This is a completely fantastic idea and I love it. I've had several ideas for different perfumes I would like to see made, but I've never been able to string them into a line.

The most recent idea I had is also the dorkiest. I work on C18th literary history and I was thinking of doing historical portraits, I guess in an HdP way. I want small bottles - 30ml EDPs make for affordable price-tags.

Alexander Pope - Antoine Lie
A key guy in my dissertation is Alexander Pope - a mean spiteful disfigured guy who was nonetheless the most brilliant poet and one of the most manipulative businessman of his day. He could eviscerate people in a few lines of people better than others could do in a whole poem. Pope obviously needs a masculine iris - an uglyish ISM style iris at the heart and on top, but I also want a chilly violet (flower) and a hissy galbanum on top, maybe even some spikenard to help show the acidity of the man nicknamed 'the wasp of Twickenham'. For an ELDO twist we could include a steamed broccoli note - Pope was one of the first people in the UK to grow and eat broccoli. I'd like dry, papery base. Nothing wet or in the least comforting: no musk, no sandalwood, no amber or benzoin, none of that. At the very most, some cedar or rosewood. What I would really like would be an aromachem that would do vellum. A tanned, leathery base that swims up after a few hours. That's my chilly, nasty portrait in scent of Pope. Perhaps someone a bit kooky like Antoine Lie would be up for this.

Samuel Johnson - Christopher Sheldrake
A great counterpoint to Pope is Samuel Johnson. A big, fat man who worked hard at being socially accepted by everyone. He became gouty, I think, partly through drinking too much port, so a big port note in the heart is a must. He was a garralous, sociable man who liked to be in the company of other people - so a sweaty musk base is important, as is the tobacco that comes with socialising in C18th london. He always walked with a staff, so we could perhaps put in a sandalwood. To lighten things up at the other end, we can have some meadowswwet and some myrtle to give a little bit of astringency to an otherwise heavy composition. These are Scottish herbs that Johnson encountered on his Tour of the Hebrides in 1762-3.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu - Mark Buxton
This woman invented the smallpox vaccine, set london society alive with her daring poetry and her scandalous love-affairs with bisexual lords and Italian musicians. She also lived in Constantinope while her husband was an ambassador there. She talks about the scent of aloeswood (seriously!) as well as sandalwood and some other aromatics that I can't figure out. I want this to be a floriental - I want a lightish, resinous oud at the heart (nothing else would sell, after all...), flanked by sandalwood below and orange blossom and jasmine above. I do want those white flowers to be a little indolic to connote the fact that she was a famous beauty before she was scarred by the pox, and the other fact that all her life she new how to gut someone with a pen almost as well as Pope. She loved roses too, so we can add a (small) rose note. She was also noted for educating herself by reading her own father's library unsupervised (and teaching herself greek and latin that way). So a dryish papyrus note would be great. The overall thing could work: Orange blossom, rose, jasmine, oud, papyrus, sandalwood. I want a light touch to this, so perhaps Giacobetti? Maybe that's too light. Mark Buxton, perhaps.

What do you think?