A Signature Scent is So Last Year—Smelling Impossible to Pin Down is the Ultimate Luxury

The concept of a signature scent is dead. I’m aware that what I’m about to say might sound ludicrous, and overly niche—but I’ve made my peace with it. I genuinely can’t remember the last time I wore a single fragrance on its own. To the purist, this might sound like heresy. To me, it’s the only way to make sense of a world that tries to categorise us.

Let me explain. I love fragrance in a way that has moved from interest into habit. I’ve written about fragrance for over 15 years. I couldn’t begin to calculate the number of scents I’ve smelled, but I currently have 65 bottles that I wear regularly. I know that’s a lot. I also know that my proximity to fragrance launches and the industry has somewhat skewed my sense of normality. But, I’m equally sure of this: I’d still spend an unreasonable amount of my own money on scent—even without access. I always have.

In fact, fragrance is probably the reason I have the job I do today.

On the day I interviewed at Marie Claire, I met the then Editor-In-Chief in the offices behind the Tate Modern. I remember the walk there clearly. It was a sunny Spring day, and I was conscious of my pace, terrified of overheating in my carefully chosen outfit. One thing I was sure of, though, was how I smelled. That morning, I didn’t choose one scent: I chose armour. I layered Ormonde Jayne’s Isfarkand with Aesop’s Tacit and Maison Francis Kurkdjian’s Lumière Noire Pour Homme (now sadly discontinued). The result was green, resinous and impossible to place. Confident. Considered but not loud. I got the job.

The idea of layering entered wider fragrance discourse properly around 2014. For me, it didn’t feel new so much as named. I’ve always been interested in individual notes—not just recognising them, but understanding how they behaved. That’s probably down to my fascination with my mother’s perfume collection. The sharp, bitter edge of my mother’s Clinique Aromatics. The soft white florals of Anais Anais. The unmistakable hit of tuberose in Dior’s Poison—a scent that makes the wearer known, whether you want it or not.

I remember the first time I encountered scent used so deliberately theatrically. I was reporting on a Meadham Kirchoff show—their Autumn/Winter 2013 presentation—for a women’s glossy. Models posed beside bin bags in a post-apocalyptic, fin-de-siecle vision: fabrications were worked and overworked to resemble broderie anglaise clashing against liquid like leather. Threat and purity in equal measure. Billows of smoke carried the unmistakable scent of Penhaligon’s Hammam Bouquet and acted as a guide through a maze of models. Thick, old-world, intoxicating.

To this day, whenever I smell Hammam Bouquet, I’m back there. London. That scene. That moment. Scent as a memory is one of the reasons I love it. But I don’t want my relationship with fragrance to stop at nostalgia. I want it to be more than that.

Long before I started mixing bottles, I watched how Hollywood used scents as shorthand for identity. In ‘Sex and the City’, Samantha Jones’ fuchsia bottle of Creed Spring Flower (the original packaging) sits on her dressing table like a statement. But don’t let the pink fool you—with notes of jasmine and musk, the juice packs a punch. In ‘Working Girl’, Sigourney Weaver’s Katharine Parker references Guerlain’s Shalimar. And, in ‘Silence of the Lambs’, Hannibal Lecter identifies L’air du Temps by Nina Ricci not to compliment Clarice, but to dissect her. It’s unsettling precisely because it’s intimate; in that moment, her scent (or lack of one) gives her away.

More recently, fragrance slipped into cultural conversation in subtler ways. Rihanna’s much-discussed adoration of Kilian’s Love, Don’t Be Shy has become almost mythological—not because she’s ever confirmed it, but because people want scent to explain presence. To make something legible.

To choose a singular fragrance, in that context, is to make yourself easy to read. And, this is where I should be clear: this isn’t a rejection of perfumery. I have enormous respect for perfumers who spend months, often years, creating something precise and complete. Their work is the foundation. I just like the idea that once a fragrance is on your skin, you’re allowed to live with it. To adjust it. To let it behave differently from one day to the next.

Perhaps that shift comes with time. Before I worked in magazines, I wore Tom Ford’s Black Orchid religiously. I bought my first bottle at a Tom Ford boutique in America and wore it through university. Sparingly, of course—it was around £190. Between that and Creed’s Original Vetiver (which I wore during college years), that’s where my money went. Black Orchid was powerful. One spray was enough. On nights out, friends would tell me they knew I was there before they saw me. It was unmistakably me.

I loved that certainty. But certainty, it turns out, is boring once you’ve lived inside it for long enough.

You don’t need dozens of bottles to understand the instinct. Most people already layer scent without thinking about it: the soap they use in the shower, the cream they apply afterwards, the oil that lingers on the skin long after perfume has faded. Fragrance doesn’t start at the bottle: it builds quietly, piece by piece.

Look at Sharmadean Reid’s new brand 39BC: rich, delicious oils that lather in the shower, leaving skin cleansed, soft and scented. Used again as a dry oil post-shower, the fragrance deepens and carries. Reid herself wears scent this way (I bumped into her at a recent launch)—layered, lived in—and the result is genuinely beautiful and impossible to place.

I see it among friends and creators, too. Alexis Foreman and I rarely get past hello before talking about scent. She layers instinctively, playfully (and always smells great). And, Yasmin Sewell—immaculately put together in every sense—understands that the final flourish is often invisible. Her brand Vyrao is centred on scent, energy and perception—it places smelling good as part of how you move through the world.

Of course, I enjoy being told I smell good. But I enjoy the pause afterwards even more—that moment they can't quite place it. They know they like it; they just don't have a name for it.

That’s not about secrecy. It’s about personality. We talk about fragrance as self-expression, but expression implies something settled. Something resolved. Most of us aren’t. And I’m no longer interested in a scent that tells people who I am before I’ve decided myself.

Layering gives me space. It allows for interpretation and movement. For softness one day and sharpness the next. It lets fragrance behave the way people actually do—inconsistently, emotionally and sometimes irrationally.

So no, I don’t have a signature scent. I have moods. And in a world that demands we define ourselves for easy consumption, remaining impossible to pin down is the ultimate luxury.

My Perfume Hall of Fame: The Fragrances to Wear Now and Love Forever

I'm often asked what the best fragrances in the world are and it's usually met with some long winded retort encompassing details of mood, situation, occasion, the outfit...you get the drift. So, in the spirit of not gatekeeping, here's a list of all the fragrances that I love and will wear forever.