For those of you who love fragrance and enjoy exploring via your sense of smell – ‘sniffing the world’, as actor Richard E. Grant puts it – you’ll want to know that there are some rather marvellous perfume events coming up for autumn 2024. (Alas, all in London and the south-east – but we have our ears to the ground and our nostrils in the wind for anything happening further afield, which we promise to share.)

Hand on heart, we can recommend any or all of the following – so if you want to deep-dive into the world of scent, have a wedding coming up that you’d like to fragrance (or know a bride who’d be interested), fancy a meander around West End perfume shops or fancy cruising along with a new fragrance brand, here are our recommendations…

How to Improve Your Sense of Smell (with Jo Fairley)

Friday 11th October 2024, 3 – 5.30 p.m. at The Star, Alfriston, East Sussex, BN26 5TA

Beauty Bible’s Jo – Editor of The Scented Letter, co-author of The Perfume Bible and a life-long perfume fan – is going to be hosting a special tea and fragrance workshop at The Star, The Polizzi Collection’s stunning hotel in the picturesque East Sussex village of Alfriston, located between Brighton and Jo’s home town of Hastings, with a special workshop to enhance your sense of smell, and a delicious fragrant tea confected by the hotel’s patissiers. Read much more about it here, or alternatively, visit The Star’s website for more details and to book.

Tickets are £65 to include afternoon tea, workshop and a fab goodie bag – book here

Discover Vallense: A Scented Soirée on a Floating Barge (with Suzy Nightingale and Nicola Bonn)

Friday 20th September 2024, 6 p.m. – 8 p.m., London

Join a serene cruise on a floating laboratory (setting off from a location near to Kings Cross/St. Pancras), where the founder of scented start-up Vallense, William Borrell, will be in conversation with the two fragrance expert stars of the ‘On The Scent’ podcast. William – who brings a wealth of experience from the gin distillation world – has brought a unique approach to his brand, and during the evening, Suzy and Nicola will also be sharing their wealth of knowledge and passion. Experience the magic of ingredients sourced from around the world, enjoy a glass (or two) of complimentary bubbles as you soak in the serene atmosphere and the captivating scent. Ticket price redeemable against full-size purchase at event.

Tickets £25 (limited in number) ­­­­– book here

Follow for more news of fragrant events: @onthescentpodcast

Discover the Art of Perfuming Your Wedding (with Alice duParcq)

Friday 27th September 2024, 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., at Diptyque on New Bond Street, London W1

Alice is one of the most engaging, knowledgeable and downright lovely perfume creators around, via her own @aliceduparcq Instagram, Substack (here), and is an in-demand host for fragrance events and workshops. This one is for brides (and their mums, we’d suggest), lasting around 75 minutes. ‘The art of choosing and wearing a special perfume for your wedding is just absolutely glorious and meaningful,’ says Alice, who we first got to know when she was Beauty Editor at Brides. ‘To enhance your venue with scented treats like candles and diffusers is such a rare privilege that you don’t get to do in real life.’  

£56 per person. The booking system’s a tad clunky, but the link is here

Follow for more news of scented events: @aliceduparcq

A Perfume Walk Through Mayfair (with Perfume Walks London) 

Saturday 21st September 2024, 11 a.m. - 2 p.m.

Olga Petrouchenko hosts riveting guided tours of London’s fragrance history, taking in the sights and sounds of the city’s historic and modern fragrance houses. This one focuses around Mayfair, lasting around three hours, during which you will visit heritage perfume shops and discover out the exciting history of names like Floris, Atkinson’s, Penhaligon’s, Grossmith, and Santa Maria Novella, as well as the new players like Ormonde Jayne and Roja Dove who – as Olga puts it – ‘are creating history of English perfumery in front of our eyes'‘ . 

Tickets £44 – book here

Follow Perfume Walks London for more news of fragrant events: @perfumewalks (Olga runs these walks regularly in different areas of London)

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