Nancy Meiland

BEGINNING HER CAREER in London as an apprentice to one of the UK’s experts in custom perfumery before launching her own eponymous collection, Nancy Meiland’s ’s decade-long journey through fragrance also saw her jointly running The School of Perfumery, in London, act as a consultant for independent perfume houses, work on collaborations with Miller Harris, and speak about fragrance at events nationwide.

Based in East Sussex, she devides her time between composing for her own artisanal house and making scents for private clients out of her Brighton boutique. Nancy has the knack of conjuring emotional responses with lyrical fragrances and meditative attars alike. Soulfully evocative yet endlessly sophisticated, they’re often based on scent memories of her own, but invite us to go on our own fragrant journeys with every single spritz.

When does your day start?

Each day begins at 6.45am – I make a cup of green tea and sit in meditation until the house begins to stir and the children get up. This short candlelit ritual helps to set my internal dial for the whole day (and I usually have two cats, Piper and Pelé, and a dog, Banjo, for company). Next, I make the kids porridge, yogurt and fruit or a smoothie using my beloved Vitamix machine – unless they cry out for French toast! Cooking and feeding my family is closely connected to my work: flavour combinations are an inspiration and I often use herbs from the garden. Then, I kiss the children off to school and walk or run with the dog.

We’re lucky to live close to the South Downs, so I like to take in the expansive views. All the olfactive impressions of these landscapes hit my nose and have informed the aromascapes in my collection. A favourite note is hay and anything horsey – the leather saddle, the steam from a horse’s nostrils on a cold, early morning. Being in nature and practicing yoga clears my head of a spiralling to-do list and helps me settle into my body, ready to create.

Where do you work?

My perfume studio is part of my Brighton shop, so I take the short bus ride there from our house in Lewes. With a receptive, non-stop nose, it’s important to bombard it occasionally and public transport can actually help with this! I always think if there’s a smell you don’t like, well, what is it about the smell, and is there something more bearable or even pleasant within it? I get a whole host of aromas that tendril towards me, and I try to apply the same objectivity to each one.

How does your day break down?

Usually, my working day begins with answering emails and getting the shop ready. I have help there, so I divide my time between work and greeting the customers. We have a café opposite us called Lost which sells beautiful coffee so I’ll stop in there to take away a chai latte. I’m definitely a morning person and have a slowdown in the afternoon – if I get to take a siesta after lunch, I’m a very happy woman! Alas, this is only possible on a Sunday or sneakily, when I work from home on Mondays.

How many fragrances might you be working on at one time?

Whether creating signature scents or perfumes for the collection, I’m always working on one blend/formula or another. I’d say there are maybe two or three perfumes at a time that I make by hand in the perfume studio. There are two other ready-to-wear collections, where I collaborate with different perfumers and receive drafts that we work together on, shaping these formulas until they fit the stories we have in mind for them. Of these perfume drafts in collaboration, again I prefer to concentrate on two or three at a time.

How do you work?

When working with another perfumer on a draft of perfume, I tend to use my computer, and when working on my own hand-made perfume Attars, I have a much-grabbed notebook, replete with oil splodges and myriad scents from being scribbled on in the middle of composing the perfumes. When I have a final formula for the collection or a private client, the formula is ‘locked in a vault with the pearls’ – also known as my laptop.

What kind of other inspirations do you look for?

I feel like I spend a lot of my time conjugating and preparing the ground for inspiration to strike. It feels a bit like ‘mise-en-scène’, or maybe tending to a garden. I have the image of setting out my gilded bowl and listening out for the inspiration to drop in, or even ‘steer my hand’, as I sometimes think of it. It’s an intuitive, almost ceremonial, approach that comes from creating a more spacious place within me. Immersing myself in nature, colour, travel, solitude, reading, meditation, and wild swimming are also part of ‘preparing the ground’. I’m continually inspired by my customers’ stories around perfume and how they connect with it.

