April 24 | 4 minute read
Words by Madeleine Boles de Boer
If you want to witness a master perfumer at work, you might need to take a trip to London. In the Marylebone laboratory of Perfumer H, Lyn Harris, the brand’s founder and ‘nose’, can be found sniffing, blending and crafting the nature-led scents she’s become famous for.
Harris’ approach to her craft is a mix of innovation and tradition – but always with her own lens: “I don’t follow trends; I don’t look at the new fragrances. But it has always been my mission to celebrate naturals in perfumery. A fragrance is not a fragrance without science, but the magic comes from this balance between science and nature,” she explains.
After 30 years creating unique note combinations (think: coriander seed and smouldering birch tar in Smoke EDP or adding sandalwood and musk to peach and rose to create the curious Rose With Insect EDP, Harris is confident in her abilities – and deservedly so. She was trained by the acclaimed fragrance house Robertet in Grasse, France (the world’s perfume capital), and by a pioneer of women’s perfumery in Paris.
And among an emerging generation of self-taught talents, Harris is one of the only classically trained British perfumers, honing her craft into a curated line of understated and wholly interesting scents.
In this edition of Talking Scents, Harris tells us about capturing memories, skin scents and figuring out what the colour pink smells like.
