A perfumery practice

Is it more than "just" making perfume?

Tasmania's full of wonderfully modest and talented creative folk, last year, I had a wonderful conversation with a well-known author who's sold over 2 million books.  At the time, I had no idea who I was speaking to.

We spoke about art, creativity, and writing, a wide-ranging and delightful chat. At one point, she asked whether I thought of my work as a perfumery practice, in the same way a writer has a writing practice.

I remember thinking, Yes, that’s exactly it! 

Perfumery beyond product

When people think about perfume making: formulas, pipettes, beakers, lab scales, ingredients and technical skills, it's important...but I think there's more to it than that.

Blending materials, testing modifications, and working within safe limits is essential but not the whole story.  For me, perfumery is ongoing, evolving, and connected to how I move through the world.  It's about constant learning and challenge and also responding to seasons, places and inspiration.  I'm quite sure that the perfume I make, is in some way informed by the life I have lived up to this point.  

What I make is a form of communication and it feels personal.

Where perfume really comes from

The perfumes I create are shaped by more than raw materials.

They come from:

• the things I notice
• the places I spend time
• the landscape here in Tasmania
• the questions I return to
• my response to change and challenge
• my intention

Scent has a unique ability to hold memory, place, and emotion all at once. Because of that, the act of making perfume becomes less about constructing a product, and more about translating concepts and feeling into something sensory.

The role of curiosity

For me working with natural materials is a joy.

Botanical ingredients are alive with variation. They shift with season, climate, and origin. No two extractions are exactly the same. This unpredictability invites a way of working that requires attention, patience, and curiosity.

I don’t think of perfumery as an end point. It's something I return to, again and again, with new questions.

What does this material reveal today?
How does this place translate into scent?
What happens if I pull this thread a little further?

Scent, place, and memory

Ongoing learning is not separate from the work. It is the work.

To call it a “perfumery practice” feels like the right way to recognise that what happens aways from the perfume bench is just as important as what happens at it. Walking through a landscape, shifts in season, attention to small details, the Tasmanian light - all these things find there way into a bottle.

For me, thinking of perfumery as a practice has helped me to create space for something slower and more considered.

That conversation stayed with me because it gave language to something I hadn't quite put words to.  Perfumery is not a fixed skill or a finished process, it's a way of working, noticing, and learning in relation to scent.

A practice.