Plezir Magazine July-August 2026
Here’s an interview Sarah McCartney did with Teodora Kovrlija for the Serbian eco-lifestyle magazine Plezir.
It’s on page 234 for those of you who read Serbian, but if you haven't mastered it yet, the English version is on page 256.
Interview for Plezir Magazine July-August 2026 by Teodora Kovrlija
To begin, could you tell us how you first fell in love with perfume and with the subtle art of storytelling through scent?
I’m not sure I ever really fell in love with perfume, I just found it intriguing enough to follow it right down the rabbit hole into the burrow. I wrote a short novel and I wanted to describe the fragrances I had written about. Each of those was set in a time and place, so the storytelling was part of it.
What do your Thursdays usually look like?
Not Tuesdays? Tuesdays are my writing days. On Thursdays I see people, clients who would like me to make something, and suppliers who would like me to buy something, journalists, potential projects. I limit this to one day a week because while I do I like meeting and talking, it wears me out and it eats my creative time.
Your journey into perfumery has been anything but conventional. From studying the natural sciences to event management and copywriting, then years of writing for Lush, and eventually your novel The Scent of Possibility—inspired by perfumery itself—which led you, fifteen years ago, to wish others could experience the fragrances that had until then existed only in your imagination. Along the way, you've faced no shortage of challenges, especially in an industry still shrouded in secrecy and exclusivity, where the system often favours established players over independent makers. What gave you the determination to persevere?
I think it’s easier to keep going than to give up, once you’re that far into it. I don’t feel particularly determined, but I keep getting ideas that I want to make happen and they propel me forwards. It’s probably that.
Do you think there may come a day when perfumery is taught in art schools alongside painting, music, or other established artistic disciplines?
There are already perfume schools but they are somewhat exclusive. There are perfumery modules in fashion and fine art courses, fashion for just in case the students want to set up their own brand, and art because creative people want to bring other senses into their work. I think it will expand.
Has your relationship with perfume creation changed since those early days, when you first bought your initial set of raw materials?
It’s different; I don’t wear perfume to work these days because I need my skin for testing, although this morning I sprayed on two to test. Also I rarely buy perfume because I like wearing what I make. I suppose it’s like dressmakers enjoying their own clothes. And I never bought a set of raw materials; things just accumulated.
Together with Samantha Scriven, you co-authored The Perfume Companion: The Definitive Guide to Choosing Your Next Scent. What myths, misconceptions, and long-held assumptions about perfume were you hoping to dispel through the book?
I was hoping to show that there are great fragrances at different price points, and that the best ones are definitely not all “made of the finest possible naturals”.
Beyond your original fragrances, many people know you as the "Fairy Godmother of UK Perfumery." Through Scenthusiasm and its online community, you've introduced countless enthusiasts to the art of perfumery, from hobbyists experimenting for the sheer joy of it to exceptionally talented students who have gone on to receive nominations and accolades at the Art & Olfaction Awards and The Fragrance Foundation Awards. One of your students, Amer Alradhi, has already won two Golden Pear Awards. As both a teacher and a perfumer, how has working with your students and nurturing this creative community shaped your own growth and artistic practice?
This has gone far beyond my expectations. Originally I just wanted to pay the studio rent by running a couple of workshops a month, allowing people to smell materials and the fragrances which contain them, then to have a little go at blending.
As so few places offer this kind of insight into perfumery, they rather took off and I ended up running online classes, and setting up the Patreon community. I hope that I’ve contributed to helping the artisan perfume world stand together - against the billionaires who run the five huge multi-nationals - rather than competing with each other. I now have a lot of friends who make beautiful things and it’s the whole ‘rising tide lifts all boats’ situation for me.
Since we're talking about your community, I'd love to introduce our readers to the rather unique model you've built around your work. Through Patreon, your supporters often have the opportunity to champion ideas long before they've taken tangible form. Meanwhile, every fragrance is developed, compounded, and bottled by you and your team in your own workshop, meaning that virtually every bottle passes through your hands before it reaches your online boutique or retailers such as LuckyScent in Los Angeles or Parfum la Dance in London. Why has it been so important to preserve such a personal, hands-on approach as your brand has grown?
