Scents-ability
JENNIFER BOTTO FOUND HER CALLING BY CHANCE. While learning to make artisanal cheese, she visited a Tuscan agriturismo, and wandered one day into Florence’s Santa Maria Novella, the famed 600-year old perfumery and apothecary. Here, she discovered the ancient recipes and tools used to make botanical perfumes, and, most importantly, found that their scents had a power unlike any mass-market synthetic scent she had encountered. “They had a deep, sensual allure that put me under their spell,” she says.
Botto became obsessed with finding her own signature scent. Yet her quest proved fruitless, and she realized she would have to begin experimenting. Filled with an intense creative energy that she says had been missing from her life, Botto was hooked. She set out to become a professional perfumer.
Botto attended Anya McCoy’s Natural Perfumery course, and began working on a line of all-natural perfumes that could fit a wide range of personalities. All essential oils and other ingredients come from sources that specialize in natural perfumes, and all are vetted and approved by the Natural Perfumers Guild of which Botto is a certified member. She also refrains from using GMO isolates (chemicals isolated from natural sources), which allows her to rightfully call her perfumes natural, or “green.”
Because of the natural ingredients used, Botto explains, her perfumes are really something of an agricultural product, subject to changes in the environment and reflective of their terroirs. The subtleties are apparent to her—in her fragrance Indigo, for example, she prefers to use high-elevation French lavender, which she says has a more refined, floral aspect than Italian or Bulgarian lavender. Each batch will vary slightly, and Botto’s hands-on blending process is necessary for creating the final product. While aging the perfumes she sniff-tests them frequently and makes adjustments as necessary.
Botto also values the role that natural fragrances can play in biodiversity. Ylang ylang, for instance, is primarily cultivated for its scent. “What would happen to ylang ylang should the world decide it no longer needed to cultivate it because a synthetic replicant was preferable? There may very well come a time when many aromatics are lost and forgotten in their natural state,” she says.
Botto admits she could spend countless hours blending in her studio, “Even forgetting to take a break or eat when inspiration hits!” At times, she says, she becomes just a nose in a world of scent molecules. It is perhaps her way of reconnecting with the outdoors, something she says she’s longed to do since moving away from the farm she grew up on. “Scent can be such a powerful trigger,” she adds. “It’s very satisfying to recreate memories in the form of an ether, almost like bottling a memory.”
As for her own signature scent, Botto says that today she prefers to rotate her perfume with the seasons. Bird of Paradise is tropical and feminine and perfect for summer; Stranger in the Cherry Grove (an homage to her father’s cherry pipe tobacco), or Evergreen, which evokes “a forest slumbering under a blanket of snow,” are well suited to colder months.
No matter what you choose, Botto suggests wearing a perfume for at least fifteen minutes before deciding whether or not to purchase, so you can get an idea of how it will mingle with your skin’s natural scent. Thorn + Bloom offers a sample pack with three, six, or all nine of Botto’s blends.
thorn-and-bloom.com.
