National Fragrance Week 2026 at Wales Perfumery

The future of fragrance, and a week I will not forget in a hurry

National Fragrance Week 2026 always feels like a bit of a celebration in the Wales Perfumery world. It is run by The Fragrance Foundation, of which I am a member, and it is one of those moments in the year when the whole fragrance community comes together to talk about what we love and why it matters. This year’s theme is The Future of Fragrance, and I have to say, it felt very close to home.

Here is what we got up to…

The giveaway that made my week

We ran a prize giveaway on Instagram to mark National Fragrance Week 2026, and I genuinely was not prepared for the response. The interest has been extraordinary. Hundreds of entries, so many lovely comments, and a wonderful wave of new people finding Wales Perfumery for the first time.

If you are one of those new arrivals, hello. I am so pleased you found us. This is a space where fragrance is taken seriously, but I hope never takes itself too seriously. Pull up a chair.

A little something for the newsletter family to celebrate National Fragrance Week 2026

While all of that was happening on Instagram, I wanted to do something a bit more personal for the people who have been here a while. Newsletter subscribers received an exclusive free shipping code at the start of the week, a small way of saying thank you for being part of this community before the wider world came knocking.

It is the kind of thing I love doing. The newsletter has always felt like the quieter, more intimate side of Wales Perfumery, and I like looking after the people who are in that space. If you are not already signed up, there is a link at the bottom of this page.

Talking about The Celts Collection with The Fragrance Foundation

On Tuesday I was featured on The Fragrance Foundation’s Instagram as part of their Scenting Culture & Society theme, which was a real honour. I was invited to talk about The Celts Collection: where the inspiration came from, the research that went into it, and the materials that bring it to life.

The Celts Collection is one of those projects that started long before I ever set foot in the studio to begin formulating. There were months spent in archives, reading, following threads, trying to understand what the landscape and the people and the history of the Celtic world actually smelled like, or might have smelled like. It felt like exactly the right project to share under that theme, and getting to bring that story to a wider audience as part of National Fragrance Week 2026 felt genuinely special.

If you missed it, you can find the feature over on @thefragrancefoundationuk.

Sunday’s workshop: where ancient craft meets future science

To close the week, I am hosting an exclusive perfume making experience here at my Monmouthshire lab, and it is one I have been quietly building towards for a while.

The whole session is shaped around this year’s theme. Because the future of fragrance is something I think about a lot, and not in an abstract way. It is there in the studio, in the decisions I make about which materials to work with, and how. Perfumery is one of the oldest crafts in the world. It is also, right now, the site of some of the most exciting scientific development I have ever seen.

In the workshop we will be working with both. Traditional materials that have been part of the perfumer’s palette for centuries, alongside cutting-edge materials developed through biotechnology and upcycling processes that simply did not exist a generation ago. Materials that came about because the industry needed to find better, more responsible ways of working, and because brilliant scientists rose to that challenge.

But I did not want the day to be a lecture. I wanted people to be able to explore and discover at their own pace. So I have written a series of in-depth articles about the specific materials we will be working with, and rather than printing them out as handouts, each bottle in the lab has a QR code on it linking directly to the relevant piece. Pick up a bottle, scan the code, read as much or as little as you want, and I will be there alongside you to talk through anything that sparks a question.

I am really looking forward to it.

National Fragrance Week 2026: A week that has meant a lot

I started Wales Perfumery because I wanted to share the real world of fragrance: the craft, the materials, the stories, the history, and the future of it all. National Fragrance Week, when it is done well, is exactly that kind of conversation on a much bigger scale. This year, with the theme of The Future of Fragrance, it felt particularly alive.

Thank you to The Fragrance Foundation for including me, to everyone who entered the giveaway and said such kind things, and to the people joining me on Sunday. It has been a really lovely week.