Throughout July, I promised to do 10 things to celebrate 10 years of The Candy Perfume Boy. I’ve held four instagram live events, speaking to beauty journalist Alice du Parcq, Escentual founder Rakesh Aggarwal, PR legend Nicola de Burlet, and Olfiction founders Nick Gilbert and Pia Long. I’ve talked about 10 perfumes of significance from the last ten years over two IGTV videos (P1, P2), I’ve given away a £100 Escentual voucher and 5 Boujee Bougies, and I’m finishing off with this blog post and a celebration of my favourite photos over on instagram. It’s been a busy month.

For this blog post, I wanted to share just a small selection of the things I have learned since I started writing 10 years ago. From being someone who had never written anything longer than a tweet to a five-time award winning fragrance writer, it has been quite the journey and I have learned so, so many things. Here is a small selection, in no particular order: