With bonfire night fast approaching and Halloween on the doorstep my thoughts always turn to the gloriously smokey scents of autumn. The crispness in the air and the first frosts on the ground always make me reach for my Penhaligon's matches so that I can set light to the pile of kiln-dried logs that are permanently sitting in the fireplace. The scent of an open fire is one of my favourite smells, which is why I’ve also been known to have one in height of summer, so I was intrigued to find that Tessa Williams had released a home spray simply called Fire. So, would it really smell like my wood-smoke scented sitting room?
You often read about the power that fragrance has for transporting us back into the past. Those forgotten perfumes, that selection of banned ingredients, these are all ways of "experiencing" the scents that would have been worn in previous decades. However, bottling a true snapshot of real life is a little more difficult. There are so many things to consider and, ultimately, it will be an interpretation based on facts and memory rather than a real "fragrance photograph". So, you can imagine how excited I was when I got to experience a real journey back in time to 1960, and even the mess that it caused was worth it.
