My first perfume obsession was Chanel No. 5, which I dreamed of owning long before I’d even tried it. Thanks to an early interest in reading Vogue it became a representation of glamour and intrigue. Nowadays it’s not a scent I’d be likely to wear often; I do have the newer light No. 5 L’eau in hand cream form, however. It’s quite a strong, classic fragrance, which I still admire as a part of perfume history, but it doesn’t feel like a scent that reflects who I am. It’s a funny thing, to appreciate a fragrance without wanting to wear it. A common enough phenomena among fragrance lovers!
Scent is such a personal thing, which quickly becomes attached to memory. It is intimate, evocative, powerful. To me, collecting fragrance is collecting moods, possibilities, new facets. Recently I’ve become interested in everything from new avant-garde scents which seek to reimagine how we approach fragrance, to simply elegant scents that suggest scenes like a bright morning wrapped in clean cotton sheets.

Here is a quick tour of everything that’s currently in my ever-expanding collection!