Our Modern Lives - Scents

Red - Harvest - Gratitude as eau de parfum and body spray.
A comandingly cheerful aroma made with spices, woods, resins and fruit botanicals, in organic grain ethanol.
In yoga classes when we spray this everyone sits, even before they're told what's next.
🧘‍♀️
The nerdy part:
When we use ethanol in perfumery, there is no need to add extra preservatives because it keeps the fragrance exactly the way we want it for at least three years. Ethanol also increases stability (as long as you only use it for perfume 😄).
Don't let anyone try to talk you into thinking that ethanol is an allergen - it's just not - or that water it a better.solvent - it really isn't that. Water in perfume is just fashionable right now. Also, it needs preservatives to stop it going off. We’re sticking with ethanol.

Harvest - Gratitude - Red is the first of Our Modern Lives fragrances, made by hand in London.
It contains hay, rose and labdanum, raspberry leaf absolutes, oakwood, pink peppercorn and hazelnut CO2 extracts, labdanum, cognac and davana essential oils.
We made it with natural materials traditionally known for inspiring confidence and calm. Specifically, we created it to use for in yoga classes, but you can wear it whenever you like.
It's fruity and rich, with hazelnut and cognac - a gourmand flourish, swirling from a secure woody amber base.

The world needs an aromatic toolkit for modern life. We make it in Hammersmith.
better

We're about to delve into the database then disappear into the lab to reformulate and relabel following the new safety regulations from IFRA and the EU.
Essential oils contain so many powerful - natural - chemicals produced by plants that we have to be really careful how much we put on our skin, as all aromatherapists know.
In the meantime, we shall be posting things we like, which we hope you'll appreciate.
This is clary sage. The first more mature plant is growing outside in Surrey, the second in a hydroponic vertical farm right next to it. The essential oil is made from the flowers, but the plants grown hydroponically have much more aromatic leaves, so perhaps they will become available as an essential oil too.

In the garden, a blue hibiscus 🌺. Hibiscus seeds are uses to make ambrette seed absolute, a natural musk perfumery material, although this flower doesn’t smell, at least not to humans.
Many tropical flowers from humid countries use their looks to attract insects because scent doesn't travel far in the damp atmosphere.
If it had an aroma, what would it smell like?
We're thinking about that...

A magnificent magnolia flower perfectly placed to be sniffed deeply. Finally a magnolia flower with a stunning scent (unlike those which flourish in my garden). We have magnolia leaf and magnolia flower essential oils at the studio, and it's a great disappointment that they smell absolutely nothing like the flower.
For a magnolia perfume to smell like the flower, it needs assistance.

Lilac.
A stunning fragrance.
In perfumery it is recreated by a skillful combination of molecules, including natural isolates, not by extracting the aroma from flowers.
This is nothing to be concerned about, it's to be wondered at.

Reusing recycled packaging. We've a friend who makes stained glass, and every time he has a new project we get boxes full of paper and bubble wrap.
It might not make for the most instagrammable of unboxing experiences but it makes us happy.
What do you think if you get upcycled packaging? Delighted, disappointed, don't notice?

In 2017 we felt a strong need for an aromatic tool kit to help us get through everything life was throwing at us: Our Modern Lives.
☀️
We have a perfumery
where we handmake small batches of fragrance, do we decided to use what we know about perfume, and about essential oils to make seven new scents with extra properties.
They are created by our perfumer who reaches for Blue Screen Blue Horizon to help her sleep and meditate and Orange Sunset Peace for a balance of staying calm and focused.
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We need them more than ever right now.
We've bottled batches of Blue Screen Blue Horizon, and Orange Sunset Peace and we're taking them to the stand at the October 15 & 16 in London's Business Design Centre.
Is you're visiting, you're welcome to try them.

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