Ms McCartney deliberately tries to keep her costs down and to bottle scents in a variety of sizes catering for those on a budget. “I have a bit of an issue with things being really expensive,” she says. “I prop up the perfumes by spending weekends teaching the workshops.”
— That's perfumer Sarah McCartney of 4160Tuesdays; she's profiled in Perfumer Sarah McCartney can 'hear' fragrances as forms of musical notes at iNews.
We have snow in the forecast as I’m writing this post, so it doesn’t feel like spring; yet here we are. Looking back at my lists of favorite spring fragrances from 2008 and 2013, I’ve decided to do something different this time. I’ll never stop loving Après l’Ondée or L’Eau d’Hiver, but I gave myself a new assignment for this round: I sampled lots of new releases and chose ten that I’d want to continue wearing in the coming months. I’ve been feeling for a long time that I just can’t keep up with the tide of new launches, but this is my deliberate small effort at feeling more current (even just for one season)!
Spring is the season when I enjoy white florals the most, and Dawn Spencer Hurwitz Je Suis La Lune (I Am the Moon) is a jasmine fragrance that smells more like a creamy, slightly salty lily to me…
If you’re a fan of indie perfumer Sarah McCartney, creator of 4160 Tuesdays, you may already know that she recently introduced a new collection called Our Modern Lives. The collection includes seven all-natural botanical perfumes named for colors and moods, plus two synthetic, hypoallergenic fragrances that can be worn alone or layered with the naturals. It’s an ingenious concept. With this collection, we’re able to choose or combine at will.
I’m slowly working my way through Our Modern Lives’ spectrum of natural fragrances; at the moment, Red (whose mood is “Gratitude” and theme is “Harvest”) is my favorite…
Where I live, it is the first day of autumn, and this year, September is the new August: after a wet and confusingly mild vacation season1, we look likely to celebrate a glorious Indian Summer. I have always loved the early fall, so I’m tempted, each time I select the autumnal Top 10 at Now Smell This, to stack it with all my favorite chypres, floral ambers and woody orientals. This time, to avoid boring you with repetition, I’ve chosen fragrances released in the last two to three years. I can’t promise there will be any less oakmoss than usual, but I do think I’m fruitier and more craft distilled today…
I’ve spent 20 years learning to recognise different aromas; I make perfume for a living, and I run workshops to guide people around the world of fragrance. Apart from those whose sense of smell is irreparably damaged, we humans get better with practice pretty quickly. Even people who believe they have a terrible sense of smell are often good at it.
— Sarah McCartney of 4160Tuesdays for The Guardian. Read more at The nose has it: it’s no surprise humans’ sense of smell can be as good as dogs’.