grenson dispatched Haeckels’ Dom Bridges to their New York store to breathe in the urban environment – and the result evokes the coffee shops, florists, restaurants and downright Manhattan cool of the locale, via lime, grasses, coriander, coffee, chilli and cardamom. £160 for 100ml eau de parfum grenson.com

We want to bathe in this. And splash it all over. On a hot day, we will be applying poultices soaked in Thierry Wasser’s eau de Cologne. Designed for ‘peace and pampering’, it soothes and takes the temperature down really quite dramatically with aromatic herbs, zingy-fresh bergamot and soft orange blossom, wrapped in white musk. Fresh, green, cucumber-cool – and supplied in a 250ml bottle that just begs for generous application. £135 for 250ml At Harrods

Bursting with summery freshness, L’Eau d’Issey is back this season with a hit of tangy grapefruit and a spring in her step. The classic airy aquatic note lingers atop a fruity cocktail of passion fruit and guava. This time reinvented by typographer Philippe Apeloig, the bottle is adorned with kookily uneven lettering that echoes some of Miyake’s designs. Wearable, chic and perfect for those hot summer nights, when only an air of utter coolness will do. £41 for 100ml eau de toilette theperfumeshop.com

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JUICY COUTURE ROYAL ROSE

KENZO KENZO WORLD

LISA RILEY CHANGE

Definitely the sexiest, smoochiest, most mysterious evocation to date, this will delight the many, many fans of Juicy Couture’s scented oeuvre with its luminous, elegant, velvety construction around the ‘rose of 100 petals’, Rosa centifolia. A cloud of incense hovers over that bloom, with heliotrope bringing out its sweetness, while sandalwood flirts with amber, musk, incense and a soft suede note.

Forget velour tracksuits; this cries out for your most feminine frock. £89 for 100ml eau de parfum selfridges.com

Its attention-grabbing Spike Jonesdirected campaign features a madly gyrating Margaret Qualley diving through a huge eye-shaped flower display – and the unique bottle with rubberised ‘eyelash’ cap and dangling gold orb is another hint to Kenzo World’s quirkiness within. Genius perfumer Francis Kurkdjian is the nose behind the juice itself, fusing peony, jasmine and Ambroxan for a juicy floral bouquet that speaks to us of paddling in rock pools while eating lychees. £45 for 30ml eau de parfum thefragranceshop.co.uk

We’re not sure any fragrance has previously been launched on the platform of an 11-stone weight loss.

But Change – from former Emmerdale star Lisa Riley – follows the launch of a signature clothing line designed to embody the positivity Lisa experienced through that process. It opens with mandarin and mulberry flowers, blossoming into jasmine, orange flower and tuberose on a base of tonka, sandalwood and patchouli.

Light on the bank balance, too. £19.99 for 50ml eau de parfum idealworld.tv

MARC JACOBS RAIN

MEMO EAU DE MEMO

MISSGUIDED BABE POWER

Lovers of this deliciously limpid creation have been praying for rain, rain to come again – and Marc Jacobs has obliged; by popular demand, this splash is back for summer 2017. Notes of wet cut grass, wild strawberries, zesty clementine, passion flower, white orchid, amber, musk and moss surround the signature ‘rain accord’, which is sheer, aquatic and invites you to dance in its cool freshness. You’ll find this as wearable as your absolute favourite jeans. £37 for 100ml eau de toilette feelunique.com

Daisy-fresh, Memo’s newest unveiling celebrates the 10th birthday of a niche house which takes inspiration from places near and far for its compositions. This time, it’s the turn of Paris – the city of lights, captured in a breezy and fragile fusion of fresh green tea, bergamot and jasmine absolute. We can almost imagine the gold glinting off the city’s statues – and we can certainly see it echoed in the gilded bottle, aflutter with dainty birds. £195 for 100ml eau de parfum harveynichols.com

A can of Babe Power was to be found beside every place setting at the celebration dinner for this year’s Fragrance Foundation Awards. That’s quite some unveiling for the debut fragrance from Missguided (the online fashion retailer), which fuses grapefruit, sour cherry, apple, pineapple, peony, orange blossom, candy floss, vanilla and amber, and was designed ‘to give you a boost of power so you can slay all day!’ (Their exclamation mark.