Do you break for lunch?

I usually eat a light lunch at my desk – a salad from home with beans, nuts and seeds, or a homemade soup with oat cakes and herbal tea. My life is one long chocolate craving and so, some dark chocolate usually features.

How does your afternoon unfold?

Part of eating a light lunch is so that I can wrap up work at 4pm to get home to be with the children, taxi them to their clubs and make supper on three days of the week. My wonderful husband, Dan, commutes to London three days of the week so we share the time with the children and the running of the house.

Do you continue to think about the fragrances when you get home?

Thinking about perfume is like a golden thread through my life – I never switch off, not even at night. Holding the different threads of the perfumes I’m working on and trying to bring them to a resolution is part of the joy for me.

Do you need to be in a particular mood, to create?

A calm state is always optimum but if I’m feeling out of balance, the work brings in calm as I do it – I’d go so far as to say, every single time. I was very influenced by the book The Hidden Messages in Water, by Masuru Emoto, and the idea that, similar to speaking lovingly to plants, you can change the health and molecular make up of a liquid by the presence of human consciousness. I try to apply this philosophy to my perfume making.

How long does it take from concept to finished fragrance, in general?

Most perfumes are finished between six months to a year – that applies to both my collaborations with perfume houses and creating my own perfumes. The Attars, roll-on perfumes like GAIA and SOFIA, which I make by hand, are more of a ‘response’ to the world around me so they can vary more in how long they take to complete.

Do you listen to music while you work?

Music is an essential backdrop in my life – I listen to Radio 6 to discover new music, and also have a playlist on shuffle with 1,000 tracks that I’ve resonated with over the last four years: an eclectic mix of anything from Kate Bush, Joni Mitchell, Chopin, Bob Dylan, Prince. I also love opera –the unbridled emotion of it! We live near Glyndebourne Opera House and it’s my happy place to go there with friends and family.

Is a moodboard helpful to you?

My moodboards are internal ones that I can flick between depending on which perfume concept I’m working on. Colour is how I tend to perceive the different notes in my fragrance library, so I might take a snap of something I find in nature that links back to a note I’m working with – they usually end up on Instagram, so I guess that is the channel for my external moodboard, to try and share something of the creative process as I go along.

What’s the most modifications you’ve had to do on a fragrance?

While working on my PAPER LEAF collection I’m attempting to ‘pull through’ the metaphor of a wild landscape. Sometimes, I’m chasing the concept as if from a fresh canvas – the perception of a place, a particular light or time of day. Other times the bare bones of the formula are naturally apparent, and I’m trying to perfect it or bring more aliveness to it. SOFIA took a long time to come into being, more than 40 modifications. It took me many more tries than the others; keeping the botanicals active, lyrical, and high vibrational while in a jojoba oil base was a challenge.

How many materials do you have at your fingertips to work with?

My fragrance library is approaching 150 raw materials – some notes will improve and deepen with age and others need checking and replacing over time.

Is there a fragrance you wish you’d created?

So many! The ones that spring to mind are: L’Air de Rien, a perfume made for Jane Birkin by Lyn Harris at Miller Harris – this was so beguiling to me, with its powdered, sensual depth. I also loved L’Eau d’Hiver by JeanClaude Ellena for Frédéric Malle – it was the first time I realised that perfume could be tender and powerful all at once. The hedonics seemed to capture a skin-like, water-like quality with a honeyed warmth that I found totally captivating.

How much time is spent playing with materials or creating ideas for future use?

I wish I had more time to seal myself off and creatively riff more – it seems to go in phases that I have more time for a freer kind of exploration. I enjoy all the individual elements of running my business, but I reckon it’s about aspiring to a better balance every day and I’m so lucky to be able to do what I love for my work.

Nancy Meiland Parfums, 2 Nile Street, Brighton, BH1

1HW. Open Wednesday to Sunday, 11am – 4pm (Saturdays 11am – 5pm) nancymeiland.com