Perfume perfection: one drop at a time - The Winchester Star

The Winchester Star

WINCHESTER — While strolling through a shop in northern Italy, Kelly Heaton was inspired by a line of artisan perfumes.

Although she often had a hard time finding a perfume she liked among brand name companies, she found herself falling for the scents of the independently made Italian fragrance.

“I was intrigued by that,” she said. “I started studying how perfume is made.”

In October, Heaton, 44, who lives in Boyce, launched her business, The Virginia Perfume Company, with her own line of small-batch artisan perfumes. Inspired by the farm-to-table movement, her perfume line is called Field to Fragrance. The line features nine perfumes ranging from aromatic florals to the earthiness of tobacco. Classic No. 9 is Heaton’s favorite and the one she wears most often. The French-style perfume has notes of Bulgarian rose, neroli, jasmine, orris, sandalwood and musk.

“It’s classic,” she said. “It’s the way elegant, sophisticated women smelled to me when I was a kid.”

Her fragrance Neroli was inspired by her visit to Italy and is named for an Italian princess. The summery scent contains Italian citrus blossom, neroli, lavender and clove.

Heaton described Jasmine Blossom as something a “rich hippy” would wear. The perfume includes jasmine and patchouli.

Ruby is a perfume named for Ruby Lerner, founder of Creative Capital — an investment company in New York that supports artists and one of the original funders of The Virginia Perfume Company. The perfume is big on florals with jasmine, narcissus, lavender and apricot.

Heaton’s Hunt Club has a light scent with lemon verbena, wood and leather. The perfume was inspired by the fox hunting that takes place around Boyce.

Fougere means fern in French. It has notes of lavender, rosemary, eucalyptus, oakmoss, spruce, patchouli and vanilla.

Ace is an elegant and masculine perfume that includes vetiver, sage and basil.

“It reminds me of Cary Grant; old and refined,” Heaton said.

Grenada Orange has bergamot, nutmeg and clove. This sweet and spicy fragrance reminds Heaton of a perfume she grew up with in the 1980s.

Heaton is originally from North Carolina, and the old tobacco shops in the area inspired her ninth perfume, Tabac. The fragrance has notes of cedar, bergamot, cinnamon, sage, tobacco, rose and sandalwood.

“Most people like how the fragrances smell when they sit on the skin for a while and let it settle,” she said.

Heaton suggests also spritzing perfume on a scarf or clothing to help the scent stick around.

Heaton found there is an art and science to creating perfume. It isn’t as simple as adding a combination of scents together to come up with a pleasant aroma.

“It took thousands of dollars and countless hours of trial and error,” she said.

She found that an ingredient that doesn’t smell good on its own can be added to other scents to make a lovely fragrance. But one drop too many can ruin a whole batch.

“There’s very much a magic when making perfume,” she said.

In Heaton’s studio are notebooks filled with pages of detailed notes and recipes that she had to tweak over and over to get the outcome she was looking for.

“It took years,” she said. “I started dabbling in it seven years ago. I started making them for myself, and my friends encouraged me to sell them.”

Heaton is a nature lover and a proponent of organic growing. When she started playing with fragrance, her goal was to use 100 percent natural ingredients. However, she soon found that, while they may smell wonderful, the natural ingredients dissipated quickly.

“Louis XIV put on perfume all of the time through the day because it was natural and it wouldn’t last,” she said.

It wasn’t until the end of the 1800s that companies started to isolate certain molecules and synthesize scents to make the fragrances last longer.

To make sure her scents will continue throughout the day, Heaton mixes natural oils and ingredients with synthesized fragrances.

“The oil is the star of the show, and the synthetic is the enhancer,” she said.

Large perfume companies have access to synthetic scent molecules that are heavily guarded in the industry. The synthetic ingredients Heaton uses are now off patent.

She uses a number of different distributors to find which ingredients she likes the most. Her ingredients come from just about every corner of the world including Africa, the Middle East and China.

The difference in Heaton’s fragrances is her scents are predominantly made of natural ingredients, while large companies tend to use all synthetic scents.

“The quality and rarity is night and day from what you buy at the store,” she said.

Heaton’s goal is to start making her own essential oils at home and release small batches of limited-edition perfumes.

A sample kit is available for purchase on her website for those who want to try out the scents.

Heaton sells her Field to Fragrance perfumes at the Fire House Gallery at 23 E. Main St. and Modern Mercantile at 13 S. Church St., both in Berryville.

When she isn’t creating perfume, Heaton is also an artist and has an art studio in New York.

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