Good question. I don’t know. My natural control freakery? I enjoy the practicality of making things. I love writing. I find it quite hard not to do everything myself. I think it comes from school days, and the idea that asking for help is cheating. I don’t think young people do not have this compulsion. Also I’m not hugely ambitious to grow; I would rather make a small quantity of something beautiful that I feel responsible for, than make a pile of money from something I delegated. (This is turning into therapy.)
Natural ingredients are often romanticized, while synthetics are frequently viewed with suspicion. Do you think that perception is justified? And which synthetic molecule would you consider one of the greatest achievements of modern perfumery?
You can’t change people’s beliefs with facts, but some naturals are so dangerous they are banned. Fig absolute for example, is a skin sensitiser and phototoxin. White cedar is a neurotoxin. Plants need to defend themselves from attack and one way is to produce essential oils. Insisting that you want naturals because they are safer is like thinking that a lion is cute and cuddly before it bites your head off. New molecules released these days all have to be safe and biodegradable. I think I’ll choose Ambrettolide HC as a favourite molecule because it’s a musk that doesn’t harm animals, it’s white biotech grown on sustainable feedstock and it’s biodegradable and smells gorgeous. What’s not to love?
Is there a natural raw material that, in your view, should disappear entirely from contemporary perfumery for ethical or environmental reasons?
Natural musk. There’s no excuse for it except for the bragging rights. We can all do without it and recently one person arguing for keeping the supply told me that it’s fine, they don’t actually kill the animals these days, they just slice them open and cut the pods out. So that’s OK, is it? No one needs that. Same for natural civet; they don’t kill the animals, just keep them in cages and scare them.
Since we're discussing raw materials, here's something I think many readers who have never witnessed the creative process will find fascinating. How often do you have the opportunity to work directly with growers and producers of aromatic materials, as you did with Rose Overdose in neighbouring Bulgaria, where you also led workshops, or with the family-run Indian producer of Attar Mitti? Or are independent perfume houses, by necessity, largely reliant on intermediaries because of the relatively small quantities they purchase?
You're right, we can usually only buy directly from smaller producers because the minimum order values are often massive. For Silvia at Rose Overdose, I created a range of rose oil based formulas across different styles, one of which she released under her brand in Bulgaria. I also buy CO2 extracts directly from another Bulgarian producer, Ecomaat, whose glorious materials Silvia introduced me to.
Which natural material do you think remains the most difficult to recreate convincingly through synthetic means?
I’m fortunate enough to be able to buy most of the naturals I want to, because I don’t work with clients who insist on reducing the cost per kilo. I know that this is a huge part of perfumery training for a job in a more commercial side of the industry, but while I do it for fun, I haven’t spent a lot of time on it. I must give my favourite mock orange tree a go through.
If you could spend a day in the laboratory of any perfumer from history, who would you choose?
I would choose Thérèse Roudnitska. Edmond Roudnitska, creator of Eau Sauvage, Diorella and a select group of other masterpieces, was her husband. However, she is rumoured to have done a lot of the work behind the scenes and I think I’d be more likely to get the real stories from her.
In recent years, public discourse has increasingly suggested that a good perfume must be powerful, and, above all, long-lasting. In your view, what truly defines the quality of a perfume?
I like beauty. If you want a perfume to last for a day, you have to base it on a restricted palette of materials which is why woody ambers and gourmands are so popular now. I like them to go on a bit of a walk. Even around 2010, it was still fine to expect a good quality perfume to last for 4 to 6 hours. Is a poem great because it’s long or because it makes you feel something?
When you begin creating a fragrance, what usually comes first: a material you're eager to explore, or a place, a memory, an emotion, or a story you want to evoke through scent?
Any or all of those things can happen to me and often a combination of several will materialise to form an idea. The first idea for the Blaze of Glory collection I’m working on at the moment turned up when I was imagining a fragrance to represent earth, water, air and fire. Then it was boosted by a series of fantasy novels featuring parallel worlds, the Greta Helsing novels by Vivien Shaw: what would gardens in heaven, earth and hell smell like? What followed was the emotions I wanted these fragrances to evoke, and materials I had been acquiring during that time influenced the way I was planning them. I usually aim to evoke a time and a place, and sometimes they are imaginary.
