Lists: 150 posts

Describing the scent of ripe mango I’d have to resort to the most unusual contrasts. It’s syrupy sweet and yet refreshing, floral and piney, honeyed and spicy. A hint of rot, that essential aroma components of many tropical fruits, gives it an intriguing twist. It’s the most luscious and seductive expression of nature’s diversity. Yet, capturing the scent of mango in a perfume is complicated, and this is the topic of my FT magazine article, Mango’s Aroma.

The Thai dessert of mango and sticky rice seems custom-made to inspire a perfume. It has the sweet top notes of ripe mango, the creamy heart of coconut milk, the savoury finish of steamed rice and the delicate floral accent of palm sugar. Yet it wasn’t until perfumer Calice Becker created Moonlight in Heaven for Kilian in 2016 that I could finally enjoy the delicious twists of my favourite pudding in a fragrance. To continue reading, please click here.

Photography by Bois de Jasmin

As much as I love colognes and find them refreshing on a hot day, sometimes I want to mix things up. After all, citrus is not the only thing that feels cool and uplifting. This is the topic of my recent FT magazine article, Summer scents that are crisp, cool – and rather unexpected.

Even more unusual, however, is the coolness suggested by myrrh, a rich and complex ingredient hinting at liquorice, driftwood and green sap. In ancient times, it was burned as incense, added to wine as a digestive or blended into perfumes to give them a lingering, suave finish. The latter is the reason I seek out myrrh-based fragrances; they are at once velvety and cool – the most intriguing of contrasts. One of the best examples is Serge Lutens’ La Myrrhe (£170 for 70ml EDP), a languid rose, smothered in myrrh and bitter almond. The champagne-like effervescence of aldehydes, the aromatic compounds found in rose petals and orange peel, lights up the composition. To continue reading, please click here.

What perfumes are you currently wearing and what is your fragrance today?

Image via FT

If you’ve been asking yourself why so many fragrances are sweet these days, then you are not alone. Even non-gourmand blends are getting sweeter, be they floral or woods. In my latest column in the FT magazine, Six Sugar-Free Perfumes, I explore various options that veer away from sweetness.

“Why does every perfume turn so sweet on me?” complained a friend, sparking a mission to find her a fragrance that didn’t have caramel, chocolate or other patisserie notes. With the success of Thierry Mugler’s Angel and other popular gourmands, perfumes have been growing sweeter and more edible over the years. While only recently a cotton candy accord of Lancôme’s La Vie est Belle would have been considered more suitable for pudding than perfume, today it’s a new benchmark. Our appetite for sugar seems to have found a parallel in the olfactory realm, and every season there are more perfumes promising to replicate famous desserts from crème brûlée to apple pie. To continue reading, please click here.

What other non-sweet perfumes can you recommend, for men and women?

Photography via FT HTSI

Before working for a fragrance and flavor company for several years, I had often wondered why cherry-flavored candy tasted nothing like the real thing. It turns out that just as perfumers have their classical accords to create the scent of rose, amber or jasmine, so do the flavorists. The cherry accord, for instance, is based on a compound called benzaldehyde, which has an almond-like scent, and since the molecule is present in cherry pits, it inspired the cherry flavor most of us recognize from sweets, liqueurs and cough syrups. Even if it lacks the tartness and floral accents of real fruit, today’s flavorists are bound by public expectations to keep to the classical cherry accord. Anything else may not register as cherry to many people.

In my recent FT magazine column, Scents of Cherries, I write about the flavor and fragrance of cherries and explore fragrances that capture something of the natural cherry scent. Cherry accords can appear in the most unexpected contexts in fragrances, from delicate colognes to warm orientals, without losing their distinctiveness. So, I share some of my favorites.

Right now, I’m also enjoying the cherry season, and I look forward to the sour cherries. They may taste tart, but they smell sweet and heady.

Photography by Bois de Jasmin

A Japanese friend once served me a cup of sakurayu, a salted cherry blossom tea that she brought from Kyoto. The flowers unfurled slowly in the hot water, turning the liquid a shade of pale pink and infusing it with the aroma of almond and apricot. This springtime drink made me wonder what it is about the combination of salt and flowers that makes it so intriguing. The topic of salt and flowers is the subject of my FT column, Magic of Salt. I explore salty effects in perfumery and the way they can uplift floral notes.

Salt has its own mild scent and, depending on its processing and provenance, it ranges from bitter and iodinated to flinty and flowery. However, the magic of salt is its ability to volatilize the aromas of other ingredients. You can experiment by cutting a tomato in half and smelling it raw. Then sprinkle it liberally with salt, wait for a few minutes and have another inhale. Even if your tomato is an uninspiring greenhouse variety, once salted, it will have a more pronounced perfume. To continue reading further, please click here.

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