May 2024
Fragrance lately
In conversation: Sarah McCartney from 4160Tuesdays
Please introduce yourself in 3 sentences:
I am Sarah McCartney, former musician (semi-professional baritone sax player) and copywriter, self-taught perfumer and founder of 4160Tuesdays. I make adventurous perfume with my team in our small, L-shaped studio, hidden behind a big black door in Hammersmith, West London. My aim is to encourage thousands of people to make their own scents so I set up Scenthusiasm: a community with live and online classes for everyone wanting to learn more about artisan perfumery.
Favourite ingredient / aroma?
I am in love with blackcurrant bud absolute as it's like intense, sour Ribena.
Any favourite perfume or one that has a particular memory you’d like to share?
My all time favourite perfume and love of my youth is Diorella by Edmond Roudnitska. My first scent memory is from the day, aged two, that I discovered mock orange blossom and found it so beautiful that I shoved the buds up my nose so I could store them there, and had to be dashed to the doctor to have them removed.
Any ideas for your next fragrance / project?
My issue is that I have too many ideas to fit into one answer, and probably one life. However, I'd like to create a London-inspired perfume called Keep Left - picture the aromas which waft from the shrubs in suburban gardens and parks linked by the outer extensions of the Piccadilly, Central and Metropolitan Lines. I made Goodbye Piccadilly for the London Transport Museum, so perhaps they would like Keep Left as it's inspired by their Underground signage.
Any perfumer / artist / person you’d like to collaborate with on a fragrance?
I would like to work with comedian Sarah Millican to create ‘Cake Shelf’, which she suggested as a more accurate description of a ‘muffin top’. I feel that she deserves her own fragrance following an experience she described when she was unable to attract the attention of the sales people in a posh perfumery department. I was so incensed on her behalf that I thought it would be great to make one for her. It would smell of whatever she wanted, but maybe cakes - and incense?
Any question you’d like to answer that we haven’t asked?
My long term aim is to broaden access to perfume-making, which is too exclusive in my view. It's no harder to learn than music and a lot less dangerous than cooking, yet its secrets are kept behind locked doors off a hidden corridor, behind a bookshelf accessed only by people invited into the room.
Tune of the day: When I'm working I listen to politics podcasts, nothing at all, or to my nephew Alex McCartney’s music. Today it's the theorbo, because I need complex beauty.
Fragrance of the day: Today I am testing new blends on my skin, and my favourite is codenamed Spring Summer Autumn BGB No1. News follows.
You can purchase 4160Tuesday’s taster set here
A few of May’s highlights in short form:
France launches a scratch-and-sniff-baguette stamp
Cosmo International Fragrances launches its C3 Fragrance Accelerator in NYC, led by industry veteran Dulce Almario, who brings over 25 years of industry expertise to the division
Puig’s IPO becomes Europe’s largest in 2024, raising €2.6bn on its first day trading on May 3rd 2024. The Puig family retains the majority stake and voting rights in the company
German NOBILIS GROUP, founded 1993 and run by CEO Udo Heuser, announces exclusive distribution agreement with fragrance houses Juliette Has A Gun and Goldfield and Banks for the DACH region
High perfumery house Amouage has published its Q1 2024 results, marking its highest performing quarter with sales up +23.8%
The Fragrance Foundation’s ‘Oscars of the Fragrance Industry’ results are out - with Diptyque taking home three awards
Interview with Marc Chaya, Co-founder, President and CEO of Maison Francis Kurkdjian, on the story of the house, and the “genius of creativity”
New industry appointments:
Laure de Metz, previously at LMVH, appointed CEO at Henry Rose, the perfume house founded by actress Michelle Pfeiffer in 2019
Things to explore in fragrance:
NYC until Sep 2nd 2024: multi sensorial exhibition “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion” at the Met
Venice until Nov 24th 2024: Korean artist Koo Jeong A’s “Odorama Cities” at the 60th Venice Biennale
My fragrance of the day: Figueres by FUMParFUM - nose: Aistis Mickevičius - green, freshly cut fennel, tomato, grapefruit
Le Coq Sportif launches Olympic perfumes
Paris, March 2024
- Flo