Can scent help with grief? When my mother passed away I found solace in the four perfumes that she loved. Fragrance was a shared connection when we shared so little else in life and by revisiting her signature fragrances, I’ve gained a deeper understanding of who she was and how to manage my grief.
If you’re following me over on instagram you’ll know that I’ve had a bit of a rebrand to ‘Making Scents Make Sense’ (I will get around to changing the blog name at some point….). With that comes an exciting new venture: a podcast! Making Scents Make Sense the podcast is a series that is all about demystifying the world of fragrance. My aim is to talk fragrance in a fun, accessible way with no snobbery and no gatekeeping. The first episode is now live and you can listen below or wherever you get your podcasts.
Barnes Fragrance Fair is returning on Saturday 17 May 2025 and it’s bigger than ever. If you’re not familiar with the fair, it was created in 2023 by Amanda Carr, one half of popular fragrance blog We Wear Perfume, and aims to celebrate the importance of fragrance in our everyday lives. Now in its third year, Barnes has even more to offer, with more brands, more talks, and more workshops. It’s going to be great.
The fair runs from 09:30-17:00 at the Barnes Green Centre, with talks and workshops hosted at nearby venues (full details here). I’ll most definitely be there but if you’re on the fence about going I’d like to try and convince you by telling you exactly why you should absolutely attend (other than to hang out with me, of course). So here we go: four reasons why you most definitely should be at Barnes Fragrance fair this year.
“It’s chic to be drab” DS & Durga tells us in the tagline for their new fragrance, Brown Flowers. It’s an unusual statement from a fragrance brand, but DS & Durga is not your typical outfit and rather than trying to crowd please, like much of the fragrance industry, they’re not afraid to be different. The tagline and name of the fragrance come with tongue pressed firmly in cheek (Brown Flowers is so off-putting it comes full circle). But let’s not mistake DS & Durga for not being serious – they may not take themselves seriously (they have fun with what they do), but they certainly do take the creation of unique perfumes very seriously indeed.
At the London launch of Brown Flowers, DS & Durga perfumer and co-founder David Seth Moltz provided a very specific description of the inspiration of the fragrance, derived from a visit to Philip Johnson’s glasshouse in Connecticut. I shall paraphrase below:
“Perhaps someone’s aunt stays in the guest house, she’s a dilettante who gets into drawing classes, and starts making potpourri. She makes a perfume called Brown Flowers, made with a musk you can only get in Europe. Everyone’s wearing it. If she could just get a few bottles into Barneys she’ll have made it. She has a boyfriend who plays a guitar in a band, nobody knows his name. It’s a drab heavy ‘70s floral. Oh and her name is Simone by the way.”
I truly admire a brand that creates such vivid and specific olfactory stories and without a single material being mentioned in that description above, one gets a real sense of what this fragrance is trying to convey. So is Brown Flowers really a drab floral? Does it evoke the 1970s? And more importantly, should you seek it out and give it a sniff? Is it chic in a counter-culture way? Well, read on and you shall find out!
I was recently asked to join an episode of Impact Makers, a podcast that rummages the supermarket shelves to discuss products that are pushing boundaries and elevating product experiences.
The episode is all about the future of fragrance and I share some thoughts on how fragrance has changed, fragrance trends, AI, and dupes. It’s a fun episode and there are other guests from MANE and more! Well worth a listen.
I’m a firm believer that fragrance should be approached much in the same way as fashion. You would not dream of having only one outfit for every single occasion or season, so why would you do the same with your scent? There is literally a fragrance for everything and I always try and match my scent to my outfit, whatever it is I may be doing, and the season of the time. For these reasons I’ve got into a cycle of curating a seasonal fragrance wardrobe which sits on a lovely little marble tray in my bedroom. I’ll be sharing this selection with you every season (whether you like it or not….)
Winter 2024/25 has been a very busy season life-wise and a mixed season for me from an olfactory perspective. I’ve focused on warmer scents (understandably) but have also craved freshness. I’ve leaned into the gourmand quite often (quelle surprise) and have worn a mixture of new launches and classics. There have even been one or two rediscoveries of things in my collection that I’d completely forgotten about. It’s been an exciting time fragrance-wise, so here’s a quick round-up of what I wore over the last few months.
Controversial fragrance opinion ahoy: I think the Tom Ford Signature Collection (i.e. the more mainstream, slightly lower priced collection that includes the likes of Black Orchid, White Patchouli, and Noir etc) has better fragrances than the higher-priced Private Blends. Maybe it’s the (slightly) more reasonable price point that attracts me but the Signature Collection is where the Tom Ford brand executes its most interesting ideas in the most successful way. In fact, they even tend to move some of their better Private Blends into the Signature Collection after a period of time (see Costa Azurra and Cafe Rose).
Bois Pacifique is the latest addition to the collection. The brand calls it “a woody spicy scent of majestic woods” which, I think means that it’s quite woody… They speak of “freedom” and “vitality” but the one word that best captures the experience of Bois Pacifique is “subtlety”. For a brand known for its heavy hitters, this is quite the turn of events and it fills a gap within the current collection: that of a soft skin scent that does not demand attention.
I always wondered whether the noses and minds behind classic fragrances such as Shalimar, Nº5, Poison, Opium, CK One etc. had any inkling that these creations would be considered as masterpieces. Did they know they were making history at the time? Or was it years later that the classic status was bestowed upon them? If so, how quickly did this happen? I think the answer varies but the moniker of classic is something that is most often awarded in hindsight and it really is the test of time that is the true decider.
We can, I think, see fragrance history in the making and it’s easy to point to a number of creations over the last decade or so that have quickly become modern classics. These are scents that have broached entirely new olfactory ground and have become hugely popular because they smell so entirely unique. I’m talking about fragrances such as Maison Francis Kurkdjian’s fiery marine Baccarat Rouge 540, Le Labo’s crystalline woody Santal 33, and of course, Marc Antoine Barrois’ spacially ethereal Ganymede.
Ganymede comes from a creative partnership between couturier Marc-Antoine Barrois and perfumer Quentin Bisch. They speak of their kinship as part of this creative synergy and how it has helped translate Marc-Antoine’s emotions and imaginations into olfactory art. Ganymede is described as a fantasy, one inspired by the moon of Jupiter and the Trojan prince from which the satellite takes its name. That all may sound a little bit abstract, but Ganymede is an abstract, cerebral fragrance that presents an entirely new olfactory experience. Is it destined to be a classic? Well, I think the answer to that is incredibly simple: it already is.
In this review I’m sniffing Ganymede in both its Eau de Parfum and Extrait concentrations. Two perfumes born from the same creative spark but with completely different points of view.
The Candy Perfume Boy 