As I sit typing at my desk, the warm, spicy aroma of marijuana wafts across the room, carried by the breeze from an open window. No, I haven’t decided to spark up a joint in the name of making working from home a little more relaxing. Rather, the smell is coming from one of the candles in Loewe’s new home scents range, which focuses on earthy plant aromas such as beetroot, coriander, tomato leaf (my favourite), liquorice, oregano and ivy.
According to Jonathan Anderson, creative director at the Spanish LVMH-owned house, the collection of candles, wax candleholders, rattan sticks and room sprays (from £70 for a small candle to £305 for a large one) is “based on the raw essences of a vegetable garden”.
Such a horticultural theme seems like serendipitous timing. Having been cooped up at home for so long, we are all pining for greenery and the outdoors. I know many people who would happily swap their TV, iPhone and maybe even their Netflix subscription for a thriving vegetable patch.
“Nowadays people are looking to be close to nature”, confirms Loewe’s in-house perfumer Nuria Cruelles, speaking to me from her home in Barcelona. “They have their gardens in their house, they grow plants on their windows, their balconies.” Admittedly, this isn’t a new phenomenon — but lockdown has made bringing the outdoors in more desirable than ever, even if it’s just a slightly thirsty pot of basil on a window sill.
Marijuana is a particularly fashionable ingredient right now. Both unisex apothecary brand Malin & Goetz and the independent Los Angeles-based perfumer PF Candle Co have cannabis candles, and there’s also a smattering of tomato and coriander interior scents on the market. Woody, floral and fruity notes are far more common, though, as are blended compositions, especially among the bigger luxury houses. Gucci’s Mehen candle, for instance, combines Persian blue salt, seaweed and water moss with liquorice, aiming, rather unexpectedly, to capture “the essence of a water snake”.
Expressing the house codes is an essential part of the in-house perfumer’s role, and “one of the big values at Loewe is connecting to nature”, says Cruelles, who joined the house in 2018, and created the range with Anderson. “You go to a garden and it smells green and fresh. Not only flowers. When we say beetroot it really does smell of beetroot.”
There’s something about these simpler, single notes that can be particularly effective in stirring nostalgia. The tomato leaf scent took me straight back to my grandmother’s greenhouse in the 1980s: a whiff of the exotic in a small Oxfordshire town, where the sharp, yet sun-saturated tang seemed like the olfactory expression of ripening.
Anderson, who came up with the concept for the line, says he drew personal inspiration from his life and childhood. He describes the scents as “part Victorian botanical garden, part apothecary, the mix is both sentimental and scientific”. This being Anderson, who is known for his keen interest in art, the starting point came from botanical drawings and prints, including cyanotypes of algae by 19th-century botanist Anna Atkins.
The ribbed terracotta candle containers — which resemble plant pots in chic shades of olive, chocolate and oxblood — were based on a 5th-century BC Greek mug that Anderson bought at auction several years ago, while the more grand, haunted château-style candlesticks were inspired by Louis XIV-era French versions. Design is one of the areas in which Cruelles has seen a change in home fragrance, she says, with “candles now more about decoration in the home”.
As with Gucci and Dolce & Gabbana’s candles, which come in ornate ceramic pots, this range is highly Instagrammable: perfect for tablescaping or having just in-shot on a Zoom call.
This spirit of modernising classics is also carried over into the house’s fragrances, says Catalonia-born Cruelles, who earlier this year also created Loewe’s more hedonistic Paula’s Ibiza scent — part of the luxury brand’s ongoing collaboration with cult Balearic boutique Paula’s. “At Loewe we take the classic to get into the contemporary: it’s like past, present, future. In our last launch, we used galbanum which is a green, gassy oil, very classical. We are trying to get some ingredients from the past and bring them up to date. Just as in fashion, that is the art.”
Cruelles, who previously worked for IFF (the scientific group International Flavors and Fragrances), makes it clear that she considers perfumery an art rather than a science. In fact when I get sidetracked with questions about synthetic molecules versus natural essential oils, she steers it back in a more creative direction. She says it’s a “bit of a secret” what went into recreating the beetroot scent, but explains that “we have 2,000 ingredients in the lab, so when we want to recreate something we know which kind of molecules to use. For beetroot, I can say we used pyrazine, which is a molecule that can sometimes smell foody.”
Cruelles enthusiastically compares making scent to making a cake. “You have to put the right flour, the right number of eggs. If you have an ingredient overload you destroy the smell. It’s an art where one plus one equals three.” This home scents project has been around 20 months in the making.
While creating scent may be an art, it's also big business — Euromonitor estimates the value of the global fragrance market at $46bn. Unlike some of the “noses” I have interviewed in the past, who exude a more self-consciously rarefied air, Cruelles is upfront about commercial considerations. She thinks about what scents will appeal to the brand’s target markets.
Of Chinese consumers’ fragrance tastes she says, “We know they like cosy, they don’t like to be interrupting people with the smell because it’s a close culture. Musk is also a must for them. If I create something for the Middle East, I will use oud, rose and saffron; when I create for Spain, I know we like more fresh, citrusy and aquatic notes.”
When it comes to the growing trend for gender neutral fragrance, similar cultural nuances apply: “In the Middle East we use rose for men and in Europe we use it for women.” She adds, “I can be disruptive, but it’s part of my work to give you something you will be comfortable with.”
The verdant aroma of the herb garden, minus the toil? I’m very comfortable with that.
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Will your bedroom smell of beetroot? Loewe moves into home scents - Financial Times
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