Though could equally be ours.) £28 for 80ml eau de parfum missguided.co.uk

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PENHALIGON’S PAITHANI

PRADA OLFACTORIES MIDNIGHT TRAIN

SALVATORE FERRAGAMO LA COMMEDIA

Fresh from the trade routes, Paithani abounds with spices. An invigorating cardamom is fused with sparkly black pepper and nutmeg – a fragrant holy trinity. Silky rose grounds the heart, while a milk accord softens and soothes. A touch of maté absolute conjures the spicy, steaming teas served en route, while sticky, golden resins are fused with hard leather, all softened by cedar essence and amber woods in the base. Definitely a fragrance we’d travel far for. £164 for 100ml eau de parfum penhaligons.com

Les Mirages are four new unisex additions to Prada Olfactories, their most exclusive fragrance collection.

This further collaboration between Miuccia Prada and Daniela Andrier ‘reimagines the art of scent as a global atlas…’ This is our favourite (others showcase rose, resins/amber, and ylang-ylang) – a dark swirl of patchouli alongside Texan cedarwood and cistus resin, surrounded by a radiantly warm amber accord. (We love the graphic silk pouches for each bottle, too.) £195 for 100ml eau de parfum selfridges.com

We’re told that La Commedia is an ode to Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’ – the epic poem ‘in which allusions, symbolisms and allegories lead to an imaginary journey…’ Bitter orange and spicy cardamom dazzle at first sniff, with nutmeg and pimento wrapping them in sexy warmth. In the final stanzas, Givaudan’s rising star NatalieGracia Cetto introduces smoky guaiac wood and vetiver. Darkly delicious – and with a suitably Tuscan terracotta tint for La Commedia’s juice. £130 for 75ml eau de toilette At Harrods

VALENTINO VALENTINA BLUSH

VILHELM PARFUMERIE HARLEM BLOOM

WORTH BELLE

An olfactory interpretation of raw silk, the latest addition to the Valentina collection wraps effervescent orange blossom in an indulgent swathe of praline, to enchant and beguile.

Perfumer Alexis Dadier captures the spirit of a joyous young woman dancing through the streets on a summer’s evening, silk dress swirling as her cheeks flush with sheer pleasure – as yours may well do, when you receive the inevitable compliments on your delectable scent. £63 for 50ml eau de parfum johnlewis.com

Vilhelm’s creations are still exclusive in the UK to the West End’s favourite bazaar, Liberty – but this one’s a magic carpet ride to Harlem, home of Vilhelm founder Jan Ahlgren, inspired by the resilient flowers that bloom in the concrete jungle. Delicate angelica seeds, violet, Damascene rose and saffron are gradually overtaken by wild leather and ebony woods – evoking shrubs arching over brownstones, or petals peeping up between paving stones and flourishing in secret yards. £145 for 100ml eau de parfum At Liberty

Firmenich’s Honorine Blanc stepped up to the role of the perfumer for this fragrance, which puts the legendary House of Worth centre-stage once more. Its inspiration is Belle – the central character in Disney’s new adaptation of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ – and it’s worthy of any leading lady.

A fruity overture, a waltz of pink pepper, Bulgarian rose, white peony, Rosa centifolia and lily of the valley soften to sleek woods and ambrette seeds as the credits roll. £69.50 for 60ml eau de parfum At The Fragrance Shop

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DOLCE & GABBANA LIGHT BLUE EAU INTENSE POUR HOMME

EIGHT & BOB NUIT DE MEGÈVE

We’re not sure which is bluer: the colour of this juice, or the colour of David Gandy’s eyes in the eyepopping advertising campaign.

Whatever: Alberto Morillas reinvents a modern icon by pouring a chilled cocktail of mandarin and frozen grapefruit, brilliantly contrasted by a salty, aquatic accord alongside aromatic juniper, then finally wrapped in amber woods. Frankly, any man is going to make a fabulous splash in this modern masculine masterpiece.

From £48 for 50ml eau de parfum debenhams.com

Albert Fouquet was the fabled creator of Eight & Bob, in the 1930s.

