It’s remarkable how a scent can evoke a certain memory from the past. This can happen instinctively when a certain smell triggers an event or an experience that took place in your childhood. A perfume you may have worn as a teenager may also trigger a memory of that youthful time! My earliest memory of a scent that I can remember, is my mother baking cardamom and vanilla cookies for the Eid celebrations. I would wake up to the scent of warm vanilla and cardamom and eat as much of these heavenly bakes as I was able to for breakfast. To this day, whenever I smell cardamom, it transports me wistfully back to this time. If you want to read the science behind memory and scent you can read it here.
My perfume ‘far pavilion’ was inspired by a very distant childhood memory of my grandfather’s house in India. I recall a walled garden with date trees and a central well. My father mentioned that there were also beehives, neem and custard apple trees. My mother also talks affectionately about her garden of mangoes trees and intoxicating white flowers such as champaca.
Scent can be a highly emotive experience and it really can transport you back in time. I tried to capture an evocative emotion with ‘Far pavilion’ with its top notes of lavender and pepper, and a heady floral heart of Ylang Ylang. The Neroli is calming and the base is smooth and grounding with Amber and frankincense. It reminds me of a long forgotten memory of a garden. Of heady days and humid night, of laughter, and of an age of innocence.