Interest in perfumery is growing, and the internet has undoubtedly democratized access to the craft, allowing independent perfumers to connect directly with suppliers and participate in a market that was once far less accessible. But how knowledgeable and adventurous do you think today's consumers really are? In the end, is it the design, the influencer, the story or the fragrance itself that sells a perfume?
The big gap in knowledge is how materials actually fit together to make an aroma, and just as we were developing more knowledge and wider interest, AI has totally thrown this in the bin. The LLMs have been reading ingredients lists - which are just allergens - and notes lists, which are just the output from a blend, and have concluded that all fragrance are made with expensive naturals, plus a list of skin sensitisers. Trying to explain to keen people wanting a shortcut that this is all wrong is quite difficult because they are convinced that these machines have the answers. Soon they might. Now they don’t. Now that dull old factual Google has been replaced by censored controlling new Google, the democratic access to information has disappeared.
Of course, scent extends far beyond fine fragrance, and one particularly fascinating aspect of your work is your involvement in multisensory experiences. Could you tell us more about this side of your practice, from museum exhibitions and opera productions to burlesque performances? How does your creative process differ from composing a perfume, and which projects have given you the most rewarding opportunities to add an entirely new layer of meaning through scent?
All the arts events are different. People have asked me recently about my “process” and I realised that I don’t have one, unless it’s to sit down, have a chat, smell a few things, get some ideas and then choose materials to see if I can conjure up what they need. My most regular collaboration is with choreographer Marika Brussel, and that’s how we make the fragrances for her ballets.
For the Courtauld, I was invited to run a workshop with a group of young people and artist Jeremy Deller. We all worked together to create different aromas to depict parts of the painting The Bar at the Folies Bergere. I then took the formulas and blended the scents to be displayed in the gallery on ceramic discs.
What does Elvis's room smell like? And what was the research and creative process behind capturing it in scent?
Elvis’s dressing room had to smell as if he’s just left and we were following him through the room. I knew that he wasn’t that fussed about fragrance but wore Old Spice and Hi Karate. I also had access to a British fragrance archive covering the 1950s to the 1980s so I was able to check the formula structures to make sure I was on track. After that, three versions were sent over to Graceland HQ in Memphis for the estate management to approve, and they picked the one that featured Virginian and Texan cedar woods.
Has your fascination with immersive experiences been shaped, at least in part, by your synaesthesia, the way you naturally connect fragrance notes with musical harmonies and colours?
I don’t think mine is synaesthesia, I think it’s a strongly developed cross-modalism. I don’t remember being born with it, and I believe that what happened is that when I started to study fragrances, the aromas mapped themselves on to a neural network I’d already built when I spent a couple of decades learning music. They are learned associations, For example, I think lemon smells yellow. People with synaesthesia can see lemon as blue or purple or orange; it’s not related to reality.
You collaborate with neuroscientists and specialists in multisensory perception. Can our sense of smell actually be trained and improved? And based on your experience, what are the benefits of developing this often-overlooked sense?
Everyone can train their sense of smell and see a huge improvement in weeks. Beyond that, spending time smelling fires up all parts of the brain, not just the bit we use for identifying scents. Smelling things consciously and regularly is beginning to look like an effective way to keep the mind fit and anything that keeps us thinking clearly is a benefit.
Staying with everyday scents, I'd love to return to last year's collaboration with Lidl, when you created Eau de Croissant. It was released as an ultra-limited series of samples that left collectors and lovers of gourmand fragrances wanting more. Did that project inspire you to explore those delicious olfactory notes further in a future fragrance?
There is an ongoing legal case, so I can’t talk about this and we can’t use that name. It wasn’t released; it was going to be a competition prize and there were only 150 of them. The formula belongs to them, not us. We hope it might get sorted out.
In the meantime I do enjoy making gourmand fragrances and Hammersmith Tea & Biscuits was already our best-selling scent. I worked on Vianne's Confession with Joanne Harris; that particular fragrance wasn’t sweet, more of a chypre with bitter cacao, but it set me off reading her Chocolat series of novels and I made a number of scents to capture scenes in the books. I incorporated one, Equilibrium, into my Blaze of Glory collection, coming out in autumn.
