Latest Features

It isn’t every day you get to see some of the world’s most revered artistic perfumers gathered together in one room – perhaps even less frequent to witness them, later, huddled beneath the awning of a Tex-Mex bar eating chips from a bucket – but such was the scene of this year’s Art and Olfaction Awards as they celebrated their 5th year.

Incense forms the fragrant backbone of many cultures. India is where the art was first discovered, writes Krishnaraj Iyengar.

Trygve Harris is unusual, even among artisans. She is a woman, but even men in the most culturally closed, patriarchal societies of the world respect her. She’s a Westerner, but has freely foregone any expectation of comfort or convenience. She’s a natural businesswoman, but doesn’t delegate. She’s successful, but has no hubris. And, unusually, for someone who is such a doer - personally trekking through jungles and inspecting crops in the most remote regions of the world – she is also a brilliant communicator, with the rare ability to entertain and elucidate under the same breath.

Marian Bendeth speaks to Ruth Sutcliffe who has developed a fragrance product to benefit Alzheimer’s and dementia patients.

The latest in our Scent Verse series features a poem by writer Daniel Firoozan

As has become tradition, we ask our contributors, writers and forum moderators to look back at the last year and let us know which have been their best scents of 2017. If nothing wowed them in 2017 they could choose something new to them

Persolaise interviews Evody's Cérine Vasseur and perfumer Cecile Zarokian about the latest Evody trio: Collection Galerie.

Revisiting Nuit de Noël Viola Levy looks back on a Christmas classic that would cheer up Scrooge To me, it also brings back memories of Christmas in the early 90s, with my parents (mum draped in her Liberty peacock wrap and doused in Miss Dior) going to their friends’ house parties. In lieu of a babysitter, all the kids would be…

Scent Verse is a poetry project curated by Basenotes writer Eddie Bulliqi that seeks to explore scent language and metaphors by publishing poems from contributors across different industries that either take scent as their inspiration or are very evocative of smell.

Writer Viola Levy looks at how the city inspired her perfume obsession

Named after the year of the Salem witch trials and with fragrance monikers such as Wicked and I Saw Goody Proctor with the Devil, Sixteen92 clearly has a penchant for the supernatural spectacle. Founded by former opera singer, advertising creative director and fine art photographer Claire Baxter in 2014, the indie company won this yea…

Perfume collector Marcy Goldman thinks she’s finally found the perfect perfume storage unit.