Here’s what happened at our Scent Salon with Aesop and Odette Toilette

For the perfume enthusiasts amongst you who couldn’t make our scent salon, here’s a quick peak at what we got up to in the Aesop store last week with Odette Toilette (in pink, above). On what could have been the hottest day of the year, we plied refreshing fruit sticks on everyone as they arrived, with beautiful edible pansies, cornflowers and the odd mint leaf,  supplied by Maddocks Farm Organic Flowers, then Odette set to work on exercising our noses.

Jane and I were taken with the Aesop space, it’s so neat and organised, we liked the industrial shelving and the clean lines, even the paper cups were stylish (wasari-style, hard to get in the UK but I’d be buying in bulk if I had access to amazon.com in the US). We had a work sheet to fill out, with a few fun thought-provoking challenges to get us rethinking about the way we talk about what we want out of a fragrance. Hard than it sounds…

As always with our Salons, the very best bit was meeting and talking to our readers. You are all such a great bunch of people!

Working hard….

The second best bit was seeing what fragrances everyone had brought along in order to change, update, add to or just enthuse over.

From classics such as Chanel No 5, Coco and Jo Malone’s Red Roses, to Max Mara’s Max Mara, Korres Vetiver Root Green Tea Cedarwood, Kiehl’s and the eternally upbeat Estee Lauder’s Bronze Goddess, the range of fragrances was fascinating. We even had one reader bring along her gorgeous wedding perfume -Rossy de Palma by Etat Libre D’Orange – for us to smell (have a lovely wedding when it happens btw!). All great fragrances, it was fun to be introduced to this selection that our readers’ had edited, something you’d never get in a store and you all had excellent taste. ( But then you read TWR, so of course you do!)

I didn’t write down everyone’s fragrance, so if you brought a fragrance along and you have a moment, do tell us what it was in the comments below. Also anyone who didn’t come but has a favourite fragrance they wear, do add it in the comments too, it would be so interesting to see what everyone is wearing and I’d like to make a list of what our readers love. So add your on please! We can all use it as inspiration for what to buy/sniff next.

We then introduced everyone -by blind testing -to some fragrances that we thought you might all like. The fragrances were Vetiver Spice by Bella Belissima, Marrakech Intense by Aesop (out Sept), Rouge Nocturne by Terry de Gunzburg (out Oct) , Osmanthus by Ormande Jayne and Anubis by Papillion Perfumes. By this stage everyone was feeling more confident about commenting on what they liked and didn’t like and as usual with our salons, it was all over far too soon with conversation still in full flow. You are a chatting bunch.

Odette Toilette was such an interesting teacher,  she is my new girl crush and knows everything there is to know about smell. She has terrific events herself, so if you missed this one, check out her website to catch her later. We had so much fun we’ll definitely be doing more scent salons, it feels like the best (and most fun) way to discover new fragrances.