From this ‘phoenix’ house, revived for the 21st Century, comes another fragrance inspired by one of the wealthy Fouquet’s playgrounds – the ski resort of Megève. Woodsmoke, tobacco, coffee, grapefruit zest, petitgrain and lashings of vetiver evoke the glamour of this winter retreat – but we’d be as keen to get a breath of Nuit de Megève on a hot summer’s day, actually. £125 for 100ml eau de parfum harveynichols.com

GRENSON + HAECKELS QUEEN STREET

GUCCI GUILTY ABSOLUTE POUR HOMME

GUERLAIN L’HOMME IDEAL SPORT

It’s fiendishly hard to categorise by family this creation by Margate’s Haeckels perfume house for shoemakers Grenson. Exactly where do leather, glue, stone and brick fit into the perfume pyramid…? No matter: this wonderfully wearable eau de parfum – inspired by the ‘smellscape’ of Grenson’s factories and their surrounding landscapes – should simply be enjoyed for its blend of grasses, aromatics, amber, woods and leatheriness. £160 for 100ml eau de parfum grenson.com

The legendary Alberto Morillas (a busy man!) collaborated with Gucci’s Alessandro Michele on this intensification of Guilty, setting out to create a structure that ‘remains unchanged from the first time it’s applied on the skin.’ (Continuing the trend for more linear fragrances that is emerging.) Playing on Gucci’s heritage, he custom-blended a leather accord with a new Woodleather note, along with a cypress extract. It’s dry, complex, woody – and very, very sexy. £54 for 50ml eau de parfum boots.com

Thierry Wasser and Delphine Jelk’s collaboration celebrates the notion that ‘the ideal man is elegant, intelligent, funny and of course… athletic.’ We reckon an occasional ping-pong game is all the athleticism required to enjoy this blend of fresh spices and ultra-crisp aquatic notes, sparkly with neroli and given body by vetiver, coumarin and patchouli. And doesn’t L’Homme Idéal’s perfect square of a bottle looks very striking in its blue sports gear?

From £50.50 for 50ml eau de toilette johnlewis.com

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GIVENCHY GENTLEMAN ONLY EAU FRAÎCHE

Givenchy invite us to get fraîche with this beautiful baby blue version of the super-successful Gentleman Only, perfect for reviving flagging spirits on a hot summer’s day. (Or night, come to that.) Fresh, aromatic and woodsy all at once, it’s a cocktail of Nepalese mint, lemon and Haitian vetiver, underpinned by Ambroxan for added smoulder factor – and the eau fraîche’s timeless masculine elegance is matched by this satisfyingly hefty bottle. £63 for 100ml eau fraîche johnlewis.com

the men’s room

MICHAEL KORS EXTREME NIGHT

ISSEY MIYAKE NUIT D’ISSEY

JIMMY CHOO MAN ICE

Issey Miyake’s latest scent is a wistful interpretation of the night sky – in an appropriately inky-dark flacon.

Sparkling lime and spicy coriander in its introduction illuminate the leathery heart like a blanket of twinkling stars.

Midnight here smells like a dewy hilltop escape, with cedarwood, earthy vetiver and a dreamy tonka bean dry-down. One for warm summer nights, applied generously to the neck of the person you most like to nuzzle. £43 for 75ml eau de toilette theperfumeshop.com

Keep ultra-cool in the rising temperatures this summer with Man Ice’s refreshing blend of mandarin, bergamot and cedrat. An ode to the ‘the Jimmy Choo man’, this scent is effortless and playful, juxtaposing crisp apple with woody vetiver and patchouli. As the night draws in, succumb to a wave of musk, moss and Ambroxan in the sensual dry-down.

The perfect spritz for sun-warmed skin – and the polar white bottle is also just as cool as you could hope for. £30 for 30ml eau de toilette theperfumeshop.com

NARCISO RODRIGUEZ BLEU NOIR

PENHALIGONS AGARBATHI

PRADA LUNA ROSSA CARBON

‘Oh you smell gooood…’ is guaranteed with any Narciso fragrance, and this addictive little number for the chaps is no exception.

At first the spices dominate, nutmeg and cardamom taking charge, but the coolest breeze of woody musk drifts in like mist on a summer’s morning and everything gets quite steamy. Imagine a man stepping straight from the shower in to a crisp blue linen shirt, skin slightly wet, the material clinging to his skin. (We certainly are.) £54 for 100ml eau de toilette johnlewis.com

Lifted by a sparkly bergamot and pink pepper in the top, a pillar of incense then sets this spicy, aromatic scent ablaze, with resinous olibanum adding both depth and richness. A milk accord (suddenly, it’s all about milk accords!) is fused with jasmine for a creamy, silky and oh-so-soft heart. Via a smooth woodiness bolstered by palo santo essence and sandalwood, Agarbathi ultimately mellows to a downy warmth we rather want to be wrapped in all day. £164 for 100ml eau de parfum penhaligons.com

Man, there are some sensational men’s fragrance flacons around right now.