Alongside creations for your own house, your collaborations with other perfume brands have become an important part of your portfolio. You've created Macaque for Zoologist and collaborated with Aura of Kazakhstan, Blackcliff Parfums, Sarah Baker Perfumes, and others. What do you find most challenging and most rewarding about creating for another brand? Do you prefer working within a clearly defined creative brief, or do you enjoy having complete artistic freedom?
A clearly defined brief does give me artistic freedom. Constraints squeeze you until your creativity bursts right out! What I never want is for someone to say, “I want it to smell like this fragrance by that brand” because that’s just a waste of my time. There’s no point asking someone with their own approach and ideas to do something a machine could do for you. I work with people who like what I do. You wouldn’t go to have your portrait painted by someone whose work you dislike, and try to force them into another style.
What is both challenging and rewarding is making something I probably would never have thought of by myself. I would just go on making a range of fruity ambers until the end of time.
One of the defining projects in your studio last year was your collaboration with Joanne Harris, author of Chocolat, on Vianne's Confession, a fragrance created to accompany Vianne, her new novel and prequel to Chocolat. Unsurprisingly, the perfume has been warmly received and this year earned a nomination at the UK Fragrance Foundation Awards in the Perfume Extraordinaire category. What story were you hoping to tell through this fragrance?
It was page 153 of the UK hardback edition. Joanne read it to me, then sent me a pdf of the whole book for context four months before the release. It’s the moment that Vianne meets the priest who will later choose to make her his enemy, during a rainshower in Marseille in the shadow of the cathedral. The story was already written. I just had to bring it to life in scent.
Many critics have described your Hammersmith Tea & Biscuits as one of the fragrances that most authentically captures the essence of British identity. Are there any perfumes whether your own or those created by fellow perfumers that you feel genuinely evoke the spirit and olfactory landscape of London?
I have to apologise for my lack of knowledge of everyone else’s perfumes. I spend time getting to know materials rather than other fragrances. I would add London Linden and No Mow May, of my own and Cathedral Library, the aroma that embraces you as the doors to St Paul’s Cathedral Library are opened. As I live here, I keep adding to my London collection.
Which perfumes do you find yourself returning to time and time again?
I continue to work on the perfect fruity floral amber! For wearing, pre-Estee Lauder buyout Editions de Parfum Frederic Malle Lipstick Rose and Dans Test Bras, Diorella and Tocade, Tea for Two and Bois Farine from L’Artisan Parfumeur and L’Air de Rien from Miller Harris.
Of my own, currently I wear Meet Me On the Corner, Tokyo Spring Blossom, London Linden and the as yet unreleased Floating in Space, These Are The Good Days and Down to Us. My travelling fragrance to wear at night so I can sleep is Complicated Shadows.
Fragrances inspired by clouds have become remarkably popular in recent years, yet you explored this theme long before it became fashionable. Your portfolio includes several cloud-inspired creations, among them the widely praised Complicated Shadows, a fragrance that feels mysterious and slightly dark, yet never without hope. What emotions were you hoping people would experience while wearing perfumes from this collection?
I have a habit of doing things before they become popular! Complicated Shadows was an early version and actually rejected for the project I did with Facebook group Eau My Soul. Eventually, we settled on Clouds and Clouds Illusion and if you know the Joni Mitchell song, Both Sides Now, you’ll get the reference.
It’s cheerful and sunlit, but with an underside of heartbroken misery. Without the dark, you’ll never know how bright the light really is, cliched but fair.
One fragrance that particularly caught my attention, not only because of its composition but also because of its environmental message, is No Mow May, inspired by the UK initiative encouraging people not to mow their lawns during May in support of biodiversity. As a perfumer, how important is it to you that your creations carry meaningful social or environmental messages, or preserve the memory of significant events, places, or remarkable people?
