Uncommon scents — Local Paddo

It’s worth letting your nose lead the way around Paddington. Although the area is a well-established mecca for dining and design, a recent boom in specialty fragrance houses has added a sweet complexity to the retail mix.

The newest addition, Wyalba, which has opened quietly behind amber-coloured glass doors on Oxford St, is the passion project of Bondi Wash founder Belinda Everingham. “This was always part of my vision,” she says, “even before Bondi Wash.”

Wyalba joins other notable retail outlets, including Bondi Wash, The Embassy by The Raconteur, Black Blaze and two distinguished European fragrance houses — Trudon and Santa Maria Novella — in making their bases in Paddington.

Add to them the work being done by Clare McGrowdie at Bond Clean Beauty and Sarah Bryden-Brown at Lume — both of whom source organic and ethical beauty products and scents — and a genuine movement in natural and native fragrance is among us.

For Everingham, an obsession with scent was sparked by the novel Perfume, about a French man who was born with a particularly heightened sense of smell. Not long after finishing the book, Everingham was holidaying in far-north Queensland, surrounded by native flora, and questioned if these plants could be used to create beautiful fragrances, as the French had with their own flora, for centuries.

(Interestingly, the French imported varieties of wattle from Australia during the 1800s, which were used as ingredients in their perfumes, and they continue to use Australian boronia and other native plants in their scents).

Everingham’s curiosity, combined with a lot of hard work, has resulted in 40 Australian botanical products that are now sold in 30 countries worldwide under the Bondi Wash label.

“It made sense to start with Bondi Wash because a lot of the Australian trees have strong antibacterial properties,” she says. “But not necessarily a perfume.”

However, she couldn’t let the idea of a fragrance go and started experimenting in her kitchen making natural and native scents. It was no easy task. Despite all her experience in formulations, she struggled to nail the right fragrance mix.

“It’s really hard to come up with something that doesn’t smell like a blend of essential oils or medicine. Perfume needs complexity,” Everingham says.

Then, in 2017, she read an article that would change the course of her business.

“My car broke down in Jervis Bay, so I bought a newspaper for the train ride home,” Everingham recalls. “There was an article by Ruth Ostrow about how she had stopped wearing perfume, until one day she passed a guy on the street who smelled so good, she chased him down to ask what he was wearing.”

The young man was Samuel Gravan, who had started creating natural fragrances for himself in 2010 because he couldn’t find anything on the market that suited him. Demand for his perfumes flourished through word of mouth, and after further training, he launched an eponymous fragrance brand that now counts British beauty entrepreneur Trinny Woodall among its fans.

Everingham tracked Gravan down and the pair bunkered into Bondi Wash’s Paddington laboratory to create Wyalba’s three hero scents: Wildflower, Firetree and Rockpool. As the names suggest, each fragrance is designed as a destination in a bottle.

“The smoky, sultry tones of Firetree will take you to a campfire in the bush,” Everingham says. “Rockpool is inspired by an inland mix of rock, water and tree roots, and Wildflower transports you to a suburban garden at the height of spring.”

The complexity of these fragrances is achieved by layering different aromas that are described as notes, similar to wine. The top notes, such as citrus and floral, are the ones you smell first, but they dissipate the fastest; meanwhile, the bass notes, which tend to be earthy and woody, remain on your skin the longest. For this reason, Gravan designs fragrances from the bottom up.

“It’s like harmonies in music, you need all the parts to work together,” he says. “Tweaking one tiny thing can change the entire perfume.”

Along with The Raconteur on William St and Black Blaze on Oxford St, Wyalba is part of a growing number of boutique perfumers championing Australian botanicals and sourcing natural ingredients from sustainable and ethical plantations.

“I hope this is the start of a new era in perfume,” Everingham says. “We need to go back to ingredients that won’t harm you or the environment.”

Gravan points out that the lack of chemical nasties is why it’s worth popping in-store to try the products, which can smell and react differently to synthetics. “Natural fragrances don’t use stabilisers so they retain a lot of personality and will smell different on different people,” he says.

Despite the variables, Everingham has developed a theory for matching customers to fragrances after years of working the floor at Bondi Wash.

“I’ve dealt with enough customers to know there are people who like the florals, people who like citrus and people who prefer the woody blends,” she says.

The beauty of natural perfume is its ability to transport us to the outdoors, which perhaps explains the rise of aromatherapy and scent-based products during the pandemic. Investing in scent has become a new tool for self-care. And as the demand for niche and natural fragrances increases, the days of having a life-long signature perfume may well be over.

“If your perfume doesn’t bring you joy and you’re wearing it out of habit, it’s time to change,” Gravan says. “You have to find a fragrance that makes you feel good and gives you confidence.”

For Everingham, the diversity of fragrance houses around Paddington increases your chances of finding exactly what you’re looking for.

“It’s great that people who come to Paddington now have a choice of Australian blends and foreign brands like Santa Maria Novella and Trudon, as well as a selection of candles, perfumes and body oils. We’re all doing different things which creates a wonderful adventure for shoppers,” she says.

The Scent Trail

Black Blaze

58 Oxford St

Bond Clean Beauty

12 William St

Bondi Wash

396 Oxford St

Lume Sydney

72a Oxford St

Santa Maria Novella

Shop 10, 12-16 Glenmore Rd

The Raconteur

The Embassy, 20A William St

Trudon

Shop 12/ 2-16 Glenmore Rd

Venustus

381 Oxford St

Wyalba

404 Oxford St

Aesop

3 Glenmore Rd