The day I… followed my dream (and my nose!)

I have always had a love of luxury and in particular a nose for fine fragrance. When I was a child, we used to go to my grandmother’s for Christmas. She loved good perfume. Every year she would give my mother, sister and me each a tiny bottle of Chanel No 5.

Despite being very young I was fascinated by this incredible essence.

It had the ability to shift your mood and take you to another place.

I still love Chanel No 5 to this day. It is one of my classic all-time favourite perfumes along with Fracas, Caleche, Rive Gauche, Je Reviens and Youth Dew.

I had no idea then that what began with my grandmother would lead to me launching my own range of perfumes and home fragrances that would entice celebrity clients such as Jack Vettriano, Judy Murray, Meg Mathews and Hollywood actress Kirstie Alley.

My fascination with fragrance remained with me as I grew up but I went into journalism, writing for top magazines and leading newspapers.

I had been living in Chelsea in London when my relationship with my husband ended, and I moved with our then young daughter to the south of France to work.

That decision was to have a life-changing impact. Not only was it therapeutic, but it was there that my love of boutique perfumeries – and luxury hotels – was properly ignited. I was intrigued by their history and the stories attached to them.

Then, in 2013, having moved again, this time to the Aberdeenshire country estate that is home to my father and step-mother, I decided to take my passion for perfume further with my first non-fiction book Cult Perfumes.

It is the first book to explore the most exclusive boutique perfumeries producing some of the world’s most captivating scents.

I travelled extensively while researching it but discovered to my surprise that the world’s most expensive perfume had its origins much closer to home!

Dundee-born Clive Christian’s No.1 perfume has a place in the Guinness Book of Records and is beloved by many stars including David Beckham, Serena Williams, Elton John and Beyonce.

I found that thrilling. A product that people have spent a lot of time and thought creating is so very special and gives so much more to you than just buying something because it has a low price.

After Cult Perfumes I wrote Hotels Of The Stars with the support of actor Richard E Grant and world-renowned hotelier and restaurateur Albert Roux, experiencing some of the best hotels on the planet.

I loved the Gstaad Palace, a mountaintop hotel in Switzerland so loved by Michael Jackson that he wanted to buy it, and Le Sirenuse in Positano, Italy. It’s a dream-like place perched on the cliff overlooking the Amalfi coast. Waking up there feels like being in paradise.

The opulence I experienced on my travels for both books drove my decision to capture the essence of luxury in the creation of my own fragrances.

I began with scented candles. They came after Cult Perfumes. I had a lot of favourite perfumes that I had got to know through research for the book and there were certain ones that I really loved.

I spent a year getting the scents for the home range right. This was never going to be mass production. The candles – like the home sprays that followed – are entirely bespoke. Each is based on the elements fire, air, water and earth. Fire and earth are the truest for me.

There is something about the scent of earth; it captures the wonderful smell of a sunny day when there’s a rainstorm and also the smell of the forest. Fire is smoky and with the essence of incense. I love to create something that is very different.

Meg Matthews loved Water from the range and wanted to order loads of the candles to give to her friends, people like Kate Moss. Kirstie Alley loved Cult Perfumes and had it at her house in LA. She put it on social media. She is a fan of earth.

After honing my skills with home fragrance, I embarked on my own perfume range. Their inspiration came from the Bible – Corinthians – which says three things will last forever, “faith, hope and love.”

My fragrance Love gives that feeling of the total blow-out of being in love, with waves of tuberose and gardenia, it’s a cloud of passion and is reminiscent of spring mornings in the south of France.

Faith is the second in the range and is sensuous and spiritual. Hope, out in October, is a sophisticated scent created from orris (the rootstock of iris), ylang ylang and jasmine, has the sense that all things are possible.

tessawilliams.co.uk