Part 1: The Inventory That Escaped
Some projects begin with grand ambitions.
This wasn’t one of them.
My goal was embarrassingly practical.
Figure out what I owned.
Figure out what I liked.
Stop buying duplicates.
That was it.
Instead, I accidentally started writing a series about memory, travel, identity, emotional geography . . . and a dog convinced I had been associating with a suspicious resin merchant.
We’ll get to the merchant.
Wait . . . what am I talking about?
The story really begins more than twenty years ago.
My friends Sebastian and Randy were looking for a lawyer to help with a wonderfully ambitious idea called Musync. Long before Spotify, Apple Music, or streaming playlists became commonplace, Sebastian had imagined providing businesses with carefully curated iPods filled with music selected specifically for their space.
He didn’t simply assemble playlists.
He visited restaurants, hotels, and retail stores, sat quietly, absorbed the atmosphere, and built soundtracks that belonged there. Independent musicians earned exposure and royalties, businesses received thoughtfully curated music, and every location acquired its own personality.
It was one of those ideas that arrived just a little ahead of its time.
Over the years our friendship grew well beyond legal work.
Sebastian created the custom mix for Herbert’s and my wedding dance—three songs seamlessly woven together into a Quickstep, a Foxtrot, and finally a Viennese Waltz.
Sebastian and Randy were with us on our wedding day.
We laughed.
A lot.
We shared dinners. When Herbert decided we should start “collecting Michelin stars,” who better to join us on our very first expedition than Seb and Randy? (The French Laundry seemed an appropriately ambitious place to begin.)
One memorable evening involved attempting to pan-fry foie gras—purchased just as it was becoming California contraband—in their San Francisco loft. Randy stood beneath the smoke detector fanning upward like a banshee, trying to prevent us from evacuating the entire building. Herbert continued cooking with complete confidence while Randy became increasingly convinced we were moments away from introducing ourselves to every resident on the street—with significant financial consequences.
Later, when Herbert became ill—but before any of us understood where life was heading—I sent invitations to our annual New Year’s Eve party with one simple request:
Please come.
One never knows.
Sebastian and Randy caught an Uber all the way from San Francisco.
A few months later came COVID.
And then Herbert was gone.
Friendships accumulate their own histories.
Ours certainly had.
Throughout all those years, Sebastian had another passion.
Fragrance.
Herbert never cared much for perfume. I didn’t know much about it either until one visit when Sebastian disappeared upstairs and returned carrying several bottles of Jo Malone.
“Try these.”
That was my introduction.
Years later, Sebastian began talking about fragrance on YouTube.
At first he simply reviewed bottles from his own collection.
Then viewers wanted samples.
Then discovery sets.
Then entire fragrance houses wanted to work with him.
Eventually, The Scent Club was born.
Today he and Randy travel internationally to fragrance events, interview perfumers, and somehow know people whose careers revolve around making things smell extraordinary.
This year they’ve gone one step further by creating ScentFestSF™, bringing together independent fragrance houses from around the world for an event unlike anything else currently held in the United States. (P.S.: Why yes, you SHOULD go . . . )
Watching that evolution has been enormous fun.
Somewhere along the way, my legal invoices also began arriving with an unusual form of payment.
Fragrance.
Honestly, there are worse compensation packages.
A few years ago, Sebastian invited me to what I still call his atelier.
I don’t actually know what he calls it.
“Atelier” simply seemed the only word grand enough.
I walked in.
Stopped.
Started laughing.
Not because anything was funny.
Because it was astonishing.
Shelves.
Rolling library ladders.
Thousands upon thousands of bottles.
Every imaginable style of fragrance waiting to be explored.
Randy smiled.
“We told you it was big.”
They had.
I had simply failed to appreciate what “big” meant.
That afternoon, Sebastian walked me through what was then an idea he was considering offering privately.
Rather than asking someone what perfume they wanted to buy, he began by asking questions.
What fragrances had they enjoyed before?
How did they want to experience the day?
How did they want to be perceived?
Then came strips of paper.
One fragrance.
Another.
Something completely unexpected.
Eventually, a handful of samples to take home and actually live with.
I had no idea that, years later, those little samples would become the beginning of this project.
I remember leaving less impressed by the fragrances themselves than by the realization that someone could navigate such an enormous collection almost instinctively.
Fast-forward to this year.
Between Sebastian’s generous habit of pressing little bags of samples into my hands every time we meet and my own occasional purchases, my “medicine cabinet” had reached a critical state of overcrowding. (The aspirin had been evicted long ago.)
There were bottles on shelves.
Bottles in drawers.
Travel atomizers.
Discovery sets.
And what can only be described as fragrance annexes—carefully organized bags of similar fragrances that had seemed like an excellent organizational idea . . . right up until I forgot they existed.
Meanwhile, I kept reaching for the same five bottles.
Surely there had to be a better system.
So I started a spreadsheet.
Brand.
Fragrance.
Notes.
Rating.
Simple.
Practical.
Sensible.
It lasted about five minutes.
Because somewhere between “bergamot” and “vetiver,” I found myself writing things like:
Tea House.
Rainy Afternoon.
Silk Road Library.
This was not how fragrance inventories were supposed to behave.
I didn’t know it yet, but the project had already escaped.
Looking back, “organizing perfume” was the last simple thing about the entire adventure.
Things were about to become considerably . . .
. . . stranger.