There’s nothing quite like scent to trigger a rush of memories. Our sense of smell is directly linked to our brain’s emotional centre and contributes significantly to our mood regulation. It’s due to the brain’s anatomy that smell and memory and emotion are so interlinked.

Against this backdrop, it’s no surprise that recently my choice of perfume has been in a state of flux. That powerful sense of recall triggered by our favourite scents can be both a blessing and a curse. Like lots of people, my choice of perfume was initially influenced by mum. Her favourites became my favourites. They were staple Christmas and birthday gifts for us both. As I’ve travelled through life, this pretty much remained the case. I knew exactly what I was buying with my Boots Advantage card points or when I was passing through Duty Free! However, as my mum’s decline accelerated, I found I had to move away from my stalwart scents. The emotional trigger was real and it was a little overwhelming. This however, presented a whole new, First World problem. What was I going to replace them with? I love perfume, but it turns out I’m actually pretty fussy. It has to have a good wear time and not vanish before I’ve left the house. But it can’t be too concentrated and overpowering and cause a headache. It’s ideally versatile and can match different moods and occasions. The list of requirements is endless!

I spent a good while trying out perfumes which didn’t fully plug the gap left by Coco Mademoiselle and Chance. However, for my birthday last year, I received a genius gift. Creed’s Women’s Inspiration Sample Set. A beautiful little box with a range of fragrances from The House of Creed I’d never tired their perfume before and knew very little about their fragrances, beyond occasionally buying gifts for the men in my life. For some reason I had subconsciously ruled out Creed as an option for me. Possibly because I was so wedded to the perfumes in my bathroom cabinet. My mistake!

I think it’s safe to say Creed don’t produce average scents. They approach perfume making, in a similar vein to vintage wine production, seeking to produce perfumes in Paris that are of a Millésime quality. They also filter, bottle and label their fragrances by hand, in the interests of producing a perfect and artisan perfume experience.

The sample set takes you from the crisp and romantic Spring Flowers, through to the rich and extrovert Parma Violet of Love in Black, which I surprisingly found myself coveting. It was exciting to try on a new fragrance each day as I worked my way through this tiny wardrobe of scents. It was a voyage of discovery during the course of which, I came to the realisation that the scents we like are so obviously a matter of personal preference, that they are almost a part of our personalities and who we are as individuals. Discerning what we like is also so strongly influenced by how we are feeling at the time we encounter those scents and the emotional triggers they pull on. I’m not sure there are many sensory reactions that are more powerful or personal.

When we encounter a familiar scent, it has an unparalleled ability to transport us back to a particular time and place at lightning speed. But at this point in my life, I want to look forwards, and not back. It subsequently became very clear that scent can unquestionably play a role in colouring the future we dream of for ourselves too. And that’s what I was subconsciously doing as I tried out each fragrance and envisaged where it was taking me and how it was making me feel. Was it the scent of where I wanted to go?

This birthday present turned into something more meaningful than I ever thought it could be when I unwrapped it last year. It turned into an opportunity to explore the direction I wanted to take my life and the scents that were going to help get me there. This sounds like an exaggeration, but given that scents can release neurotransmitters in our brains, such as the happy hormones serotonin, dopamine and endorphins, they can fully impact on our emotional wellbeing. When everything is in balance, anything is possible. So your perfume is actually doing a lot more for you than you think.

My new fragrance is completely different from those of my past. It matches my resolution to start a new, freer and happier chapter in my life, enjoying all that life has to offer. So, if you, like me, have found yourself a scent nomad or if you are just curious to experiment with something new, this is a journey you should think about taking yourself on. It may take you to places you never dreamed of but want to go. Such is the surprising and extraordinary power of scent and the perfume you wear.