How to buy perfume for other people

Plus, olfactory gift ideas & an exclusive Apotheke candle preorder offer

Apotheke Perfume Candles, exclusive Christmas preorder, open now

Scents are notoriously tricky to choose for others, but oh! How wonderful when you do get it right. What could be a better way to insert oneself into a loved one’s thoughts than with a spritz of a scent that whispers, ‘Remember me! Think only of me! I love you the most!’

Perfume is so personal. One woman's heaven is another's idea of (Santal 33) hell.

To buy a fragrance for a loved one, you need to know what they wear now and buy in that ballpark. You would never buy vanilla perfume for an oud obsessive, or sensual jasmine for a rose girl, for example.

If you are not confident in deciphering the scent yourself, you can enter the perfume into Fragrantica, and it will reveal the most dominant notes in the bottle. The perfume-obsessed community on this cult website has voted for the notes in most fragrances. It’s what you can smell in the bottle, not what the press release says is in there. Fragrantica is like the dark web for fragheads; it’s a great resource and can be wonderfully unhinged.

People want to be complicated, but we rarely are. If you like the scent of patchouli, you’ll probably like other perfumes with this note if they're made by a decent perfumer.

Now you’re armed with the right information, you can shop with this in mind (rose/amber/bergamot) or perfume family (floral/edible/woodsy).

If a brand new scent feels risky, get them the candle version, or the body lotion of their signature scent.

And don’t be afraid to ask the shop girl. I’ve been one. They know more than you think. As a sales assistant, your Christmas wish is for just one customer to say:
‘Can you recommend something from a cool independent brand that smells like [insert name of the hyped perfume everyone is buying from a huge conglomerate that if they smell one more time, they will puke/cry here] that I can buy, please?

Small Moments of Scent - The Gift List

Candles - Pre-orders now open! (and exclusive offer)

We launched the Apotheke perfumes a few years, ago. It’s been a slow unfurling. Some learning, smelling, stopping, starting again. We are so lucky to have an inner circle of perfume lovers and creatives who have made The Dreamer, The Lover, The Traveller and The Thinker their signature scents.

We finally have candles to add to the mix! For now, we’re starting with The Dreamer (boudoir rose & iris powder) and The Traveller (heady palo santo, patchouli, coconut).

We’ve made a tiny batch with our friends at The Bath Candle Co. They are available now for preorder. But for our community only, you can get the candle for £32, instead of the official price of £49. If it works, we’ll return with a full range next year.

So if you need something new to set your altar with, don’t miss out.

Email me at jessica@apothekeperfume.com, or comment below if you want to hear more about the offer.

(UK only, order now for delivery on the 17th of December, very limited numbers).

Soap

A cake of hand-cured soap is one of life's secrets to happiness. Cotlswold-based Cult of Cuda's products were always an easy sell when I had a store. Plus, Varanasi is packed with high-grade frankincense if you’re feeling biblical.

Cult of Cuda soap from £7.50

Fragranced Booze: Bitters & Cordials

Boutique bitters are a bougie way to bring some olfactory magic to a Christmas cocktail. Another alcoholic present for perfume lovers is Cordialty's range of flavoured cordials, each has a top, middle and base note. The rhubarb one is delicious with just soda water and a sprig of rosemary.

The Bitter Club from £15, Cordality from £36

Cordiality drinks at a recent launch in Somerset

Vanilla Pods

Due to climate change, vanilla pods have rocketed in price. Once a treat, now a luxury. With that in mind, a few sticky pods make a thoughtful stocking filler for any baker. For the non-bakers, slice them lengthways and tuck them into a jar of brown sugar for a scented infusion in porridge or coffee through winter.

Discovery Sets

Apologies for stating the obvious, but if you want to buy someone a new perfume and don’t want to commit to a whole bottle, discovery sets are ideal. Either go for the discovery set of the brand they already wear, each perfumer has a signature, and it’s a safe bet that if they like the bombastic synthetics of one Byredo, they’ll like another 'fume by the same brand. Plus, you've just supplied them with a year’s worth of perfectly-sized miniatures for travel.

For perfume lovers, there’s only one perfume discovery you need to know, and that’s Urban Scents by Marie Le Febvre. Le Febvre is a classically trained French creator who is an icon in the industry, she’s the perfumer's perfumer. (Le Febvre also made the Apotheke line).

After 20+ years of ghostwriting formulas for all the designer brands, she set up her atelier. Every scent is a hit. The shimmering metals in Ber Cavok never fail to elicit a compliment every time I wear it. Vetiver Reunion is the most artisanal take on the citrus-bright grass note, and Singular Oud is the only oud I would consider, deep and rich, yet still contemporary. Oh! And Desert Rose lives rent-free in my mind, even though my bottle ran out a long time ago and I don’t even like rose perfumes! In fact, buy two sets, and keep one.

If you go for one natural beauty set, invest in Palm of Feronia.

These products are handmade and charged with crystals by the full moon, (or something as equally 'woo-woo' as that, which I am very much here for.) The scents are divine too, the founder Sophie, has a nose, which is rare in the natural beauty world that usually forges scent for function, these products have both. Try the Ritual Cleansing Oil if you don’t know where to start.

Palm Feronia Ritual Cleansing Balm

Sean Pritchard’s bulbs in vintage vases in FT

Paperwhites or Hyacinths in a vintage vase

This is the week to plant pungent blooms in a vintage vase for a mid-February show. When the world is grey, your friend's house will be full of the scents of summer, and you'll have a reason to buy kitsch vases in charity shops for the next week. I was reminded of the joy of winter bulbs indoors on reading this piece about Sean Pritchard’s Somerset cottage.

Herbs

If you have a garden or can swipe some herbs on a walk, nothing is chicer than a sprig of earthy bay, rosemary and sage, wrapped in a camp-as-Christmas red grosgrain ribbon. Here is a video on how to make a herb hanging.

Another herbaceous gift idea, perfect for the brother-in-law who's made 'camping' his entire personality is these cute tins of seasoning for outdoor cooking, Fields Blends from Delli. Delii is an app from the team behind Depop and is brilliant for culinary gifts.

Post-foraging loot, last Spring

Incense

I’ve written a whole essay on this £3 paper incense from the nose behind Baccarat Rouge 540, it’s a gift I’d always be happy to find in a stocking. I would also love to try these more fancy paper incense by Ponsot Papers but I’m not sure they ship to the UK, anyone going to the States soon?

You can’t beat hippy store incense gifted in bright-coloured boxes. They are cheap enough to use a whole carton in one go. Push them deep into the grass at a summer party, making a circle around your friends, and light as the sun goes down. I like the Positive Vibes, it smells like musk and hand soap.

Teas

At a perfume and yoga retreat I ran last summer with my teacher Maddie, we laid out a tea bar that the retreaters could return to over the weekend. We all had a favourite combination, I landed on cardamon, rose and fennel with hibiscus. Save up your Bon Maman jam jars and fill them with loose Camomile, Vanilla Chai, or Earl Grey from your local health food store, and add in a few rose petals to make it look fancy.

The tea bar from our Yoga & Scent retreat in Somerset

I don't charge a subscription for this newsletter, it’s more a place for me to work out how I want to put words to paper about perfume, life and everything else, but I always appreciate a perfume order, if you are curious to try myblends, here is the Apotheke website.

Thank you for reading Making Scents of it All. Merry Christmas, and here's hoping we can all stop for a moment, and fill our lungs with all the festive smells this holiday season.

Jess x

If you have a recco we need to know about, please post below!