From Britney Spears to Rihanna, the market is flooded by star-powered perfumes. Now New Zealand has one for its own unlikely star - famed writer Katherine Mansfield.
One Wellington perfumer has created a signature scent celebrating the centenary of Mansfield’s third short story collection.
Francesco van Eerd, known in the perfume business as a "nose", utilises his perfumer's organ - an old library cabinet containing 750 different ingredients - to create his signature fragrances.
"Perfumers are illusionists, full factory illusionists really, that's what we are. We create imaginary concepts with smell," van Eerd told 1 NEWS.
It was at his Victorian-inspired perfumery, based in Wellington, that he turned Mansfield’s 1918 short story, Bliss, into a literary scent.
The story is set at a dinner party and centres on a young woman in love with her husband and new baby.
“Bliss - absolute bliss! As though you’d suddenly swallowed a bright piece of that afternoon sun and it burned in your bosom, sending out a little shower of sparks into every particle, into every finger and toe,” an excerpt reads.
Van Eerd says the story references fruit “coming through all the time, bowls of fruit on the table that I brought in and the pear tree, there's a big pear tree in the garden”.
The perfumer visited Mansfield’s childhood home to soak up the garden and house as inspiration for the fragrance.
"I basically sat in the room where she was born and brought up as a baby and a young child for about half an hour to become inspired, and it was utterly blissful," he says.
The final product - handmade using 100-year-old techniques - was completed six months later.
The fragrance is a fruity broome which “makes me feel really warm inside,” van Eerd says.
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