As part of my garden and horticulture journey, it’s not surprising that plants-as-muse has further ignited my passion for fragrance.

As an artist, I’m not alone in finding inspiration in nature. The unparalleled beauty and mystery of plants inspires our artful storytelling ~ in painting, photography or literature…

And every good perfume starts with a story. As a writer, I readily embrace such an emotional narrative…

How did I learn this?

My teacher told us and my fellow classmates how every fragrance begins with a story. I just love this! The narrative helps us connect on an emotional level to a deeper experience… Our lives are a collection of stories…

Recently, I was a very happy student of the university of Grasse ~ the world capital of perfume.

Initially, I had planned to attend in-person and spend the month of July in Provence. Heavenly? Mais oui.

But then Covid changed those plans ~ along with lots of others…

Upon Pillywiggin, gossamer wings, it seemed that the parfum fairy sought me out. Que’lle chance… 🧚

Back in January, I eagerly registered for the online classes.

It’s a very rigorous program: two hours a day; three days a week for the month of July.

I couldn’t wait.

While July has always been a tough month for me ~ what with the start of the real summer gardening season, Mother’s and a godchild’s birthday July 3rd, and our annual birthday and Independence Day fireworks celebration at our country house ~ this year was made a wee bit more complicated by Mother’s fractured kneecap and attending collateral “damage” and the fact that we were blessed to have been able to celebrate her 100th birthday! So needless to say, there was oodles of wonderful party planning work ~ stuffed into the same “calendar basket” as the Perfume classes.

Nevertheless, I begged my family to understand that this study period was sacrosanct. I just had to carve out this time from the planning, healthcare, and garden work.

My family accommodated. I thank you, again.

The course materials arrived like treasures: two boxes ~ one white and one black, laden with vials of essential oils; Natural Perfumery Raw Materials, (i.e. Sandalwood, Neroli, Rose abs.Grasse and Bulgaria,) “Synthetic Perfumery Raw Materials,” (i.e. Citral, Cedryl Acetate, Linalyl acetate); paper testers, droppers, and a scale. Along with notebooks and more.

It was as if a magical genie had granted me my wish! And on top of that, Santa had delivered on my gift list. (who needs a pony?!)

Not unlike Daisy in the “Great Gatsby” who cries at seeing Gatsby’s vast shirt collection, I couldn’t help but feel a visceral, emotional reaction at opening the box to the vials, seeing them as metaphors for luxury, personal desire, and love.

I adore everything about the glamorous world of fragrance: its history, the artful, bejeweled bottles and flaçons, the scent of course, and the way it inspires other art, including film and fiction. In the past, I’ve interviewed a fragrance designer for my Ladies Who Lunch Conversations videocast (please link over to hear the fascinating journey of Mackenzie Reilly.) learn about her personal fragrance journey ~ and to see my fragrance tablescape in Mackenziei’s honor.

Perfume is a prism…

A bit of background before I share the hands-on academics.

Do you know that our sense of smell is the one that triggers our memories the most?

I’ve written about this before so forgive me but it bears repeating ~ especially in this context.

In terms of gardens and plants, you can readily relate to this when you consider lilacs. Most folks think of their mothers. Why? By and large, because they bloom around Mother’s Day.

Roses conjure special occasions, personalities, and love because…

With regard to food and drink, cinnamon often triggers warm memories of Mom’s apple pie and big dinner celebrations with pumpkins and mincemeat.

The scent of lemon conjures a summer’s day brimming with refreshing lemonade or cocktails or pasta!

Close your eyes and remember a favorite scent and your happy memory…

The link between fragrance and our emotions and memory is no coincidence or fabrication.

Rather, and I’m quoting here: The olfactory bulb, which processes smell, is part of the limbic system, a primitive area of the brain responsible for emotions, memory, and motivation. A scent bypasses the brain's typical sensory processing, sending signals directly to the parts of the brain that handle emotion and memory. This is why a smell can instantly transport you to a past moment with remarkable clarity and feeling.

The Classes

The other five students represented a diverse, global perspective; some had fragrance experience to varying degrees.

Our instructor, Rosalie, (naturally her name would be a revered flower. And she laughed when I asked her if her parents were prescient ~ naming her to align with her future career. She said she’d ask… (😉)

Rosalie told us that a perfumer or brand builds a scent story through an intentional creative process. The best perfumers are storytellers.

