Creating niche perfumes in West Wales is a great way to tell our story, but there is often an expectation of verbal explanation.
How on earth do you translate a scent into words so that you can share that feeling with others?
How do you communicate a very specific fragrance experience using a shared vocabulary?
You can try talking about perfume as the art of painting a picture in your mind’s eye. Likening the scent to a composition, describing it as colours and shapes.
Or you could use a creative process just like storytelling. Building a narrative through descriptive suggestion and simile.
Either way, everyone brings their own feelings and memories along, just to complicate the situation further.
And yes, I do fall into this trap.
If asked to describe AER eau de parfum, I might say it was inspired by that day when we took the dogs out and the weather broke so we quickly had to seek shelter in the woods.
Not such a far cry from “a cool, coastal breeze in a bottle with notes of woodland litter”, but certainly less poetic!
Both being true, which narrative I choose depends entirely on who I am communicating with and how polished I need my answer to be.
The point is, it’s personal.
Draw on your own experiences and memories.
Tell it like it is, share that feeling in your own words.