Memory in a bottle
Jennifer Chase Esposito
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He takes your past and the memories that have made you happiest, swishes them around with your current frame of mind, likes and dislikes, and Poof! out comes a potion you'll likely wear today, tomorrow, and for the rest of your life because it smells just, like, you.
And it should. Because after an introspective session with Neil Morris, his acute sense of smell - and people - allows him to create 2.5 ounces of You in a Bottle through his custom fragrance company, Neil Morris Fragrances.
Some 800-plus fragrance oil vials line two walls of his home, so many that you can't imagine how they'd end up in a bottle and smell like anything remotely good. But Morris' business is this: he spends 90 minutes learning what makes you tick to create "Eau de You," a personal fragrance he'll create after asking carefully crafted questions about your life, in an attempt to capture your scent in a bottle.
At 6-foot-5, with a broad chest and cropped grey hair that decorates a shiny pate, he looks more bouncer than beautitician. But part therapist, part gentle giant, part scent-sory artiste, Morris has used his talents to create custom fragrances since 1998. He's only one of roughly 1000 people in the world in his business, several of whom he knows well. And, he's self-taught.
"I've always been a fragrance person," he said in an interview in his home-slash-fragrance "lab." "It sounds funny but my mother had a great nose ... and she passed it on to me. I'd walk into a field and the first thing I'd say was 'Oh, can you smell the earth? The lilies? My friends thought I was nuts."
Out of those 800 bottles and vials, Morris can name each one by scent alone, the way a musician with perfect pitch can detect an E or A-flat. His original fragrances have sometimes come from dreams the way an innately good chef or writer might divine a recipe or plot during sleep.
"People say you don't have to go to school for this," he says, comparing his work to that of painters who avoid art school as not to confuse their take on their craft. Morris acts as a modern-day alchemist, mixing his potions so they can do what scent has always done: remind us of another time.
I sat through the process a few months ago (ah, what we journalists do in the name of true reporting) and it's a mindful experience, from the moment you enter his home. It's a serenely comforting space with white walls, black-and-white prints, a stunning head-on view of the Christian Science Church replete with the Pru in the background, and a plush sage couch on which to sip something hot or cold as Morris walks you through an intensive questionnaire of, well, your life.
"I'm going to take your lifestyle - find out who you are from a fragrance perspective; I'm going to bottle, you," he says.
Morris is gently protective of his questionnaire so I won't divulge what's on it. Just know that the process is designed to be a trip in self-awareness, and he recommends clients go through it alone (though he will take two people at a time).
Some of my own answers were nighttime, citrus, Christmas, lilac, and the city. Morris evaluated those cryptic elements and sitting before me as a mathematician solves problems, he concocted the recipe for "Jennifer."
Over to his bottle collection he went, opening and sniffing, before bringing me some 20 bottles on the couch. After separating scents into ones I definitely liked, disliked, and a bunch of maybes, Morris used delicate glass pipettes to layer scents, one by one, in the same spot on my wrist.
It's an intimate, all-about-you process to sit so close to someone and discuss how scents make you feel. But Morris is respectful of the process and put me at ease. Sometimes he grinned broadly when he hit on something great. Other times he waited for my reaction, careful not to impose his nose on mine.
In all it can take countless essences to achieve perfection: when I felt embarrassed for liking so many, Morris told me Chanel No.5, still the most popular scent in the world, has more than 142 notes. I didn't feel so badly.
When we agreed he was finished, Morris mixed the oils in fragrance alcohol and poured 2.5 ounces of "Jennifer" into bottles he'd beautifully pre-labeled before I arrived. It's been months and I've worn it nearly every day.
At $350, Morris' session buys you the lengthy consultation, two atomizers (one large and one travel) filled with your scent, and a file he keeps on you for re-fills. Want him to mix you a body balm with your scent? How about glitter powder? At $30 a pop, it's all in the offing.
His sessions are popular gifts for mothers and the "women who have everything" set. But roughly 30 percent of sessions are with gay men - even young girls looking for a signature scent that will let them stand out from everyone else standing at their lockers.
One of his clients suffers from manic depression, and Morris created a calming scent reminiscent of a happy childhood memory she sniffs when she needs salvation. And one client, while answering Morris' "what makes you happy" questions, named the unlikely duo of the smell of the chocolate from baking brownies with her grandmother as a child, and her gram's lavender.
"She looked at me and said, 'Uh oh, you're in trouble now, Neil: How are you going to mix brownies, chocolate and lavender?'" said Morris. But after some careful mixing, adding other fragrance notes Morris learned of during his interview with her, "I sprayed it on her and she burst into tears."
With coverage in Lucky magazine, The Boston Herald and the prolific great-stuff site www.DailyCandy.com, his wholesale work for stores and clients spans from Boston to Salem, Mass., to Pennsylvania and California. His popularity makes sense: In a sea of sameness, Morris gifts the chance to be individual as he creates scents that truly contain the essence of your life.
Neil Morris Fragrances, 221 Mass Ave., Suite 501. For appointments or gift certificates phone 617. 267.2315 or e-mail Neil Morris at neil@neilmorrisfragrances.co.m For information, visit www.neilmorrisfragrances.com.