FRAGRANTARIUM Eau de Toilette British Grassland

Headspace fragrances are based on a technology that captures scent molecules directly from their surroundings. A closed system is placed over an object – a flower, for example – in which the volatile aroma compounds collect and are then analysed. The resulting data make it possible to reconstruct the scent precisely in the laboratory. This allows even smells such as the scent of a flower in the wild or rain on warm asphalt to be recreated, which cannot be obtained through conventional extraction.

Julia Asenbaum is a plant scientist, and she wanted to know what a flower really smells like. Using headspace technology, she captures the scent of living plants and rebuilds it as perfume; she calls it “Olfactory Realism.” One example is Klimt’s Rose, recreated from the scent of a rosebush that still grows today in Gustav Klimt’s last studio garden in Vienna — the same one he painted in 1912.