Why I love perfume

There is no rational way to talk about what fragrance makes us feel. The history, development, ingredients, process of perfume making, its many and varied and often exotic terms, the fragrance families — all these may be subject to rational discussion. But the result of a conjuration — a little bottle of magic, of feeling, of memories-to-be — this cannot be the subject of rational talk.

Rather, there is an ineffability, a subjectivity to what a particular scent makes us feel, or think, or remember or desire. And therein lies the true beauty of fragrance – as far as I can see.

Decades before The Clarens Parfumerie was born, my love of the alchemy of fragrance began to grow, nurtured in a dimly lit back room of one of Johannesburg’s oldest houses. Tinctures of bougainvillea and other garden flowers appeared in mugs and jars. Then came the dozens and dozens of essential oil blends, with notes on their composition jotted down on scattered paper.

Behind it all was a desire for transcendence of the everyday, I realise, perhaps something similar to what the alchemists felt in centuries past when they tried to transmute base metals into gold.

It took time – far more than I would have wanted to imagine as a younger person – for what remained a lifelong passion to truly bloom.

But in the beautiful foothills of Clarens – another place about which there is something ineffable, indescribable, full of feeling – the dream takes root, and gathers itself to flower.

Eve Strauss
Founder & Owner, The Clarens Parfumerie

** Adapted from the foreword to our book, Bottled Magic: A Perfumer's Handbook