April 2025
Fragrance lately
In conversation: Séamus Lloyd White from Imperial College London, Gaziano & Girling, E.B. Meyrowitz
Please introduce yourself in 3 sentences:
Hello, I’m Séamus - I’m a design student across perfumery, fashion, and product design. I study Design Engineering at Imperial College London and work at Gaziano & Girling on Savile Row, and I’m currently on placement with bespoke eyewear brand E.B. Meyrowitz. I’d like to describe the style I’m working towards as a dramatic take on traditional elegance, inspired by British and Irish craft.
What interests you about fragrance?
For me, a fragrance is a complete expression of self. The fragrance you choose can tell you a lot about how someone sees themselves, how they experience life. Your favourite song can capture and carry a feeling and a memory, fragrance can too, but it’s more tactile, you can hold it in a bottle, see it, experience it as more of a product. Fragrance is more than perfume too, the most compelling fragrances are those of the world around us. They both change and stay static. I’m sure you can think of a scent from your childhood that you haven’t smelt since, and at the same time, you might occasionally catch a hint that brings you back. It’s not just a memory of a time, it’s a part of it. You could recreate the same scents your ancestors experienced thousands of years ago if you wanted to, I think that’s very cool.
The art of perfumery to me is a perfect blending of the different areas of my study. It’s an art and a science, a feeling and a formula. In much the same way as when I’m working on a product or a visual and can spend hours adjusting every colour by the smallest values until they’re just right, you can feel when a perfume is there and when it’s not. In the same way as designing a product, it’s a dichotomy, because while many aspects are subjective, there is an optimal solution for what you’re looking to make in both cases. For perfumery, there’s an ideal amount of each chemical to combine to produce exactly what you’re looking for - would one thousandth of a gram improve it or move it away from your desired result? I love that about it, I use many of the same processes for creating a perfume as I do for designing any product.
Tell us more about your experiences until now within the world of fragrance?
It’s been about a year now since I started learning perfumery. I’ve always loved and been very aware of scents in day to day life, as I imagine most people interested in perfume are, and especially of trees and the outdoors. A significant element of that environmental noticing has been carried through into what I’m doing, for sure. I’m not somebody that has a very big collection of perfumes, as much as I do enjoy picking up a new fragrance here and there, so my fragrance ideas are very much based on my memories of places and feelings, and my understanding of individual materials. I’ve been learning, practicing, and building up my library of molecules; I’m taking it gradually, really getting to know the materials I’m working with for each perfume idea. I’m currently doing some work with the Oakwood CO2 Extract from LMR, it’s a very interesting material. As of right now, I have one perfume that I would consider ‘finished’, which was a Christmas present for my sister. It’s cinnamon forward, and reminds me of the scent left behind in a warm home after someone has been baking biscuits. It can be a little tricky making something for someone as a present but she’s delighted with it, so I’m very happy about that.
What’s your first fragrance memory?
The scent of the sun rising over the trees in my childhood garden lighting the dew on the grass is something I remember clearly. That fresh, damp, grass smell. The other scent that comes to mind is the wood chippings they use around flower beds sometimes, that’s a very specific, recognisable scent.
What’s your favourite perfume, and why?
Roi Sans Équipage from Henry Jacques - it settles on me as very smooth and woody, with notes of the old wood of a Church in particular. On my skin, it’s in some ways like a more elevated traditional barbershop fragrance, it’s very wearable. I also love Lune Féline from Atelier Des Ors, created by Marie Salamagne. It’s not one I would wear, but as a women’s perfume it has such a nice warmness to it, yet still has an attention grabbing edge.
What scent would you like to capture as a perfume if you could?
The scent of a night walk in the last days of winter around my hometown of Amersham. There’s an empty, purpley-blueness to the air, the scent of the trees settling for the night, the faint smell of car exhausts as they pass you that you become more acutely aware of in contrast to the scent picture of the quiet, lamp-lit roads you walk down. The metallicness of the railway tracks as you cross the bridge over them and the last train of the night passes under, wheels sparking as it slows. The scent of the asphalt of the roads, the low-lying muddy freshness that blows in from the fields and the woods that you can see on the horizon between houses. I’m not convinced it would be wearable, and it’s not the sort of thing I make to wear, but I would love to capture that, like my own, more British-countryside commuter town interpretation of an Edward Hopper painting.
What’s a fragrance product you would create if you could? No limits to creativity!
What I’m working on and would like to fully develop is bringing in more elements of true bespoke, the same way we have in shoes and tailoring, with a real process of ‘fittings’ and consultation with the client. I know of some perfumers who offer similar, but across the market bespoke perfume compares more closely to made-to-order or made-to-measure in the shoe and tailoring worlds respectively. A client provides an idea and is given back a result - it doesn’t allow for them or the perfumer to reflect and adjust based on how the perfume fits them. With a full bespoke process, the perfumer can see how their creation works for that client specifically, and then take the time to go back, create a new version, and present it again until it’s perfect - a process that will be very familiar to bespoke tailoring clients. Tying together tailoring and fragrance in that way and creating a product that provides for those clients is what I’d like to do, and is what I’m hoping will be the foundations when I launch my own brand in the future. I’ve started work on it (although naturally university is where the majority of my time goes at the moment), and I’m looking forward to getting it going, that’s the plan.
Outside of my brand idea, I’ve been thinking about technology in perfumery. I feel a bit conflicted, because with AI being used more frequently it feels like we’re moving towards being much more efficient but possibly further from the art and heritage. I’m in two minds as to whether I want to work on something that brings more tech into perfumery. I think it’s something I’d like to explore and give a good go at least, it could definitely make for a very interesting university project next year and then maybe I’ll see where it goes from there. One area where I think tech could be useful is in aromatherapy diffusers. I’d like to look into making one that can respond to its environment based on things like what kind of room it’s in, time of day, weather, perhaps it could even sync to your calendar and output based on the aromatherapy properties that could help you with whatever task you’re working on. I think there’s also room for improvement from a product design perspective there. I've seen some very nice waterless ones coming out recently but I haven’t found one that would really fit into my interior design style yet.
Any upcoming project / launch you want to share?
There’s lots of design work we’re doing at E.B. Meyrowitz - the team have lined up some great projects that I’m really looking forward to working on. Other than that, the best place to see what I’m doing or to get in touch is my Instagram, seamus.lloyd.white. I think that’s all!
Tune of the day: Dlp 1.2.1 - William Basinski
Fragrance of the day: Opus 1870 by Penhaligon’s
My fragrance of the day: Rose on the Shore by TOBBA - rose loukoum, rose oil, green, beachy warmth, pepper, patchouli, rich, heavy soil
Sunrise in Mexico City, Dec 2022
- Flo