Pera's Adventurous Past 50ml

Created in cahoots with the mild horror story podcast, At Your Peril, Aunt Pera’s Adventurous Past is a darkly resinous, vintage style chypre, with a heart of orris and rose, made with materials which were all available in 1939, when Sarah's real Great Aunt Pera was obliged to leave her job in Cannes - just down the hill from Grasse, the home of French perfume - on the last ship back to England.

For the whole story, you probably ought to listen to the podcast episode, The Family Legacy, which is absolutely 100% fiction, written by Sarah, but featuring an alternative life which her Aunt Pera could possibly have led.

Pera Jacqueline Bain, did have an adventurous life, and in France she was personal assistant and cook to society hostess and sculptor, Alexandra Henrietta Baroness Colebrooke in Cannes during the 1930s. Back in London she ran the factory, hidden in a former bakery in Fulham, which made rivets to hold Spitfires together. (In her later life, Pera did not in fact run a perfumery; she ran a tea shop and a dog kennels.)

The only area in which we deviate from historical accuracy in the perfume is that animal ingredients which were used at the time - civet & musk for example - are being replaced with molecules made by people in laboratories. (We also deviate from historical accuracy in the story.) The chypre base also uses oakmoss, labdanum, patchouli, bergamot, styrax, benzoin and opoponax. To evoke the fascinating international visitors to Lady Colebrooke's home, we have mitti attar and rose otto from India.