Where did Thursday Fragrance come from?

The inspiration behind all our fragrances is happiness. It’s broad, I know.

Mainstream fragrances will have you feeling ultra feminine, sexy, romantic or empowered – if you’re a woman. And if you’re male then your options are even more limited. Your fragrance probably exists to make you feel like a Powerful Man.

There’s nothing wrong with this – although gendered fragrance is a bit weird. Wanting to feel all those things is cool, who doesn’t want to feel those things at times? However, I’m interested in making niche perfume that makes me feel HAPPY.

I don’t know if anyone else has this – but there are certain smells that make me LIGHT UP. It’s not just that I like the smell, it’s that I feel a rush of joy. If I was in a brain scanner, there would be all sorts of action going on. Sometimes it’s a perfume that does this to me, and sometimes it’s a specific smell that I encounter in life, like cypress trees on a warm day.

One of the many things that amazes me about the sense of smell is that there’s a direct route from what we smell to the amygdala (the bit of the brain responsible for processing emotion) and the hippocampus (an area linked to memory and cognition). So it makes complete sense that smell can have a huge impact on mood and recall. We’ve all experienced it – whether we like it or not – one whiff of a buffed parquet floor or lino and we are back at school, for instance.

Once I realised the power of this, I wanted the fragrance I wore not just to smell nice, but to make me feel good. Never mind smelling appealing to other people, or of what a woman “should” smell like. If I can smell myself happy, that’s what I want to do. And that’s how Thursday Fragrance was born. It’s a happiness hack.

All our fragrances are inspired by distinct moments of joy and delight. They’re specific, but relatable. I started making these fragrances for myself, they’re personal. They’re the smells of things that get me going, but I’m heartened to find that other people relate to them and that they have the same impact on others as they do me. It seems we share an olfactive vocabulary of sorts. I find that both thrilling and inspirational.