SMELL TASTE & FUNDRAISING

in 2014 Sarah met Duncan Boak, CEO of the charity Smell Taste, for people who have lost their sense of smell, taste, or both. She immediately asked what she could do to help. Our latest project together is the fragrance Making Sense, created for the Smell Taste sensory garden at Hampton Court Flower Show in 2024, to be launched in 2025 to help with fundraising.

We also worked with Louise Woollam, writer of the Get Lippie blog, who developed parosmia after losing her sense of smell completely and then getting it back bit by bit- but not the way she would have liked. This was long before Covid hit and smell loss became widely known.

After visiting the Osmotheque in Versailles, Louise discovered that she could still smell ionones - the molecules that make up violet and iris scents - citruses and musk notes. She tweeted - with a load of her usual sarky wit - that all she had to do was find a perfume with those notes, and none of the ones that smelled disgusting to her. The fact is that finding an usual perfume like that is almost impossible, so Sarah volunteered to make one. When Louise came to 4160Tuesdays, we found out that vanilla smelled like poo to her, while her brain repaired the damage to her olfactory system. As there's vanillin in almost every modern women's scent, as well as chocolate and cakes, this was a massive problem in her life, not just when she wanted to wear fragrance.

After we developed the perfume together, Louise came up with the name Paradox, because that's what it is - a perfume for someone who lost her sense of smell. Duncan Boak, founder of Smell Taste (formerly Fifth Sense), lost his sense of smell after hitting his head and decided to set up an organisation for people like himself. For Louise, his organisation was just what she needed. We're very happy to be supporting Smell Taste's work with people living with an impaired or lost sense of taste and smell.