6 minute read
MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE
bottle Message in a
Discover the importance of our sense of smell with Susan d’Arcy who enlists the help of Floris to create a bespoke concoction of her favourite scents
f you had to lose one of your five senses, which would it be? I imagine many of you instantly said smell. Until recently, I would have agreed with you, but about three years ago, I heard a Ted Talk about the vital role our sense of smell plays in health. I was intrigued, did some digging and – apologies for sounding dramatic – it’s changed my life.
The talk detailed how neuroscientists discovered that amputees recovered from the loss of a limb quicker than those who had lost their sense of smell. What an extraordinary thought! I was hooked and needed to find out more about how I could harness this humble little sense to my advantage.
You might know that if you put a peg on your nose, you can’t tell the difference between eating an apple and an onion. Our tongues only identify bitter, sweet, sour, salty and savoury. In reality, we don’t taste the difference between a strawberry and a raspberry – we smell it. Less well known, but scientifically proven, is that sniffing a lemon boosts your feel-good hormones, so helps combat depression. Then there’s research suggesting that losing the ability to smell is an early indicator of conditions such as Alzheimer’s, and that taking an exam in a room scented with rosemary improves student scores by seven per cent.
Taking up smell training has proved beneficial to me. I keep four oils (clove, lemon, eucalyptus and rose) on my bedside cabinet to sniff for a couple of minutes every morning and evening. It’s basically a
Igym for my nose. As a result, my appreciation of food and joy in the scent of flowers have rocketed and my pleasure in petrichor has been magnificently magnified. You might not know the word ‘petrichor’, but you’ve certainly experienced it. It was coined by Australian scientists in 1964 to describe the earthy aroma associated with rain. It’s a primeval, cavemanneed-fire-and-water uplifting scent. My daily smelling ritual bolsters my concentration, aids memory and, by lowering stress, supports my gut microbiome and that might stop me putting on weight. Full disclosure: I never quite picked up a tambourine, but I did get a little evangelical at one stage. Friends would roll their eyes as I waxed lyrical about all things nasal. So I felt vindicated (OK, smug) when the NHS recommended smell training for Covid sufferers who had lost their sense of smell. My new-found passion led me to a curious little time warp in London’s most quintessentially English row of artisans, Jermyn Street. Number 89 has been home to Floris, the UK’s oldest family-run perfumer, since 1730, and is still run by the descendants of founders Elizabeth and Juan Famenias Floris. My appointment was in the back office, which is fitted with polished mahogany apothecary cabinets containing grooming products dating back to the 1730s, framed photographs of famous customers such as Prince Charles, and even a thank-you note from Florence Nightingale for the
“beautiful sweet-smelling nosegays” that helped her through the Crimean War.
I flicked through leather ledgers as big as paving slabs, turning pages that had yellowed with age to read handwritten orders dating back hundreds of years. I spotted one customer whose name was scored through. It was the Duke of York, so eventually needed amending to The King. Sadly, I didn’t find Winston Churchill, Marilyn Monroe or David Bowie, but they are there, along with many others.
My eyes wandered in anticipation to the rows of nut-brown bottles, whose labels listed raw perfume ingredients, from amber to zibeline. If Joanna Harris had visited this place before writing Chocolat, Vianne would have been selling scents not sweets. And that was why I was here: to create my own signature scent under the guidance of fragrance developer Julia Casanova Calvo. I had a sneaking suspicion that this was like a three-year-old ‘helping’ mummy make a cake, but Julia, who topped her year at the prestigious Grasse Institute of Perfumery, the Oxford of olfactory courses, was charm (and patience) personified. We discussed what scents I liked to determine my fragrance direction and then got down to the seriously sensuous business of perfume alchemy.
We began with a blind test to discover what I really liked as opposed to what I thought I liked. “I love rose,” I declared, which made it embarrassing when I pulled a face and said, “Hate that one.” It was rose. Julia insisted this happened regularly. Sometimes, she’d describe a smell as she handed me a tester strip: “This has a note like peeling a green banana, no?”
For two hours, I sniffed dozens of scents, from floral to earthy and citrussy to woody, eliminating some outright and placing the rest into a porte-mouillettes de parfum, a traditional wooden holder, until my tester strips looked like a delicate Victorian fan.
Then it came to reducing them to the final selection for my pyramid. Perfumes have top notes (small molecules that intrigue but quickly fade and tend to be citrussy), mid notes (more complex and headier, the heart of the scent) and base notes (large, heavy molecules with depth and staying power).
Julia peppered our time with stories: how Napoleon would order two bottles of his favourite cologne every day, one to wear and one to drink – perfume contains alcohol after all; how Ian Fleming wore Floris and mentioned the perfumer in Moonraker. In fact, it is thought James Bond wore Floris.
It was moving to learn that couples book bespoke perfumery sessions like mine to create scents for their wedding day, or to celebrate a birth. I can’t imagine a more intimate and enduring gift, but then I think I’ve established I am now a smell geek.
Finally, wonderfully, I whittled down my choices to my absolute favourites and I had my perfume. Top notes of soft apple, grapefruit and cassis, mid notes of neroli, mimosa and white blossoms and a base of vetiver and musk. I watched excitedly as Julia used dainty pipettes to measure precise quantities of each to blend my perfume into my monogrammed bottle. At the last second, I added night-scented jasmine. And that was it: my completely personal and perfect scent. As a tribute to my artistic guide, I named it Zaragoza after Julia’s birthplace. The formula now sits in the Floris ledgers alongside those created for heads of state and Hollywood legends.
Every time I spray it on, I honestly feel fantastic.
