Who: Amanda Carr, trend forecaster and blogger. Amanda is the founder of We Wear Perfume and co founder of the influential blog The Women’s Room. She set up We Wear Perfume to help people discover fragrance in a more enjoyable way.
Perfume is a gorgeous thing, it connects strongly to memory, romance, sadness, joy and a whole host of other exhilarating emotions. You can pick a perfume to match or improve how you feel daily, creating your own scented comfort blanket to help you face the world. And it doesn’t require you to be thin, beautiful or young to smell its best, in fact I think older people appreciate how to use perfume most effectively, understanding its power in bolstering your own confidence as well as intriguing those around you.
It was while we were having our first Scent Salon that I realised other people’s scent stories were a lot more interesting than anything the perfume houses did to promote their fragrances. The event was for The Women’s Room, participants brought along their own fragrances for a scented show-and-tell. The stories they told about how and why they’d chosen those particular perfumes were fascinating and made us all want to try each others fragrances. Many of us went on to buy the ones we’d tried, thrilled that we’d discovered great new smells.
Most of my favourite fragrances have all been found through other people wearing them. And I’m not the only one. Most people we’ve interviewed here found their favourite perfumes almost by accident, either by hearing someone else’s scent story and loving it, or through a randomly lucky gift.
Increasingly it occurred to me that personal perfume stories from other people were a great way -perhaps the best way- to try out new smells. I love talking to people, so why not get them to tell me their personal perfume adventures? The result is a journey of varying emotions, humour and enlightenment in perfume knowledge as well as being down right useful in pointing you in the direction of some beautiful smells.
My favourite fragrances vary every day, I post my Today I’m Wearing on Instagram. My all time favourites include Terry de Gunzburg’s Rouge Nocturne, a scent I discovered WGSN’s beauty editor wearing and fell instantly in love with. it’s a warm, spicy rose with a ‘look at me’ attitude.
I also love Bella Bellisima’s Orris Fiorintina, a warm hit of sophisticated floral with a spiced edge. I met Bella, who founded the brand and instantly loved her quiet, knowledgeable aesthetic around scent. This was a present and now it smells of me. Another present- this time from my husband who surprised me with it one day when I was feeling low- is Chanel’s Jersey, it’s basically posh lavender and goes well with a sunny day.
Miller Harris is another brand I find it easy to buy from but its collaboration with Jane Birkin for L’Air de Rien sealed it for me when I got to meet Jane at the launch (more here). It was love at first sight and smell. Dusty, musty, and with hints of of paper, tobacco and leathery handbag interiors, I wore it on a trip to New York shortly after, which only added to its exotic-ness.
Images Maya Glaser, make up Hina Dohi
