When I began my perfume blog on January 2nd 2013, it was to share my passion for perfume as I was discovering it. Being the mother of two young boys, my Chanel Cristalle habit was thrown out for Milton, Calpol and Pampers. Necessity forced a cutback on the perfume budget, and I explored outside my signature scent.
I was not an expert and there’s no perfume A-Level you can sit while raising two young boys. (There is an excellent perfume course I recommend however, please visit Scenthusiasm). I committed myself to writing daily, a scent a day, hence the name. This was to force me to take time for myself, even for a very short period. Parenting is all about prioritising needs that are not your own, but that doesn’t mean a parent should forget who they are, even if the theme tune from Balamory is your earworm and you now read Julia Donaldson.
My writing muscles were itching to get back to Word Gym. I have always written, since I was eleven. In the nineties I wrote and staged plays on the London Fringe. I have reams of unsuccessful novels from BC (before Children), even trying my hand at a Mills and Boon. I was a local editor for Mumsnet for a year, where I learned lots of SEO, CRM and CPN jargon that would later prove invaluable. I was also, for a short while, the food correspondent for the South Wales Argus brief but bright Over Fifties supplement.
I figured out the blog by myself, despite several people assuming my IT specialist husband did it for me. Nope, but he has rescued me several times when the network has rebelled, and he does not protest when I jump on him, bare his arm and spray him with perfume samples.
Within a few years, and with no small input from my perfumista friend Lisa and her world class collection of niche fragrances, the blog was doing nicely. Here are a few highlights:
2014: I visited 4160 Tuesdays in London, and met Sarah McCartney for the first time. I liked her but I was a bit starstruck. She was the first perfumer I had met. Her studio was heaven for learners and perfume lovers, and she doesn’t mind you spraying her stuff.
2017: Joy! I entered an article into the UK Fragrance Foundation Jasmine Awards and was thrilled to be a finalist. The awards were at BAFTA, in a screening room at 8.30am. I didn’t win, but I was very pleased to see Sarah again, who had dragon fins on her dress and took me for tea with perfumer Ruth Mastenbroek. It was very exciting and I was home in time for the school run, wondering if I had been hallucinating since morning.
2018: Shaping up to be quite a year, I was once again nominated for a UK Fragrance Foundation Jasmine Award. This was the year I met perfume writer Stephan Matthews, from my hometown, and Marina Barcenilla, a remarkable perfumer and astro-biologist. I was thrilled that she won. Sarah was also there and we did a short video about bringing back the evening glove.
2018: Known as the Queen of Natural Perfumery (she even has an award named after her), Mandy Aftel had not long opened part of her home as the Aftel Archive of Curious Scents in Berkeley California. Since I was visiting relatives in San Jose, I was able to visit, thanks to my Aunty Pat driving us. There’s not enough space here to describe what an immersive and unforgettable experience it was, so I will republish the blog post I wrote about it.
2018: Sarah said something about a book she was doing and how she needed me to help, so we met up and she explained that she couldn’t write the entire thing on her own and run a business, so could I do half the entries? (give or take). This was originally the Perfume Directory and was published in 2021 as The Perfume Companion. We didn’t tell any brands we were doing it, so you can rest assured, no bribes were offered or taken. Sarah wrote the introductions and the perfume knowledge-y bits and I waded in with about two hundred entries in the directory/companion. Quarto Publishing added a wonderful illustrator called Alice Potter. You should google her, she’s great. There was talk of a launch but some sort of global pandemic knocked that plan on the head. I’d bought a pen and everything. Still use the pen.
2020: I’d been writing for Le Jardin Retrouve for two years and the Perfume Experience that they opened in Paris (now sadly closed) was a must-see on my fiftieth birthday family trip to Paris. Paris was where my husband proposed to me in 2005. The boys had never been and they loved it. Like the Aftel Archive of Curious Scents, this will have a blog post of its own.
2021: Sarah and I were finalists in the UK Fragrance Foundation Jasmine Awards for The Perfume Companion. It was a very amusing gala dinner affair with posh food and goody bags and speeches. We were on the journalists’ table so the company was top notch. We didn’t win, but we had a good time even though I made Sarah get home late (Again,sorry!)
2024: I had started a new job in January 2023 and due to my freelance work being not enough to help support the eating and clothing habits of two teenage boys, I took on more hours for stability and a good pension. I took the decision to close the blog. It costs money to host a blog and apart from a small handful of declared exceptions, I didn’t make any money from it. Also, my job used up all my thinking beans so I didn’t have any left after a day at work.
2025: I missed my blog so much! I kept looking longingly at other blogs and thinking, “I wish I had a blog again.” Don’t do as I did and lose eleven years of content. WordPress gave me 28 days of cooling off in case I wanted my blog back, but my mind was made up, and now, it’s just a fragrant memory, a tonne of samples and many, many notes on Word, that I may be able to do CPR on.
I don’t get paid for writing reviews. I do get sent stuff from brands and I will always declare it, although I purchase too, and will say so. My opinion cannot be bought. I also avoid negativity. If a fragrance really disagrees with me, I won’t write about it. You may also find that I eschew the idea of ladies’ fragrances and men’s fragrances. Old Spice is underrated as a floral, and men smell great in rose attars. Speaking of Old, the phrase “old lady fragrance” is banned for life on here. I prefer the term classic or “Grande Dame”.
My real passion is for the small and independent brands who have started from scratch on their own. You’ll see a lot of reviews about them.
Well, that was a long story and I hope I didn’t bore you. Nowadays there will be content old and new, interviews with perfumers and people I admire (same thing) and you can always ask me stuff. Thanks for listening. I hope you’ll find a new favourite on these pages. That would make me very happy.
Scroll down, make yourself at home and mind the cat.
Sam x