Glass speaks to Lyn Harris of Perfumer H about her journey from a Saturday job in a perfume shop in Halifax to becoming a world-class perfumer
ALTHOUGH classically trained in perfumery, Yorkshire-born Lyn Harris has had an unconventional path to becoming one of the world’s foremost perfumers. Beginning with shop-floor experience in a perfume shop in Halifax when perfume education and training was predominantly taught in France by second generation perfumers, her passion and persistence allowed her to get on a prestigious course in Paris and then on to more training in the home of perfumery – Grasse.
Following her studies, she remained in France working inhouse for a LVMH fragrance and beauty brand. After returning to the UK, she set up her own luxury fragrance brand, Miller Harris, in 2000. I remember visiting her beautiful shop in Notting Hill Gate, the first of its kind to embody understated contemporary interior design with perfumery.
She left the company in 2013 to found Perfumer H two years later. Harris is also a nose at large –consulting and creating for brands such as Manolo Blahnik, Anya Hindmarch, Givenchy, Sam McKnight, Cire Trudon, Connolly and Sunspel.
The shop and retail experience are key to Perfumer H, with Harris’ first store in Marylebone again exemplifying beautiful low key elegance, this time with a laboratory at the back where Harris works and a “pantry” in the middle, which sells tea leaves (working with Postcard Teas such as Smoke, Violet leaf, Morocco and, Harris’s personal favourite, Yorkshire Grey); jars of jam, salts, oil and marmalade – packaged in her signature smoky glass jars.
Since then, she has created many exquisite subtle fragrances, never overwhelming but powerful in their delicacy and often exploring one note or a material, like Ink, Petitgrain, Salt and Smoke.
Perfumer H has a store in Paris and also has expanded into Asia with shops in Taipei and one opening soon in Shanghai.
Lyn Harris of Perfumer H
How did you become a perfumer and what inspired you to choose this path?
I had a tough time at school where no one was channelling my creativity. However, I had a Saturday job in a fragrance shop in Halifax, which I really loved. I knew that was the beginning. I loved the fact that these beautiful couture houses had fragrances that represented them, and the way fragrance transformed clients in the shop, how it elevated them and became part of their personality.
I read a lot about perfume and did lots of research. I thought, how can I be a perfumer? There were no schools in the UK because it was the early 1990s. However, I found this amazing woman, Monique Schlienger, who had set up a school by the Eiffel Tower, called Cinquième Sens, which is still there.
I went to Paris for an interview with her. I’d been playing with a few essential oils and had a few materials and chemicals. I gave this little presentation to her. She was just so fascinated with me and she let me attend her school. I started writing formulas quite early on in my course. We were taught the Jean Carle perfumery method. You learn all your benchmarks. Monique was an extraordinary woman. She had so many stories about the legends of perfume.
When I left, I was very fortunate as I met somebody from Robertet in Grasse and I presented my work. They said, “We’d love you this to be your second home.” They put me under a master perfumer, Richard Melchio, in Grasse. I studied with him for three years, which was really incredible. I went through the entire code book with him, training my olfactory memory. He was much more formulaic and structured than Monique. He told me he found my work very emotional. I’m still connected to Robertet. I have been working with their code book for over 25 years now, which, when I first started, wasn’t computerised. We just used to write formulas.
The exterior of the Perfumer H shop in Crawford Street, Marylebone, London
What was the first perfume you loved?
Jicky by Guerlain. I also really love Eau Sauvage because my dad wore that. They’re real classics – so beautiful.
What is it about Jicky that you like?
It’s the perfect fusion of freshness with bergamot and lavender against a subtle backdrop of sweetness from vanilla and tonka bean. It was created when there wasn’t a lot of synthetic notes around. It was one of the first fragrances to use coumarin and vanillin. I just think it’s genius.
The interior of the Perfumer H shop in Crawford Street, Marylebone, London
Where do you seek inspiration for your fragrances?
From life and nature. Nature just keeps on feeding me. I love exploring and foraging. Nature just gives me something every day. Every day I can smell something different outside – with the light, the warmth and all the wetness. That’s what I love about this country. It does feed me lots of things. But then I love travelling, too, and I have just come back from Asia. I get so intoxicated with new smells.
Saddle by Perfumer H
What is your creative process?
It is how I would like somebody to smell – that’s my fascination at the moment. I like translating smells that I experience and then making them beautiful on the skin. For example, I may smell some beautiful wet concrete that fuses with a white flower smell.
Then I have to make it beautiful for the skin. It’s quite a challenge to make this work. A big fascination I’ve got at the moment is meeting people and then thinking, “I want you to wear this perfume.” So, if I meet somebody whose style is really interesting, I want to create a perfume around that energy – how I see them and how I want them to smell.
Do you have any favourite ingredients to work with and would you say you have a particular accord?
I like wet smells and also my florals, which I don’t like too sweet. They’re quite tomboyish. I like them to have a little bit of an edge – even my amber fragrances. I also like working with woods. I quite like how sandalwood combines with other scents like iris and violet notes.
I like sandalwood because you never use a natural, so I think I find all the different substitutes beautiful in their own right. I’m quite into my sort of synthetics. I also like a waft of bitter orange – to give a lift. The orange tree fascinates me because you can use every single part of it. I’m very good with citrus.
But I still want to learn. That’s my personality and I can never be complacent. I’m always challenging myself. I’m at a really nice point in my creativity at the moment.
Can you share with me any other plans you’ve got for Perfumer H?
I’ve got two big projects next year which are feeding me because I’m working with lots of different artists. I’m opening a shop in Shanghai, in the French quarter (known as The French Concession). I’m really passionate about retail because it’s always gone hand in hand with fragrance and I have this aesthetic thing going on as well.
The Shanghai shop has four storeys. It’s a little townhouse. The ground floor is going to have my fully functioning laboratory. The second floor is a gallery space where I’m exhibiting different artists that I collaborate with such as a glass blower. On the top floor, we’re hosting an artist in residence. It’s a self-contained apartment and a place where you can create. We’ll do workshops with some of the artisans while they’re staying there. I feel retail needs to go on to the next level. We need to share instead of expecting people to buy all the time. I believe in giving back and giving people an experience.
We have a refill station in our new stores, which is a really good idea. You can refill the candles so that you can reuse the glass. Being sustainable, that’s at the forefront of the brand for me.
The interior of the Perfumer H shop in Crawford Street, Marylebone, London
How do you see the world and business of fragrance developing in the next decades?
I think there’s going to be two channels. A lot of the big commercial boys will be definitely diving into niche fragrances now. You have the big boys coming into the niche world because they’re all doing these small collections – trying to have beautiful materials because this is definitely what the customer wants. And there’s the new niche – I guess I’m part of – which is really pushing perfumery in different directions. Brands are really being true to their ethos.
I also think fragrance will be more intertwined with how we live rather than it just being something on the skin and everyone wearing the same thing. I also think the education people are having in fragrance is really encouraging. It means that people are much more confident in the way they buy perfume. This is why we’re so busy because people understand now about composition,
I think being able to access more information on perfumers is enabling the industry to really move forward quickly. AI will help this area as well tremendously. And yes, some groundbreaking things will come through the internet. For example, you may be actually able to smell something through a website – perhaps by using GC/MS (gas chromatography mass spectrometry) that we’ve used for the last 20-odd years that can read out a fragrance formula. And I’m sure in a few years’ time this will happen in a very primitive way.
However, nothing will ever take away from what the perfumer can do.
by Caroline Simpson