The olfactory rebel. Los Angeles-based Killian Wells, pop musician turned perfumer turned millennial entrepreneur, represents less a relaxing of the rules of perfumery and more their ripping up. His fragrance house Xyrena pays homage to the retro culture of the 1980s and to the smells we risk losing in the march of modernity. Wells’ first job was a cinema projectionist and this colours the format of the range; each perfume is packaged in a VHS case, with the invitation to display and...

Perfumer Andy Tauer is a hobbyist turned professional, inspiring many to try their hand at perfumery. Tauer describes the creation of L’Air du Désert Marocain, which features in the exhibition Perfume: A Sensory Journey Through Contemporary Scent, in cinematic terms as though standing in a desert scene receptive to the odours carried in the breeze. No perfumer has done more than Andy Tauer to communicate with perfume enthusiasts, and to bridge the knowledge gap between creator and...

Lyn Harris has brought a new relaxed confidence to British perfumery, promoting the role of natural materials. Trained in Paris and Grasse, she emphasises the quality of her ingredients which are allowed to shine through using pared down formulations. In Charcoal, Harris has found beauty in a material usually considered prosaic. The perfume holds the tension between hot, rough smoke and a smooth green translucency, and is built around two grades of juniper oil. Perfume: A Sensory Journey...

Free from European perfumery heritage, musician and self-taught perfumer David Seth Moltz is at the vanguard of a thrilling and unorthodox scent movement. His Brooklyn based house D.S. & Durga, co-founded in 2008 with his wife Kavi Durga, uses perfume to tell stories of offbeat landscapes and folk histories capturing places in time and space. David shares his story behind El Cosmico, the perfume created for the eponymous trailer and teepee campsite in the city of Marfa, in the remote high...

Daniela Andrier's perfumery is about evolution, not revolution. Her creation Purple Rain for Prada Olfactories (2015) is an exquisite, seamless layering of iris effects. Daniella introduces her philosophical approach to perfumery and gives insight into how our sense of smell can play an important role in memory, and our understanding of time and space. Purple Rain is designed to prompt a sense of deja vu by smelling distinct yet somehow familiar. Perfume: A Sensory Journey Through...

Antoine Lie talks about love and bodily fluids as he introduces the concept behind Sécretions Magnifiques, perhaps the most provocative scent within the Perfume exhibition. Recalling the height of sexual pleasure with the smells of semen, sweat and milk, the perfume has been highly divisive since its launch a decade ago, labelled as both attractive and repulsive. Perfume: A Sensory Journey Through Contemporary Scent continues at Somerset House until 12...

The latest Perfume Pioneers podcasts features German entrepreneur Geza Schoen who introduces his elusive perfume Molecule 01, containing just one material known as Iso E Super. The molecule has been used in the making of perfume since the 1970's. Geza explains how his perfume, containing just one synthetic ingredient and a scent that many are unable to smell, became a pop culture phenomenon.

Mark Buxton's Comme des Garçons 2 changed our perceptions of what perfume could be. In the first episode of the Perfume Pioneers series Mark gives insight into his madcap entry to the perfume world and Comme des Garçons 2 which features in the exhibition. It was created in response to a one-line brief to create the smell of a swimming pool of ink. Perfume: A Sensory Journey Through Contemporary Scent, invites you to go on an olfactory journey through some of the most important perfumes over...

Tom Chatfield has written six books on digital culture and technology, and he's also got something to say about smell. In the light of his latest publication, Live This Book, he's urging us to reclaim the quality of our time including the relationships we hold with our environments. Join us for a fascinating, challenging discussion on the value of stopping to sniff in this edition of Life in Scents.

This time on Life in Scents we’re at the home of footballer Jay Tabb. Currently with Ipwitch, Jay has also played for Coventry and in the premier league with Reading. In this episode he talks to us about the smells which have accompanied throughout his career. From spending his weekends at the local rugby club with his dad, to the smell of his part in Readings 2012 Championship winning Campaign. Sweat, mud, fresh new boots and some other smells you might not expect.

Carla Valentine is the technical curator of the Bart's Pathology Museum, founded in Smithfield London in the nineteenth century to conserve and document human specimens. Surrounded by death, whether restoring what are called 'pots' of remains, carrying out autopsies, excavating plague graves, or running a dating night for those working in the death industries, Carla shares with us the olfactory worlds of death and decay in an utterly captivating and sensitive way, from the funeral...

