Sweet Anthem Handmade Perfumes was founded by Meredith Smith, a writer, music lover, and designer from Seattle, WA. Her previous endeavors in storytelling have transposed well into fragrance - she now creates aromatic tales featuring a wide cast of quirky characters, and composes olfactory ballads using a variety of prima materia.
You can read on, or check out her featured seller interview on Etsy.
What started as a never-ending quest in finding her own signature scent (occasionally referre to as her OTP) has led to a love affair with mixing and composing perfume. She started where many in the creative industry do - learning about the perfumers and brands that came before her. Early loves included independent perfumers like Aftelier and Villainess. Later, she discovered and subsequently fell for high-end niche lines like L'Artisan and Serge Lutens. To boot, Smith began to devour perfume texts - Essence and Alchemy by Mandy Aftel and blogs by the likes of Chandler Burr and Luca Turin - as well as scientific information about the chemical makeup of botanical essences and countless vintage texts about historical perfumes and unguents. Soon after, as the story goes, Smith started her collection of three initial oils - a black Egyptian coconut, violet, and jasmine - and began blending from there.
Today, her library spans some 300 prima materia - a combination of natural and synthetic materials that she uses to infuse her scented darlings - and she has her sights set on a retail venture in West Seattle. Clearly, she's doing a few things right. Smith is constantly working with new-to-her materials and attempting to find the perfect formulas - and loves using classic perfumery notes in new structures as well as creating her own fantasy accords to use in her fragrances. Her philosophy remains that fragrance should be fun and enigmatic glimpses into one's mood and personality - that they can change with us, and work as odorous allegories into our memories.
Since officially founding Sweet Anthem in 2007, Smith's perfumes have been seen in a multitude of online media. She has worked with Blue Marble BioMaterials to use carbon neutral drop-in replacements for typical perfume aroma chemicals. Her perfume tutorials have been featured in print magazines such as Bust, and she now teaches perfume making classes. In October 2011, she will open the first brick and mortar Sweet Anthem - an apothecary featuring independent fragrance brands with impeccable design sensibilities.