Nun Girl Summer, Social Media Outreach, and Unicorns

This summer, apparently, belonged to the nuns. Convent podcasts topped the charts, sisters went viral, and the internet called it Nun Girl Summer. And like most internet summers, it was over almost as soon as it had a name.

But I've been thinking about why it struck such a chord, because underneath the memes there was a real longing. The world is often loud and rushed, with little space for quiet, or what Hopper in Stranger Things called "coffee and contemplation." People type "perfume that smells like church incense" into search bars all year round, trend or no trend, because scents reminiscent of old churches, incense and all, can bring a kind of hushed peace in a hectic world.

On November 3 last year, I bought some spikenard oil. I love finding new and unusual oils, when finances permit, and anyone familiar with the Bible, or with scent in Christian tradition, will know the famous story of the costly nard used to anoint Christ. The Gospel accounts vary: John names Mary of Bethany and has her anoint his feet, while Mark describes an unnamed woman breaking an alabaster vessel of nard and pouring the oil over his head. Later Christian tradition entwined these women with Mary Magdalene, hence the name I eventually gave the perfume, but in the Catholic tradition, Mary Magdalene is a Saint, and the patron saint of perfumery. Whoever poured the oil, it was an incredible act of devotion and generosity, since it cost a year's wages. It is thought that the oil was imported from a long trade route from the Himalayas, including Nepal, where it still grows today and is endangered. I use sustainably harvested CITES compliant organic spikenard oil for that reason.

Fortunately, the oil does not now cost a year's wages and is strongly scented, with not very much needed to impart its magic. Because there is something about spikenard. The oil I have is a little camphoraceous and medicinal initially, and it then moves into an earthy, slightly damp, woodsy and rooty smell that I am not describing adequately here.

The Welsh have a word – hiraeth – that describes a longing for a place you can't go back to, or that might not even exist. And spikenard oil is like that to me; it is familiar, but I don't remember ever coming across it before. Perhaps there is a collective unconscious of scent. My absolute favourite feedback from the perfume I have made with this oil is "There's something about it." That familiarity you cannot place is a magical thing.

My own tastes are quite specific on incense in the church direction: I like it, but not as a standout note. And so I went with sacred feminine – white florals of white rose, tuberose, and jasmine, with a thin thread of incense and nard, on a bed of white musks. The result is a quiet, intimate perfume. Magdalene, unlike Rhapsody, doesn't announce herself. And I think that suits her perfectly. My attempts to make her louder and more present always led me back to the third trial I made, where she spoke in suggestion and whisper. The perfume is near extrait concentration, but is light and aura-like.

I've previously touched on white rose absolute. Magdalene is built around genuine white rose absolute. Unlike red or pink roses, which everyone knows to some degree, and which can be by turns spicy, sweet and deeply rich, white rose is a quiet, 'pure' smelling rose, intimate and bridal. I have wound the ribbon of incenses I have used around a hint of real vanilla absolute, which is a glorious pairing with frankincense materials, and imparts just a little balsamic sweetness.

I don't think my perfumes are ever done. My sign to stop is when people ask me to leave it alone, some variation of "stop messing with it." In my head, Magdalene is a little denser and more cloth-like, and I could quite easily spend geological timescales calibrating the trace materials and only approach the exact idea I have of it, like a fragrant asymptote. I've mentioned previously fragrance marketing that relies on social proof of people chasing you down the street to ask you what you're wearing, something that is not very likely, at least in Britain, where we apologise for bumping into you even if you were the one not looking where you were going. 😊 I have, in my life, only ever been complimented three times on perfumes I have been wearing: Jo Malone's Wood Sage & Sea Salt layered with English Oak & Hazelnut; Lush's Karma, and Spirit of Kings' Allegiance, which I only wear on special occasions. Magdalene is the first perfume I've made where people within arm's reach of me wanted to know what I was wearing. So perhaps that should be my sign.

