Suzy Nightingale is an award-winning writer who describes herself as “scent-obsessed”. Senior Writer for The Scented Letter, the magazine published by The Perfume Society, and freelance contributor to numerous other titles including basenotes, The Rake’s Progress and Cent Mag, among others, Suzy is a woman who knows a lot about perfume and, more importantly as a writer, how to express complex ideas about fragrance in an engaging and entertaining way.
But Suzy can transfer her witty and engaging writing style to on-camera reviews without even batting an eyelid… well, unless that’s what’s called for. And, no, it’s not that straightforward: many a brilliant writer becomes a bumbling wreck when addressing a camera. But we’re sure you’ll agree that Suzy isn’t one of them.
We absolutely love the video review of Bascule from the S.BAKER Collection she published on her personal fragrantmaven Instagram channel.
We love so much of what Suzy had to say about Bascule by nose Ashley Eden Kessler. Here’s are a few of our favourites snippets:
“Leather, horses and hay... It also has lily of the valley… within this fragrance it comes across as a cleanliness, along with some cut grass notes. That makes everything else seem all the more dirty, which I like. I’m all behind that…
“There’s something sophisticated, quite vintage-smelling without smelling old-fashioned. It’s that succulent sticky, ripe peachy-ness with the resins and the darker notes, again, a fabulous contrast. It smells incredible on the skin…
“When you spray this you get these wafts of leathery, smoky naughtiness and it is to be encouraged….vetiver, it’s almost like the smell of a cigar, an unlit cigar, not that kind of smokiness, but it smells leafy and cool and dry, almost like a shadow captured in fragrant form…
“ They’ve been working on it for a really long time to get it right and, my God, they have. I feel confident in saying that if you like a chypre fragrance, if you like a leather fragrance or if you like a smoky fragrance you’re going to be all over this or, rather, it’s going to be all over you, hopefully.”
As if we weren’t feeling flattered enough, we even got a little bashful when Suzy goes on to say:
“I’m a really big fan of Sarah Baker Perfumes. I think she’s done some fragrances that are really bold, really characterful but also really wearable...at the end of the day the fragrance needs to smell fantastic on your skin otherwise why would you buy it?.. I don’t have enough room on my shelves or in my life for fragrances that I don’t actually wear and enjoy all the time. I will be adding this to the shelf of fragrances that I wear a lot.”
Thank you Suzy for such kind words. It means a lot coming from someone who really knows her stuff.
To see the full video in all its glory, click here.
In her role as Senior Writer for The Scented Letter, Suzy wrote about three of the S.BAKER Collection fragrances for issue 44 ot The Scented Letter. Learn more about that here.