‘It reminds me of something but I’m not sure what,’ could be an unofficial mission statement for Early Modern, a range of fragrances by Clara Weale, perfumer and founder/director of the not-for-profit scent education organisation, A Library Of Olfactive Material. Her small-batch Glasgow-made perfumes evoke storybook snapshots of feelings and memories through scent. 

Early Modern was born through lockdown. With the Library closed, Weale found herself experimenting with scent compositions. The first launched were Life Of The Party and Veil, both responses to lockdown life. ‘Life Of The Party has that naïve adolescent feeling when you are getting ready for a party, feeling like it’s going to change your life,’ explains Weale. ‘I never went to prom, but I can conjure up the anticipatory feeling. It was a bit of a FOMO perfume, both about missing out and about being aware of the feeling of missing out.’ 

In contrast, Weale says Veil is a simple construction of materials ‘designed to make you feel comforted. As well as notes like amber and musk, it has honey and eucalyptus which was a nostalgia for the home remedies you go to when you feel under the weather.’ 

My first time meeting Weale was at a workshop on the scent of death. As the founder of A Library Of Olfactive Material, she hosts events deconstructing different scents and subjects. ‘Something I love in perfumery,’ she says, ‘is that often you need something a little bit wrong or harsh, something unpleasant by itself, in order to provide contrast to other notes. A good trick I was told by another perfumer was to include dimethyl sulfide (DMS) in a rose composition. DMS smells like overcooked cabbage, or seaweed, but adds an amazing depth to a rose.’

Weale’s perfumes come with accompanying playlists too, dotted with the likes of Jenny Hval, Mitski and New Order. ‘The more I work with scent, the more I’m aware I personally can’t think about it in isolation,’ she says. ‘The playlist creation mostly happens at the same time as I work on a perfume, with a bit of editing afterwards. I use the playlist to try and define what I’m working on; sometimes that can shift quite a lot during the process.’

With infinite possibilities though, how does Weale know a perfume is complete; or as complete as it can be? ‘For me a scent tends to be finished when I have taken the formula apart and rebuilt it several times, starting from different points, and end up with mostly the same outcome. It also helps me to know that as much as I try to fine tune and control every aspect, I’ll never actually be able to control how someone perceives a scent: that’s based on their body, their memories, what’s going on for them that day.’

Weale says she’s always trying to keep her perfumes ‘somewhere in the middle of a scale from photo-realistic through to abstract. I love for some of my specific memories to be in there, but mostly I try to keep it open for other people to project onto.’

Early Modern, @early_modern; A Library Of Olfactive Material, 28 St Andrews Street, Glasgow.