{
  "id": 15597279,
  "title": "Bottling the soul: Why Loewe’s perfumer believes you should never have only one signature scent",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/19/bottling-the-soul-why-loewes-perfumer-believes-you-should-never-have",
  "topic": "business",
  "section": "Business",
  "published": "2026-10-19T11:02:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "The National Business",
    "slug": "the-national-business",
    "url": "https://www.thenationalnews.com/magazine/2026/10/19/bottling-the-soul-why-loewes-perfumer-believes-you-should-never-have-only-one-signature-scent/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Nuria Cruelles, perfumer for Loewe, draws a parallel between perfume and synaesthesia, describing it as a means to perceive the world through textures, temperatures, colours, and moments. Her Crafted Collection, launched last year with three scents – Iris Root, Bittersweet Oud, and Roasted Vanilla – has since expanded to include five new perfumes. Rather than treating ingredients like iris, oud, or vanilla as mere components in a formula, Cruelles delves into their personalities and composes pieces around their relationships. For instance, she pairs the rustic, animalic oud with zesty orange to create a \"contrast marriage,\" balancing its dark, earthy character. The new scents draw inspiration from nature, with Field Diary combining citrus, lychee, and sandalwood; Sweet Woodland merging florals with ginger and cognac; Rosetopia deepening rose with amber; Smoky Rain evoking a summer storm; and Verdant Grove layering pistachio, iris, caramel, vanilla, and cedarwood. Cruelles emphasizes the importance of how ingredients interact, categorizing their relationships into contrast, affinity, or hedonism. Hedonism refers to surprising, elegant, and sophisticated combinations. The Middle East, where perfume is deeply ingrained in daily life, has influenced Cruelles's approach, as people there mix, layer, and play with scents. This mirrors the growing Western trend of experimenting with fragrance rather than settling for a permanent signature scent. Cruelles believes that the idea of a signature scent worn for years can be limiting, as the nose becomes accustomed to the familiar and loses its ability to perceive new essences. She encourages choosing perfume for specific moments, much like selecting clothes or jewellery. Her method involves experimentation, as ingredients sometimes yield unexpected results. For example, timut pepper, used in Iris Root, initially disrupted the composition but, when used in the right proportion, transformed the fragrance into a harmonious \"explosion.\" Cruelles's Spanish heritage and native ingredients, such as rockrose, inform her work for Loewe. She uses co-distillation to soften the rough edges of resinous, leathery, and woody labdanum, revealing a more rounded character. For Cruelles, scent is a sensory language, with different notes evoking distinct feelings – sandalwood feels soft and transparent, citrus is sharper and more effervescent, and aldehydes can feel almost hot. Her relationship with scent is akin to having an exceptional ear for music, as her \"nose reads the air\" and every scent molecule creates music in her brain. One of Loewe's most recognizable olfactory creations, Tomato Leaves, was developed using Cruelles's childhood memories of peeling tomatoes with her grandmother, resulting in a pungent green scent that offered an unexpected interpretation of a familiar ingredient.",
  "summary": "“I think perfume is like synaesthesia,” says Loewe perfumer Nuria Cruelles. “You can close your eyes and feel textures, temperatures, colours, moments.” For Cruelles, scent is less a finishing touch than a way of viewing the world, and she describes it with the sort of language usually reserved for art, architecture, music and gastronomy. This approach informs Loewe Perfumes’ Crafted Collection,…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 2,
    "also_reported_by": [
      {
        "outlet": "The National UAE",
        "title": "Bottling the soul: Why Loewe’s perfumer believes you should never have only one signature scent",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/19/bottling-the-soul-why-loewes-perfumer-believes-you-should-never-have-15598717",
        "published": "2026-10-19T11:02:00.000Z"
      }
    ]
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}