The perfume is currently incubating at 40 degree heat for its longevity testing, which will complete on 14 October 2026. This is part of the unglamorous and slow behind-the-scenes stability and safety work involved in bringing a perfume to legal sale. The concentrate takes around seven weeks to mature, and once diluted into alcohol the finished perfume takes another seven or so to properly come together. As it matures, it progresses through 'maybe I added too much incense,' to 'this is too quiet even for quiet,' to rounding out and fusing together at week seven. So end to end with regulatory compliance, packaging and production, next Spring. If you'd like to be notified when she's finally ready to meet you, please sign up to the newsletter. I hope you love her. 😊

Outside of my comfort zone, which would involve a little cottage in the middle of nowhere with my husband and possibly some ravens I've trained to bring me trinkets, it was social media outreach time! I offered ten samples of Rhapsody in Violet to fragrance content creators of any size, without obligation.

When I got some interest and asked people where to send them, TikTok assumed I had started a very British phishing operation and temporarily limited my account, so the people messaging me couldn't see my replies, or my comment to advise people to go through the website to provide their details. But that was lifted, and I was able to send out three by Royal Mail 48. And then something happened which hasn't happened to me yet – all three of them didn't track for nearly 48 hours. I re-sent them by Tracked 24 — at which point, naturally, the originals reappeared within minutes of emailing the recipients to let them know they were being resent. But of course! I need to think about whether 48 is reliable enough now, or at least manage expectations on that front, because posted Tuesday morning and arrived Saturday is not 48. I counted it and everything.

Anyway, a lovely lady, scentunseen, posted a review on her sample on her channel, which I've shared to my Instagram. And a very kind friend, who is also in the space, posted a lovely review on BaseNotes.

You don't quite appreciate until you sell your creations how much marketing is really needed for perfume. It is a vast machinery that works at great cost so that brands become known and their perfumes rest on department store shelves, and then it acquires a kind of self-reinforcing loop where the brand is content people are at least curious about. So the people posting their thoughts on my perfume when I am so dinky will not be forgotten if I ever leave the dinky space.

I'm on a white musky kick at the moment. Years of smelling relatively strong creations has given me a whole new appreciation for subtle and understated, particularly in the heatwave we've just had, where the only perfumes I could stand to wear off the shelves were Versace Crystal Emerald for its beautiful cooling quality, and Hvit by Peculiar Perfumes, which is a lovely fluffy coconut incense hybrid made by an indie studio in the UK.

A person on a Facebook perfume group I'm a member of asked what a unicorn might smell like some months ago. These days, unicorns tend to evoke bubble bath, cupcake, fruity sugary bunch-of-heliotropin kind of associations, usually child-centric. A creature that lives on a pencil case. But there were long stretches of history across cultures where the adults really believed in unicorns.

In Europe, the unicorn was depicted as a graceful white horse with a horn, that could only be captured if a maiden enticed one to lay its head in her lap, whereupon the hunters would corner it. So the unicorn is essentially symbolic of purity; its horn was said to be able to cure disease and nullify poisons, and powdered Narwhal horns were sold at princely prices to the nobility by Norse traders, who had no interest in correcting the record on its true origins.

In China, the qilin was considered by Europeans to be their equivalent, and it was a creature so gentle, it refused to bend grass. It would only appear at times of great auspiciousness, to benevolent rulers. A good omen.

In Persia, their unicorn was fierce and dangerous, and resembled a rhinoceros more than a horse.

What all of these accounts have in common is an uncapturable, magical beastie. When I was younger, I used to dream of the European style unicorns. When I was old enough, I had one tattooed on my arm.

What does a unicorn smell like? Well, from the Western tradition, ethereal white musky to me. Not cupcake, not sprinkles, not horse. It shall not smell like a horse. Mystical and luminous, with the faintest hint of white hair.

I'm going through my materials and picking out the really expensive ones I don't have much of to test for this. Ambrette seed essential oil and angelica root essential oil. Ambrette seed essential oil I think is the most expensive material I have in my collection gram for gram. A one millilitre vial of this cost me £60. That's the sort of vial you hope you don't put down and never find again; it is one dinky vial. Fortunately, this is another 'a little goes a long way' material. Put together, these two have a lovely ethereal quality of the 'there's something about it' type.

Can I conjure a unicorn stranger and more ancient than today's cupcake beastie? Who knows. Let's give it a whirl. Let's go hunting for the allure of a scent that calls to us from a place we can't quite name.