Doughnuts

My head’s full of smoke and leather. It’s a shame the same can’t be said for the empty vials on my window sill. I keep telling myself that one day, hopefully this side of Christmas, I will have a moment to sit down and formulate.

Still, if anything’s going to keep me from my bottles, it ought to be the perfume world: yesterday I attended the official launch of London’s Avery Fine Perfumery. I won’t reveal any details here, as a full report should appear on Basenotes soon, but I will just say that I had a fascinating conversation with Stéphane Humbert Lucas, the nose behind a brand new line of scents. The topics we discussed ranged from the quality of synthetic agarwood oil to the delights of scoffing Nutella doughnuts on the beaches of Antibes. You may be interested to learn that he was more animated when talking about the latter rather than the former.

And speaking of perfumers, fingers crossed, this weekend I’ll get a chance to catch up with one of my favourite masters of olfactory alchemy… so yes, once again, I probably won’t have any opportunities to tweak my own formulae, but I may just gain some fresh inspiration and new ideas.

Persolaise.