Scent communicates that narrative.

I’ve long asserted that “every good garden tells a story.”

So I was eagerly anticipating my happy place to create fragrances that amplify my writing and garden talents… to write unique stories with ~ aromas…

We began our perfume studies with the History of Perfumery.

Again, history has long been one of my most favorite topics. (To wit, the novel I’m writing is historical fiction.)

Fragrance has played a unique and starring role in religion. The word Per Fumum means “by smoke.”

You’ve seen or participated in spiritual services where the priest or monks share burning incense. One sees the smoke rising. It was a way to communicate with the gods.

Fragrance is also Therapeutic. From use in ancient Egypt ~ referred to as the cradle of perfume where the living and the dead were scented with oils and perfumes to make them acceptable to the gods; to Greece where the use of herbs especially were used, and Rome, to Apothecary in the Middle Ages, to medicines.

The Arabs created the distillation process that is still in use today and they in turn learned from the people in India. and finally to:

Seduction. Fragrance has come to be about pleasure,

Many of the scents used then remain popular today: cinnamon, rose, cardamom, pepper, musk, narcissus, rosemary, and spices.

I find the history of perfume is an ancient, spiritual, erotic, and forgive me, not unlike the history of cocktails, (this I am most familiar with because of my writing on food and drink and my book, The Art of the Garnish ~ for those of you who don’t know me).

Both cocktail recipes and fragrances are similar insofar as some of the details or facts have become rather, ahem, “burnished” with time..

We of course, learned about Grasse, its regional flowers, and its position as the cradle of Perfumery.

We moved on to perfumery raw materials: types, classification by volatility, and fragrance descriptors. After all, if every good fragrance tells a story, one needs the vocabulary to describe all the scents. Think: heady, intense, tenacious, powdery, terpenic, petaly, smoky, and so on.

We also had to use the paper strips to learn what the scents were. And learn to do blind test smelling sessions ~ by contrast.

Eventually, one of our tests was to identify 20 blind scents, by name 🤔

We also learned the Genealogy of Perfume with all seven families, from Aromatic to Chypre to Fougere to...

We studied what elements and materials comprise some of the world’s classic fragrances: including 24 Faubourg by Hérmes and Dior’s Eau Savage (the world’s best-selling).

Eventually, we created fragrances, a shampoo and learned about making fragrant candles.

Not only did I learn so much from our instructor, but also from my classmates.

When tasked with creating our first fragrance, two of the women told their perfum stories in brilliant powerpoint presentations!

Their creativity blew us away.

When we were tasked with the next homework assignment to create an apple shampoo, I unabashedly learned to do the same for my botanical luxury hair shampoo: Return to Eden.

We also created Simple, Complex, and Olfactive Family Accords.

The other tough test was to build our own fragrance around the suggested cologne accord and demonstrate how and why the materials we chose “worked.”

After the conclusion of our classes, our instructor, Rosalie, recreated our colognes and graded our work, along with adding some suggestions.

I waited with baited breath until I received her generous feedback.

(I’ll share my creation with you soon.)

I am so very proud to have earned this certificate.

The classes were so enjoyable, rigorous, and adventurous. The world of perfume is vast ~ brimming with exoticism and romance. I look forward to continuing this perfume journey.

I will put together a business plan, of course, but I aim to create signature fragrances ~ in the same way that I’ve been asked to create signature cocktails.

With fragrance being our sensory memory trigger, a signature perfume or perfumes ~ if you like to wear different scents as the mood strikes ~ will endure. It will be unique to you; to a time and place…

Even the process of creating the fragrance is special and, I believe, very enjoyable; sensuous, and romantic for my soon-to-be clients. I hope to create beautiful, joyful, healthy, fragrances for special occasions, including bridal parties, births and deaths (I am a certified Doula 🙂) , milestone birthdays, holidays, achievements, and love…

If you or someone you know would like to jump to the front of the line (be a Beta!) just reach out xox

Thank you for sharing in my love of plants and especially for their redolent, emotional, mysterious, seductive, transporting fragrances that help us tell our own artful life story…

Plants are our enduring symbols of life, death, and love.

The joys of perfume celebrate these moments in a compelling, personal way.