SMELLTASTE & FUNDRAISING

SmellTaste is a charity for people who have lost their sense of smell, taste, or both. In 2014, Sarah met Duncan Boak, CEO of SmellTaste, who lost his sense of smell in 2005 after a head injury and founded SmellTaste to support others in a similar situation. After learning about what Duncan and his charity do, Sarah immediately asked how she could help.

For their most recent project together, Sarah has made a fragrance that anyone can feel confident wearing. Understanding that wearing a fragrance can be an empowering, mood-enhancing form of self-expression, even if the wearer cannot actually smell it, they came up with the idea of a light and reassuring fragrance.

Our Making Sense fragrance was inspired by the Making Sense sensory garden, the first sensory garden designed for those living with impaired smell and taste, and was created by Flora Scouarnec and Victoria Pease-Cox, in partnership with SmellTaste. It was shown at the 2024 RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival.

Making Sense is a light, herbal eau de parfum made with essential oils of rose geranium, lavender, rosemary, palmarosa, and mint, with a base of soft musks and woods.

People with smell impairments often worry about what they smell like, or that if they wear a fragrance, it could be too strong or unpleasant for others. That is why we have made a bright, fresh, soft and pleasant fragrance, very unlikely to offend, but likely to be gently admired, and hopefully give a confidence boost to the wearer.

To support the wonderful work SmellTaste does, we are giving 25% of the proceeds from Making Sense to SmellTaste.

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 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. 

For Louise, Duncan’s organisation SmellTaste was just what she needed. 

We're very happy to be supporting SmellTaste's work with people living with an impaired or lost sense of taste and smell.