My Experience At Bloom Perfumery

Perfume is something I have always held in very high regard. I started collecting perfume years ago during my adolescence and with age I have developed a much stronger passion and interest for fragrance as a product. Last year, I was gifted a perfume-making experience at Bloom Perfumery in Covent Garden and I came to the realisation that I never wrote about my experience which is a real shame, as it is probably one of the finest ways that I have ever spent a Sunday morning.

Beautifully (and aptly) situated just off of Floral Street, this cosy little fragrance haven is tucked away in one of my favourite areas of London - just turning into the little cobbled street filled me with enough excitement to rival that of a kid in a sweet shop (can you tell I'm missing London just a tad?). We were greeted outside the door by the lovely woman who was leading my little workshop and she opened up the shop for us, the first shop on that sleepy Sunday morning to burst open its doors, inviting any passerby to follow their noses into the sweet-smelling heaven that was that lovely little place.

Fortunately, it was a 1-to-1 session (not surprising as it was 10am on a Sunday morning in the middle of January, it felt like a crime not to be still in PJ's snuggled up in bed) so I felt as though I had the most thorough, insightful experience that I could enjoy all to myself. We began by discussing what I wanted to get out of the session and what sort of fragrance I had in mind to create, during which I explained I tend to favour the sweeter, more floral scents (think Chanel's Coco Mademoiselle) and wouldn't be averse to trying something a little different. Then, my nose had an absolute field day smelling all of the ingredient options, weighing up my favourites and also discovering so many new scents (who knew green tea could be a perfume ingredient!?). It was a real olfactory treat that I was lapping up, however, my boyfriend's nose evidently couldn't handle it as he kept having to step outside for some fresh air between inhalations. Poor guy, just couldn't handle it.

After what felt like hours of endless sniffing (yes, my senses were well and truly overloaded), we began to whittle down all of the options I had put in my colossal "Yes" pile. We had to be ruthless. Some compromises were made. I had come to the decision that I didn't want to create a fragrance similar to any I already own (and that is a lot), so I was trying my best to be inventive and to step outside of my comfort zone a little. At first I was erring on the side of caution so as to keep the perfume classy and not overbearing but as time went on I did let my overexcitement become all-consuming and ended up adding notes of cocoa and vanilla (maybe I was a kid in a sweet shop?). What I also loved was the amount of information I was absorbing in amidst all of this aromatic fun. I learnt how to ratio the ingredients, how to carefully select the top, middle and base notes and that the idea of smelling coffee beans to reset your olfactory palette is a big fat lie that makes us look like royal fools in department stores.

Once I had finally determined my top, middle and base note ingredients, we worked out how we would ratio them (when I say we, I mean the woman was doing all of the maths and I kept on sniffing the samples, allowing the calculator to stay on her side of the bench) to create the final product. We settled on this makeup:

Top notes: green tea, bergamot, hay

Middle notes: rose, fig, gardenia, wild jasmine (you can see I was really successful at not selecting florals)

Base notes: fougère, vanilla, oud, tobacco

As you may be able to decipher, I did manage to create a perfume very different to the ones I already have in my arsenal as the core of the fragrance were more deep, rich and spicier ingredients, adding hints of floral-notes in there to sweeten it up and ensure a young, lighter concoction. I am so happy with the way it smells and develops on the skin after some time. We then named it, bottled it up and created a label for it so I could have my fragrance at my disposal in a clear, glass bottle just as if it belonged on the shop shelves. I named my perfume "Twenty" as an ode to my age and so that every time I spritz this fragrance, I am reminded of my youth (was literally only a year ago I'm hardly much older now) and how wonderful an experience it was.

I would recommend this workshop to anyone who is creative and interested in making something so personal that you can keep forever. Bloom Perfumery keep your fragrance and all of its ingredients on file so that you can keep repurchasing it, which I think is a gorgeous initiative and I would love to make my signature scent something that I created with my own two hands (and nostrils). I would also happily go back and try create something much different and see what "Twenty-One" would smell like.