My love of fragrance began when I was a child. My father travelled overseas for work and would often return with a new perfume for me. Each bottle felt like a small window into another place, and fragrance quickly became connected to memory, identity and imagination.

While studying, I worked in an independent fragrance boutique in Lancashire. It was there that I began to understand perfume properly - not only how it was composed, but how deeply personal choosing a fragrance could be. I loved helping customers find something that reflected who they were and how they wanted to feel.

I later spent almost a decade working as a management consultant in London. After surviving bacterial meningitis and septicaemia, I felt an urgent need to make space for something more creative and personally meaningful. I began sharing my fragrance knowledge online, explaining perfume in the straightforward, un-fussy way I had always wanted to hear it discussed.