Webchat with perfumer Sarah McCartney: Thursday 24 May, 9pm

[RachelMumsnet]

In response to this thread, we’ve organised a webchat on Thursday 24 May at 9pm with perfumer Sarah McCartney.

Writer turned perfumer Sarah McCartney composes fragrances for her micro-perfumery, 4160Tuesdays, and for clients including Google, Tinder and Hyundai. Using early 20th century methods, with a 21st century online business strategy, she has built a worldwide reputation and fanbase, with stockists in Europe and the US, as well as the UK.

Sarah’s perfumes, described by perfume archivist James Craven, are “a wardrobe of highly sophisticated scents which one can also play with”. They all have their own stories, which she enjoys telling with wit and enthusiasm, sharing some of perfumery’s secrets along the way.
4160Tuesdays operates from a small studio in West London, where all the creation, bottling and despatch happens in a friendly space with its own swing, a world away from the image led, celeb driven, multinational fragrance industry.

Join Sarah on Thursday at 9pm to find out more about perfumery and put your questions to her. if you’re unable to join us on the night, post your question for her on this thread in advance.

I've often wondered the same boglin

I well know the disappointment of smelling something divine on someone else, falling in love with it, and then trying it on your own skin and smelling nothing but cat pee :(

Hi Sarah!!!!!!
We were lucky enough to have Sarah join us last year at our glamping site for an amazing weekend of perfume, yoga, gin, foraging and more gin

She is a wealth of knowledge and we all love her

Looking forward to doing one of her courses (again) next month and planning another mini festival for next year

Wow this sounds interesting
But why so late??

Yay! I love 4160Tuesdays for producing beautiful, interesting, affordable perfume.

I'd like to know more about Sarah's journey from being a scent obsessive with a day job to founding the micro-perfumery.

I was in Babylon Sunset today! I love the samples and 9ml sizes as I’ve never yet finished a big bottle without going off it - I am fickle! I’d like to know how to train yourself to identify scents, I often find that I can only smell top notes or one note rather than getting the variety. I think some of the problem is that I don’t know what things smell like as essences, especially unusual notes. (And then some things are supposed to smell like a cowboy’s saddle but actually smell of new car, the problem there is probably that I do know what a saddle smells like but the manufacturer doesn’t!)

My question;

Hello! 😁

Imagine we all lived in a horrible society where individualism was frowned upon and punished (post brexit UK?????)

You can choose 1 scent but you have to wear it for the rest of your life...

What would yours be?

Don't mention Brexit when Sarah is in the house.

Skin chemistry and age effects how perfume smells, why the age thing.

One scent MrsR? I might just have to smell of me.

Oh! That's true...Im Peri menopausal and scent definately smells different on my skin now.

Great question MrsReynolds!

Mine would be 4160 Sex Goddess, it’s just got a bit of everything and is very versatile.

Another question for Sarah if I may. How might Brexit affect the perfume industry and will prices go up for consumers of French and Italian perfumes (big Prada fan here!)

Mine would be - perhaps unsurprisingly- sexiest scent ❤

I have a question about the regulations regarding ingredients for perfumes. My layman’s understanding is that changes to legal requirements have caused classic perfumes to be reformulated: what impact is this having on your own work, and the wider industry? Is it possible to have a completely hypoallergenic fragrance?

Oh, in case I forget later can Sarah talk a bit about the influence of her synesthesia on her fragrance design. And (supplementary question!) dare she reveal if she's ever hated the sound of a best selling perfume?

And someone needs to ask a biscuit question (Sarah - this is a bit of a Mumsnet thing). But perhaps rather than the usual, how about, what biscuit would Sarah use for inspiration, if we were to ask her to make us an imaginary, biscuit-inspired gourmand scent?

A boring functional question, bit having missed the Birmingham workshop because of Easter hols, are there any plans to come back to the Midlands? (Pleeeeeeease?)

I may be stupid, how do web chats work? Does Sarah just turn up on this thread at 9? Is there a special place I don't know about?

Do you always love Tokyo Spring Blossom best of all your confections? What guides your perfume moods? I may still be online for the live webchat, or not, but be assured, I shall be reading it in the morning. This device is playing up a bit and Ds is on the reliable machine.

Oh yes....another Midlands workshop....please....

I am currently doused in sexiest scent extrait in Sarah's honour
oh who am I kidding?? I wear it most nights! 😍

@PestymcPestFace

I may be stupid, how do web chats work? Does Sarah just turn up on this thread at 9? Is there a special place I don't know about?

Hi Pesty, the webchat will take place on this discussion thread this evening (at 9pm). Sarah will answer questions (just keep scrolling down to the bottom of the thread to see her answers). Feel free to post questions this evening and she'll aim to get through as many as possible throughout the hour. Do shout if you need any further instruction!

Hello fragrant friends!

Thanks for having me, I'll aim to answer questions as they come in, then fill in the gaps with questions which you all wrote earlier. I'll type as quickly as I can!

This thread intrigued me so much I visited Sarah's shop website on Tuesday and today am the excited recipient of a clutch of 9ml testers
My question is very simple and I suspect has something to do with top and base notes etc, about which I understand very little, anyway - if someone thinks they like musk/vanilla (for example) but dislike citrus, are they being too simplistic and missing out on a wealth of possible perfumes? Because that's basically me.

Thanks so much for agreeing to join us, Sarah McCartney. There's already a good number of questions for you to get through, so we'll hand over to you. Welcome to Mumsnet...

@mrsreynolds

Oh yes....another Midlands workshop....please....

Mrs Reynolds (and others with very similar questions)
There are only 52 weeks in a year and currently I work about 51 of them, so I'm not sure when I can, but I'll see what I can do, honest.

Hello Sarah, are there any plans for branching out into home fragrance, with candles and/or reed diffusers?