My inspiration for all my formulas is from a summer I spent in Grasse, France at the Grasse Institute of Perfumery. As a student the protocol is you are smelling the best raw materials. Provence in the summer is exquisite. Scents are all around you. The iconic thoughts that come to mind are the lavender fields. But I also got to smell Grasse jasmine in a field. I had the luxury to pick jasmine and sat in the vat where they process the jasmine and have jasmine thrown on me. At the orange blossom festival the firefighters spray orange blossom water on the crowds. I drank orange blossom liquor with sparking water and ate orange blossom fougassette. It felt like a spa to my favorite sense.

Grasse felt dry and there is a hay smokey scent that permeates all around you.

I learned the difference between lavender and lavandin by the plants, I’ll never forget it. Smelling the oils is natural because that is what you will be using when you make a fragrance but getting to smell the plants was a luxury. Marigolds is not used in perfumes, it is not even a synthetic and I never associated it with being necessarily beautifully fragrant. My teacher took a marigold had us smell it and then opened up the stem directly under the flower, opened it up and had us smell again The earthy burst is something I will not forget. I have tried it with marigolds back home, but as she said, you cna’t duplicate the Provence sun or soil.

Another sensory impression from that summer is the fruit. I already knew my favorite fruit shop and went there daily. It was the first time I had pluots. I had delicious cherries, peaches, and strawberries so small, fragrant, sweet, and delicate they barely made it home in that hot afternoon sun.