The Perfume Collector

Your olfactory sense connects not to the memory itself, but to the emotion you felt when that memory was made. To recreate a scent memory is one of the most challenging, eloquent pursuits possible. It’s poetry, in its most immediate form.

You see, most people assume perfume is made only from crushed flower petals but nothing could be further from the truth. All these ingredients give weight, dimension and contrast. Without them, the result is shallow and one-dimensional.

‘Most customers want to smell like those they aspire to become, not who they were in the past. But perfumers are always attempting to capture scents that remind us of certain places, people, moments. It’s the great challenge, to capture not only a true scent but one that recalls entire experience.’

It literally expands on the skin – creates a vista in the senses.

In response to the fungus the tree creates an incredible dense amber resin that smells of mould, sweet decaying wood, vivid green notes.

The complexity and juxtaposition of the accords involved makes the difference between a truly revolutionary perfume and a merely pleasant-smelling scent.

An accord is a mixture of two or more ingredients which produce a new scent, quite different from any of its individual parts.

It was impossible to put into words the way her natural scent had inspired him; driven him, in fact, to devise a fragrance that would match the complexity of her skin.

how the very fact of her fuelled his imagination

His perfume highlighted her youthful freshness and yet blended naturally with her rich, musky undertones. It ‘finished’ her, gave her a polished elegance, joining the fractured sides of her together