Wealden Times | WT258 | November 2023 | Christmas Gift Supplement inside

Scents for the
Season
Josephine Fairley handpicks the finest winter fragrances that’ll have you returning for spritz after spritz
Images: Skin image courtesy of Olfacttive O, all others: istockphoto.com/ Seng kui Lim / banusevim/ Wirestock / Suchat longthara
There’s only one thing that has me looking forward to
winter. It is the prospect of switching over my scent
wardrobe to fragrances that I love, but which feel
heavy as a faux fur coat on a summer’s day, almost physically
making me hot and sweaty. For me, some fragrances are floaty
frocks – my summer choices. Others are velvet, cashmere and
– yes – opaque tights. And it’s at the exact getting-out-theopaque-tights
moment in the calendar that I change over my
perfumes, too. A real olfactory highlight, for me, in the year.
You, of course, may be one of those people with a
‘signature’ scent that you’ve worn for forever, and be sitting
there muttering: ‘That’s irrelevant to me.’ But actually, I’d
like to persuade you otherwise, because there’s a very good
reason, at least occasionally, to switch up what you wear.
Because I’ll bet you also say, at least sometimes: ‘Trouble
is, I can’t smell it on myself any more.’ And that’s precisely
because you do have a signature scent, and your nose –
or rather, your brain – treats it like wallpaper. In other
words, it just becomes a background smell, and you miss
out on enjoying something you love, except perhaps for
a minute or two when first applying. Imagine how bored
your sense of taste would become if you ate the same food,
morning, noon and night. Now think about how that
translates to smell – and maybe at least experiment with
some of the scents I’m about to go into raptures over.
Autumn 2023 is actually a very good moment for
fragrance. During the pandemic, fragrance launches got
backed up like planes circling round Heathrow. When
we were all liberated, there was much uncertainty in
the marketplace, and a lot of the fragrances launched
were ‘flankers’, existing perfumes which had been given
a bit of a twist. But this season, the floodgates have
opened, creativity abounds – and we perfumistas are
happy people indeed. So, here’s what I’m loving…
Guerlain Tobacco Honey, from £90 for 50ml eau de
parfum. There’s a strong tobacco trend wafting through
perfumery right now. It’s all a bit decadent, considering how
long the smoking ban’s been in place – but in truth, tobacco
as a perfumery note is quite different to standing in a fug
at the King’s Head (for anyone who remembers how much
they used to have to splash out on dry cleaning, back in the
day). It tends to be grassy, woody, complex, yet warm and
seductive, which is why perfumers are having so much fun
with it. This Guerlain latest really does give the sense of honey
drizzled with honey, its sweet seductiveness further enhanced
by vanilla, tonka and sesame, all enveloped in a cigar-like
smokiness; indeed, it begs for you to dress up in your very
finest and take it out to a fancy bar, as far as I’m concerned.
La Montaña Divine Sunset, from £22 for 10ml eau de
parfum. Used up all your annual leave allocation? From a
Sussex-based brand (well, in truth, founder Cassandra Hall
is based between Brighton and a Spanish mountainside),
Divine Sunset is a real holding-on-to-summer scent which
invites you to bask in the warmth of orange blossom and
musks. This is the scent equivalent of finding a protected spot
on a sunny, blustery winter’s day and turning your face
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