Captured by Candlelight

The scent The artist Try a sample first!  One day, perfumer Sarah McCartney received a call from a professor of philosophy at the University of London. His request: Make me a scent that smells like Christmas pudding, that traditional British holiday dish that incorporates sweet, decadent spices, dried fruits, and brandy. (Oh, and he needed by the next day, for a television program.) Sarah got to work. "Picture a huge Christmas pudding, trundled into an oak-paneled dining room illuminated by candles, the wax dripping on to the starched-linen tablecloth. Flaming brandy, sozzled fruit, rich pud, rich people, old wood, soft wax... that smell." Now you know why we couldn't resist. Notes include cognac, cinnamon, toffee, fruity notes, beeswax, and oak.    We've met a lot of people in the perfume world, and Sarah McCartney of 4160 Tuesdays is one of our very favorites. Want to know why? Sarah, in her own words: "As a little girl, I did not make perfumes from rose petals. That was for softies. I made magic spells and wanted to be a witch when I grew up. When I was 16 I bought a bottle of Diorella. I studied maths and sciences, practised music and French, wrote books on brands and their evil twin—counterfeiting—and online marketing, and learned to dance Argentinean tango. "For 14 years I was the head writer for Lush while the company grew from four shops—one in Poole and three in London—to 700 worldwide. I was writing 50,000 words every three months for the Lush Times, aiming to encapsulate the products' scents in their descriptions. During that time, I bought and read 200 books on essential oils and herbalism and learned the essential oils the founders gave me to educate myself. "At the end of the 14 years, I took some time off to write a novel featuring a problem-solving perfumer. In it, I described the scents that she made and I wanted to have them available for people to smell. So I set off on a quest to see if I could buy them. This turned out to be impossible - and pretty expensive - because no one was making exactly what I wanted, so I started another quest to see of I could make them instead. Of course that turned out to be even more difficult, but once I'd started, I just kept going. 4160 Tuesdays perfumes is the result."