I have always been enchanted with scent. I would not let my parents leave the market until I had picked up every soap in turn on the shelves and smelled them through the wrapper.    It was certainly an early manifest of my OCD behavior, but one wholly related to the sense and wonderment of smell.  I also collected a wide variety of these soaps.  Not knowing how to properly store or care for them, I placed them all in a large wicker basket with a handle and kept it in my bedroom closet. There were some wonderful soaps in there, fruity, or colorful, unusual shapes, weird or exotic smells.  Some were in little gift set boxes. I would always ask for a soap to be bought when I saw or smelled something I didn’t have. I remember one that was shaped like a lady’s slender outstretched hand, fine and delicate, with porcelain complexion and another that was a set of cherubim in grotesque pastel shades.  I used to often take them out and look at them, but never used them. Eventually what happened, of course, was that they all sort of became a en masse lump, chipping, their scents joined in unison to smell like, well, a big ball of soap.  I ended up having to bin the lot, but that was my childhood whim for quite a while.  I would always find myself smelling flowers in the garden, buds and grasses and herbs, picking them, rubbing the leaves between my fingers. A lot of weekends were spent in the gardens of National Trust homes, or walking in the local woods, where an abundance of fragrance bloomed. I remember treading on bracken, avoiding nettles and skirting round the bluebells, often while donning a pair of ‘wellies,’ or picking blackberries from the hedgerow. I wasn’t even aware of how much I really smelled or was super conscious of doing it. I just did it, all the time.

My first introduction to perfumes would have been the coma-inducing fragrances adorning my mother’s dressing table. I remember Poison being a hot favorite, as well as Opium and Obsession.  Trying to remember the first perfume I ever had, I don’t have a clear memory. I had perfume solids from the outdoor markets in Spain that would come in a little painted tin and that I would bring home and absentmindedly dab on my wrists.  Those were the days when I thought that souvenir shops were the greatest invention ever, and certain wasted all my pocket money and several pounds worth of my parents’ money buying tacky knick-knacks that would sit around on my window sill.  As a result, I am now the most anti-knick-knack person alive and try to convince my daughter, who is most like me in that respect, that she doesn’t need ‘cheap tat.’  But first ‘real perfume’? I remember starting to wear perfume in my teens; bottles of Anais Anais, CK One, Chanel No. 5, several variations of Jean Paul Gaultier. I did like No. 5 back then, even being so young, cause it smelled ‘grown up,’ but it was initially only used for special occasions.   Anna Sui and Ralph Lauren Romance were college-era things.  And since then, there was a blur. Maybe I used and maybe I didn’t. There was probably always a bottle of No. 5 floating around.

My first introduction to the niche world would have been the house of Santa Maria Novella, discovered in a Portland, Oregon boutique.  The bottles weren’t outlandish and didn’t try to sell themselves.  Looking into it, I learned this perfume had been made in Florence by monks since 1221.  Anais Anais cannot quite boast the same claim.  Their original pharmacy location just celebrated 400 years of paying rent in the same spot.  While that in itself is incredible, their perfumes launched me onto that first stepping stone of looking beyond the Sephora scents of this world, and realizing that there was something above and beyond and that it was a complex, exciting and beautiful art form.

But why start a blog?  One reason. I read this quote:

“This is a great shame, but of course there have to be some things in life that not everybody can have, and great perfume is one of them.”

Diana Vreeland.

Now I am a very stubborn and contrary individual at the best of times, and my response to reading these few words was, “Well, why the hell not?”  I don’t know if there is such a ‘thing’ as starting a fragrance blog, or any other blog for that matter, because you are incensed by the quote of a dead woman, but that just seemed mightily unfair to me.  So my conundrum was how to let people experience these scents, even if they never got a chance to hold the bottle in their hands.  The answer came soon after.  Be the storyteller. Be the connection.  Tweak the experience of scent and lay it bare for everyone to enjoy.  I am not here to provide a technical analysis.  What I want to do, and if this is all I ever accomplish here then that will be reward enough, is to convey to you, my reader, the feeling that perfume can give you; a story.  A vignette of scent, as it were.  I hope you enjoy turning the pages of my thoughts.

Helen.