Why I'm Making a Perfume

When I was a kid, I watched the movie Perfume, and it has stayed with me ever since. The story followed someone whose world was shaped almost entirely by scent. Every memory, every person, every place came back to him through smell. He chased scents the way the rest of us chase moments, because he understood something most of us only feel without naming: we forget what we saw, we forget what we heard, but we rarely forget what we smelled.

Smell sticks. It hides somewhere quiet inside us, and then one day you walk past a stranger, or open an old drawer, or step outside after the rain, and suddenly you are eight years old again. You are in your grandmother's kitchen. You are on a street you haven't walked in twenty years. The memory doesn't arrive politely. It ambushes you.

That idea stuck with me as a child, and I think it's why I want to make a perfume now. I want to create a scent that reflects me. Something that says who I am without needing words. Maybe it's the inner world I keep tucked away most of the time. Maybe this is my way of letting it out.

Looking back, I realize I've always done this. The things I couldn't say out loud, I wrote. I painted. I built them into my designs. Even when I cook, I never really follow a recipe. I start with one, but somewhere along the way I add my own flavor. How would I do this? What would taste like me? Even when I order food, I adjust it until it feels right. Not because everything has to be perfect, but because it has to be mine. It has to reflect my taste, my hand, the way I see things.

So a perfume feels like the natural next step. A scent of my own. Something I can share with the world and say, quietly, this is me.

I know that sounds self-centered when I write it down. But honestly, it's also a way of finding myself, because who would know me better than I do? It would be a dream to find someone who truly sees me, who remembers me for who I am. And admitting that out loud feels vulnerable. I'm not sure if this part will even make it into the final post.

But that's the heart of it. I'm making a perfume to hold a memory. To create something that belongs to me. And maybe, if I'm lucky, to give other people a moment of their own. A scent that reminds them of their childhood. Their family. The place they grew up. A sunrise. A sunset. Someone they loved.

Because in the end, that's what all of this is about. Creating memories. Bottling something fleeting so it can find its way back to us when we need it most.

Fatma