Everything's Coming up Roses. Ellie Jauncey and Anna Day are The Flower Appreciation Society, who have been revitalising the world of floristry with their unstuffy arrangements celebrating seasonal British flowers, and recently published their first book. Early one morning, they took us round New Covent Garden Flower Market to sniff around the sea of blooms, and find out how to buy flowers from the trade.

A walk with Loredana. Encounter lucid, vivid scents, smells, colours and be present in this ancient place. Meet Salvatori, the last of his kind, who dances for us in his home. Feel the earth that produces fruit not tasted for a thousand years.

With over 300 scents in its catalogue, The Library of Fragrance (known as Demeter), has become the place to go for perfumes inspired by the everyday, the nostalgic and even the banal. In our only interview directly in the fragrance industry, Life in Scents chatted with lawyer-turned-perfume-company-founder Mark Crames about stopping in his tracks when he encounters smells that he simply has to get translated into sprayable form , whether it’s the perfect vanilla cake batter, fresh air in...

Life in Scents takes an unexpected turn this month; instead of discovering the smells of one person’s world, we travel back to the scents of a place and time: 18th Century England, with PhD researcher William Tullett of King’s College London. Moving between the aromatic pleasure gardens habituated by fashionable, scent-obsessed Macaronis, the perfume shops of London purveying the ubiquitous lavender water, and the crowded assembly halls with their assorted putrid miasmas, it’s time to inhale...

Pedro da Costa Felgueiras is a specialist in historic paint techniques. In this episode we talk to him about the smells of his craft from turpentine and pigments to the objects and buildings he painstakingly restores to their former glory. We also travel back to with Pedro to his childhood and the scents fish, sea, vegetables and growing up in Portugal. And we visit him on site at the restoration of Twickenham’s Georgian Gothic Revival Villa, Strawberry Hill House.

Life in Scents heads into the inspiring, energising and cacaphonous world of London's Science Museum this month, as we meet Inventor-in-Residence Mark Champkins to talk all things smell. The founder of Concentrate Design, Mark is tasked with solving problems into useful, patentable products. He pitches the concept of the anti-smell spectrum, the odour absorbing school gym kit, and the olfactory world of the inventor, while Jo and Odette pitch him some real and fake smell-invention ideas to...

Shonagh Marshall is a curator at the cultural centre Somerset House, home of London Fashion Week and the Courtauld Gallery. As a cataloguer and archiver of fashion collectors, she has worked on internationally renowned exhibitions including Alexander McQueen’s collection for the Costume Institute in New York, Tim Walker: Story Teller and Valentino: Master of Couture. Most recently, Shonagh was asked by Daphne Guiness to catalogue the personal collection of the late Isabella Blow, and...

Darren Rook is the co-founder and CEO of the London Distillery Company, the first to open it’s doors in London for over a hundred years. Darren speaks about how his team create their Whiskey and Gin using high quality ingredients and an attention experimentation, process and the latest technology. He also takes us back to recycling plants in Newcastle, and to Islay, the island which sparked his passion for the magic of distilling.

Hawthorne and Pink May Sniff and Scream with James Craven: Episode 3

Patchouli and The Incredibly Strange Bed Sniff and Scream with James Craven: Episode 2

Sniff and Scream with James Craven: Episode 1

Our guest on Life in Scents this month is His Excellency Williams Nkurunziza, who is the High Commissioner of the Republic of Rwanda to the United Kingdom and non-resident Ambassador to Ireland. With a diplomatic career that follows years in industry, His Excellency is also a poet, and his recent volume ranges across Rwanda's painful recent history and the drive towards rebuilding the country in the aftermath of genocide. We talked with him about the olfactory scentscapes of his home, from...

In this special edition of Life in Scents, we map the smells and stenches of the city, as Dr Victoria Henshaw, Lecturer in Urban Design and Planning at Sheffield University, shares her work in understanding the olfactory character of the urban. Victoria's talk, hosted at Angela Flanders' perfumery in East London to a public audience, was recorded immediately following a smell tour round Spitalfields which Odette had organised. From the scent implications of urban zoning to the creation of...