A lot of my fragrances are provoked by political situations. It’s important for me, but I don’t always get round to spelling it out. I made We’re Not Out of the Woods Yet when the disastrous, selfish, psychopathic abomination of a Prime Minister Boris Johnson resigned, there were some saying, “Wonderful, now for the good times!” so rather than argue about this, I commented in the form of a scent name. I see people saying that we should keep politics out of perfume, but the billionaire owner of LVMH is a well known Trump donor, at his side during the 2025 inauguration. The Lauder family encouraged him to invade Greenland. Perfume is funding fascism, and if people want to ignore that they can, but I won’t. Many political arguments are nuanced, but that one is not.
Your website features a section dedicated to retired perfumes, including several that, in my opinion, deserved a much longer life - Rome 1963, Paris 1948, The Goddess of Love & Perfume, and Damn Rebel Witches, to name just a few. What ultimately leads you to retire such beloved olfactory creations?
It’s just practicalities. We sold about one bottle a month of Rome 1963 so I gave notice and the people who did actually love it could get a stash in at a discounted price. It wasn't beloved enough. Mostly it’s because we can’t get the raw materials any more. A whole range of CO2 extractions disappeared when one of the big companies bought the producer and just dumped the ones that didn’t sell enough. Also Galaxolide is being withdrawn for environmental reasons so a bunch of those are going.
Recently, you've been developing your new Blaze of Glory collection. Could you tell us more about the concept behind it, the inspiration, the redesigned bottles, and the fragrances that make up the collection?
I’m writing the whole story about these as a little booklet to go in the boxes. I’m going to have to read my diaries for the last few years to see where it started because the influences are many and varied. It came together when I was reading a series of fantasy novels, the Doctor Greta Helsing stories, set now but involving parallel worlds of a world filled with angels, and one with demons, some of whom visit Earth. Sling in some very elegant vampires, mummies, 1940s electrical devices occupied by malevolent beings in the London Underground and you get the idea. Vivien Shaw’s descriptions of these worlds had me thinking about the plants which would grow there. I ended up with vintage scarves, socks, Bertand Russell’s books, pictures of stained glass windows and many materials that fit the atmospheres I wanted to evoke.
Stories have always been inseparable from both your personality and the brand you've built. It feels perfectly natural that the stories you've written have inspired fragrances, while fragrances have inspired stories in return. The same dialogue can be seen in your collaborations with authors and the perfumes you've created around their fictional worlds and characters. Has there been a novel or literary series in recent years that made you think, "I wish I could bring this world to life through fragrance"?
Ha, see above! But yes, the other one would be Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London.
In a recent newsletter, you wrote: "Why don't I use my most beautiful, most precious materials in the perfumes I create for 4160 Tuesdays? Why don't I free myself from every limitation and create a collection so extraordinary it takes everyone's breath away?" Should we take that as a hint that something very special is on the horizon?
Oh yes, that’s another reason for the Blaze of Glory Collection. I dislike the situation that fragrance finds itself in, where big brands are suddenly quadrupling their prices and calling their fragrances “niche” just because they can. Some business owners believe they must charge the absolute maximum their customers will pay. I never wanted to be part of that and always wanted to set the lowest price for my fragrances so that my friends can buy them. But then people think that the expensive ones must be “better” which is really frustrating. I would sometimes decide to miss out pricy materials to keep my fragrances affordable. The one time I really went for it was when I made Clouds Parfum, which was £360 for 50ml, but I offered it in advance for 50% discount because I don’t think people should be asked to pay full price for blind buying something that doesn’t yet exist.
The limit I have freed myself from is the cost. I’ve never had a problem with creative limits. What I have also done is brought in 15ml bottles so that customers can have the smaller version. I have found that people have a budget per bottle, and it’s less about the cost per millilitre,more about the total.
32. Finally, for readers in our part of Europe who are discovering your work for the first time, what's the best way for them to experience and purchase your fragrances?
We currently have no retailers in mainland Europe. There are some countries we can ship to and some we can’t as the UK is no longer in the EU. We can’t send anything into Spain, and we’ve had to stop shipping to Germany because the last few parcels have been stopped at Customs and mysteriously “lost”.
You can visit our studio in Hammersmith, Monday to Friday, but check first that there’s someone here because some days we’re busy running workshops.
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