beauty
Can a fragrance ever take you back to a moment of empowerment and belonging? Stylist’s Billie Bhatia investigates
illustration: peter crowther
Earlier this year, on the 10th floor of Tate Modern, I was invited to a dinner to celebrate the widely anticipated new fragrance from master perfumer Monsieur Francis Kurkdjian. Alongside a lengthy table set against the backdrop of the Southbank were billboard images of the embargoed scent: 724. Superimposed pictures of the Maison Francis Kurkdjian bottle embedded into the Manhattan skyline suggested this was an urban scent. A super fan of TikTok’s favourite fragrance, Baccarat Rouge 540, I anticipated something similar from this launch – a scent that smacks you in the face with heady luxury and indulgent notes. What transpired was wholly different. This fragrance was familiar to me, but I couldn’t work out how I knew it or from where. It ignited an all-consuming feeling, one that rendered me utterly distracted. People were talking to me, but I couldn’t concentrate, too busy trying to place where I had met 724 before. In the same way you spot a familiar face, but the name eludes you, I wracked my brain to find the feeling that 724 evoked. An hour later, as I dug my nose into aldehydes, bergamot, sweet pea, jasmine, white musk and sandalwood, that feeling hit me with radiant colour: it was the smell of belonging. Belonging is maybe the mightiest tool we have in our human arsenal of emotions – it’s a
