Shopping bag.

‘Your brain tells you what to use because that’s what you’ve been trained for in the last 20 years, and that’s what is so beautiful… It’s like making music.’ Lyn Harris, the only classically trained nose in the UK, reclines in contemplation on one of the beautifully constructed chairs that sits front of house in her new venture, Perfumer H. It is not the first time in our conversation that she has tried to articulate what exactly goes into the art of perfume-making. Or should that be the science of perfume-making? Of course her answers touch on both worlds, and over the course of Harris’ journey – her intensive education in France, the unique success she enjoyed with Miller Harris, and now this new ‘labour of love’ – she has continually refined a deeply personal approach to both. The art and the science.

Not that Lyn is averse to indulging in the more inexplicable delights of perfumery. There are frequent references to the ‘magical bit,’ the ‘magical thing.’ Its not too much of a stretch to suggest that the magic is a placeholder for those seemingly intangible qualities that allowed Harris herself to successfully navigate the intensive, unforgiving world of traditional French perfume, when the odds were seemingly against her. For a start she was British, and a girl. ‘It was all very male-oriented, very French,’ she says. ‘It was all about that world, you know? “Oh, there goes another third generation Grassoir!”’ Despite this, Harris speaks with genuine affection about her time spent training in Grasse at Robertet, the renowned jewel in the crown of the French perfume industry. ‘Because I was British, I was just seen as the quirky, odd one [but because of this] people there actually took an interest, let me into their offices. Some of the old masters were very, very kind to me.’

The perception of being ‘quirky and odd’ also translated to Harris’ work which stood out due to the resolutely British perspective that informed her olfactory tastes. In place of the prettified French fields that inspired her tutors’ own journeys, stood the altogether wilder beauty of the Yorkshire countryside in which she grew up. Frequent visits to her grandparents’ home in Scotland also played a huge part in Harris’ early development. She speaks of this time and place with huge affection, evoking Romantic – with a capital ‘R’ – images of something akin to the opening chapters of an old-timey children’s adventure story. ‘My grandparents had the most amazing garden with flowers and vegetables, and I remember they made beautiful bread, cakes, jam with their berries… Oh it was idyllic! You would wake up in the morning and the fire would be on and you could smell it – a whole world of constant smells. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t smell something from those memories….’

‘…That’s when my dream began I think.’