This black glass bottle from Prada has its red stripe actually etched into the inky (yet transparent) glass, and feels like nothing so much as jet, or slate.

The juice itself smells as good as this looks: a mineral-dusted, botanicalpowered aromatic fougère blend of bergamot, patchouli, black pepper, lavender and dry amber, perfectly showing off the enduringly noteperfect talents of Daniela Andrier. £48.50 for 50ml eau de toilette escentual.com

A feisty surge of black pepper and nutmeg sends this scent into overdrive from the first blast, the powerful opening notes tamped down with a crisp shot of bergamot.

An aromatic heart of clean-skin soapiness, with cypress and clary sage, then leads to a sensual dusting of orris-infused vanilla.

Think: sleek open-top sports car zipping through the darkening streets of a vibrant city, all urban cool as the wind ruffles his hair… £42 for 40ml eau de parfum boots.com

The

scented Letter

45

d r a y e v a r g t s e l l a m s e Th

it takes me right back

Sometimes, a passion for smells begins in the strangest places – as this (slightly macabre) account from blogger Samantha Scriven – a.k.a. IScentYouADay – reveals

“

Scent memories are not always pretty smells, and digging holes in wet earth for small rotting animal bodies has, I believe, given me a gut of iron. There are few smells I can’t handle (and both are manufactured).

I grew up in the 1970s where we lived on a modern housing estate on the edge of tangled, unspoiled woodland which is now even more modern housing. It was Heaven for cats and curtains for mice. There are a lot of very tiny skeletons under that new even more modern housing estate, and probably lots of tiny ghosts too.

My earliest scent memories always involve being alone and outside, and as my mother used to say ‘in a world of my own.’ In my world, which is often preferable to the real one, even today, I was both florist and funeral director for victims of my cat. It was the least I could do after Blackie or Thomas had murdered vole after mole after sparrow and littered the garden with dead, surrendered corpses.

From the smell of the limp furred or feathered bodies, I could tell if this was a fresh kill or several days dead.

The unique sickly, rotting tang is one I can still smell today – but it holds no unpleasantness for me, only happy nostalgia. I was outside and I was busy.

That’s all any child wants.

On discovering a new feline murder, my modus operandi was thus: I would ensure the victim was dead and not just faking it until the cat had gone. Having ascertained that a death had indeed taken place, a fresh grave would be dug and damp soil and moss would be turned with a stainless-steel jelly spoon.

The body would be placed in the grave, and earth laid over the unfortunate fluffy soul who had passed too soon.

I would pat down the soil, arrange a bouquet of colourful wildflowers over the top and then push a twiggy crucifix into the ground at the head of the grave. I would put my hands together and either say the Lord’s Prayer or sing ‘When a Knight Won His Spurs’, which we learned in school assembly and which made me think of King Arthur rather than Jesus.

The fun bit was collecting the wildflowers to arrange

over the graves. From this exercise, I learned the names and scents of them all: pink campion, herb robert, dog roses, scarlet pimpernels, mauve (strangely unscented) buddleia, daisies, celandines and sunset ferns. Any leftover flowers would go in a rinsed-out Ski yoghurt pot on the kitchen windowsill for Mum. The legacy of this smallest graveyard means my sense of smell can transport me back to 1976 faster than a whole album of photographs. I can stomach almost any smell. I can clean up after dead animals (I still have predatory cats), and didn’t flinch when a nest of baby rats once swarmed over my feet in the garden.

I hadn’t realised that recognising the scent of a decaying animal would prove to be a life skill, but recently there was a distinct odour emanating from under the stairs in our house. My husband was convinced one of our cats had mistaken it for a litter box and urinated in it. He readied himself with his expensive catpee neutraliser gun and prepared to drench our son’s beloved Nike football boot collection.

‘Wait!’ I said, holding my hand up like a stop sign as my Wonder Woman cape flapped in the breeze. ‘This is no cat pee.

This is decomposing garden bird.’ I sniffed the air. ‘A few days old. Not fresh.’

Sure enough, there it was. A dead blackbird, stored as a snack for later by a ginger menace with blood on his breath.

The other happy result of my childhood occupation is that I have two sons who know their celandines from their buttercups and their thrushes from their starlings. And they have a mother who loves florals and green scents and wildflowers in yoghurt pots.

Some things you never grow out of.

46 The scented Letter

© Berty - Fotolia.com

“I was outside and I was busy.

That’s all I wanted. That’s all any child wants.”