All about Odette – Glass meets the host of London’s famous fragrance events
The British perfume industry is full of colourful characters: the visionary perfumers, intrepid bloggers, PR supremos, charismatic boutique owners and the formidable team behind the newly launched Perfume Society. And then there’s Lizzie Ostrom, who is somewhat of a delightful anomaly to this merry gathering. Not a perfumer, critic, PR or businesswoman in the traditional sense, she instead hosts “Scratch n’ Sniff” perfume events all over London. And such is her passion and enthusiasm for fragrance, that you immediately get drawn into her magically fragrant world.
At each event, she invites fellow perfume lovers to explore the history of fragrance and develop new ways of describing scent – all based around sniffing, talking and sniffing some more. Past events have seen her pair scent with spirits (at her recent Sip/Sniff event in Hackney) or talk about scents via a certain decade (the Vintage Scent Sessions) or various other wonderful themes such as Temptresses, Lotharios and the Scented Siren; Scent and Mythology; and Fragrance and Male Identity.
Not one to rest on her laurels, Ostrom is currently penning a book on her favourite subject. “It’s a hundred essays about fragrance and most of it is perfume history, so I’m choosing perfumes from the last century that have been socially important. I was writing about Aramis, which was this suave men’s scent from the ‘60s. I’ve basically written the first scene of a bad 60s TV show about a spy called Agent Aramis …”
It’s safe to say her approach to perfume and fragrance is far from conventional – something one might say the current perfumery world is in dire need of. Glass caught up with Ostrom – whose stage name at her events is Odette Toilette – at the venue of her very first Scratch n’ Sniff event, East London’s Leonard Street Bookclub to chat about her sweetly-scented life and the state of the perfumery world today.
Where does your maverick approach to perfumery come from?
Probably my previous life working in restaurant PR. Food was changing quite quickly at the time [10 years ago]. There were lots of restaurants opening up, pop-up venues and events, which gave me the idea later for perfume events. I saw the fun stuff happening in food and wondered why that wasn’t happening in fragrance industry, seeing as they’re so interconnected.
The fragrance industry is so conservative. In contrast, restaurants are very quick to change. If you’re young and you’ve got ideas you can kind of get in there and get something off the ground.
So how daunting was the transition from food to perfumery?
I loved my perfumes and I liked events, so that was how it started. I didn’t do any research into what the industry was doing, I didn’t know anyone in the industry either, so I don’t think I realised until later on that it was a new thing for this time. If I’d had a job in the industry – say I’d been working at a brand or an agency in a salaried role – and I’d quit to do this, the threat of failure would be hanging over me.
But it took about a year until everyone in the industry really spotted it, so I just got on with it and didn’t have any worries, as I didn’t have a reputation to protect. I didn’t know it was going to be a job at first, it was a nice way of doing it.
How did you feel about hosting your first event?
I was so nervous but had a foundation of steel that this was the right thing to do. I called up [boutique perfumery] Les Senteurs and had the founder James Craven come and speak – we did a potted history of the 20th century through perfume, and got everyone to come and sniff different scents. I learnt a lot about the limits people can smell in an hour or two! The number of fragrances we look at have reduced since then.
Your events tend to focus on niche as opposed to commercial perfumes. Was this always your intention?
When I started it was all about niche, partly because it’s a lot about telling stories and niche fragrances have a lot of interesting concepts and backstories. What can you do with the latest designer scent when you’re trying to tell a story? Unless it’s a classic like Angel or Giorgio Beverly Hills, it’s not interesting to people, at least not to the people who come to my events.
Where else do your ideas come from?
What I do now comes out of loving the studying for my English degree and reading and thinking critically about books. I didn’t want to be an English teacher or an academic, with this I’m kind of doing a similar thing, but it’s just about perfume rather than books. A lot of the events refer back to literature anyway, I’ve got one on Greek mythology coming up in the autumn.
Or sometimes ideas come out of the history of perfume. In the 30s, one of the fragrance houses Lenthéric commissioned one of the big ballet companies to do a performance, they toured all around the states and performed in shopping malls, dance colleges and theatres and it was a massive hit – stuff like that is so inspiring.
Do some events work better than others?
Historical ones seem to be popular. Perfume is such a visceral way of connecting with the past, to be able to smell the things people wore. It’s a really nice reflective thing to do – anything on mythology sells really well. We also recently did one on teenage perfumes which was quite popular.
How varied are your audience?
The events on a Saturday afternoon tend to be predominantly female, while at bigger events at museums and similar places, you often get a lot of men there – but it’s really mixed bag. It ranges from the hardcore perfume gang, to people who have no idea why they’re there and were dragged along by a friend. You also get some regulars, which is really nice. But yes it’s very mixed. Sometimes people are really well behaved and quiet and they’re the worst events!
Do you hope these events will inspire more interesting approaches to perfumery?
It would be really nice if it opens up a space for more fun to happen. By not representing a brand, I can have a bit more fun with what I do. If an audience member’s take on a perfume has nothing to do with the official campaign, then that’s fine – I like to hand a fragrance to a women on the street and letting them come up with their own story. But it isn’t good for brands who want to present you with ‘this is the story, this is the model in the advert, here you go. And now buy it please.’ There’s definitely a friction!
You’ve occasionally hosted events held by brands. Would you let a Scratch n’ Sniff event be sponsored by a perfume house?
I don’t get paid to use perfumes at events. Sometimes I get given perfumes and I’ll get them out the cupboard, but if we do a vote and 60 per cent of the room says “I hate this, get it away” then that’s great, that’s voting on your feet. But if I get given a perfume by a brand to promote and the majority of the audience doesn’t like it, the brand isn’t going to be very happy.
And lastly, where did you come up with the name Odette Toilette?
I really wanted a silly stage name, part of that thinking was when you’re doing public speaking, you call on a persona you have a stage identity. It also added a bit of “tongue-in-cheekness” to it all, it sends out the message that these events are meant to be fun, not serious or austere. I didn’t come up with the name, a friend was over for dinner before the first event, he started bantering about with names and came up with it, and that’s how it happened. At an event I like being called Odette I’m not Lizzie! But then it’s a bit awkward day-to-day if you’re meeting someone I’m Lizzie, haven’t worked that out yet, I definitely introduce myself as Odette at events.
by Viola Levy
Odette Toilette will be hosting a month of events Profumo di Roma with the House of Peroni every Tuesday evening in October.
She will also be holding a Vintage Scent Session on the 1950s on 6th December. Bookings can be made here