Maya Njie didn’t have the job of perfumer in mind while growing up in the commercial town of Västeras, about an hour outside of Stockholm. But she was sensitive to scent.

Njie has a vivid memory of smelling CK Be for the primary time, before moving to London on the age of 19.

“I remember where I used to be, who was wearing it,” she said. “I remember coming into the room, and I used to be just blown away. I knew I needed to have it and saved up. After I moved to London, my mom had some money put aside for my first deposit and stuff. The very first thing I did was exit and buy one in every of those bottles.

“It type of set the tone,” continued Njie. “After I take into consideration my first two, three years in London, I wore that fragrance.”

The self-taught perfumer, still based in London, often revisits the link between fragrance and memories. Yet she started off as a visible artist.

“I’ve at all times been visually driven,” she explained.

As an adult, Njie returned to college to take a surface design course, involving textile printing, wallpaper, ceramics, homeware and fashion.

“Whilst I used to be there, I took inspiration from my old family photographs loads,” she said. “I’m half Swedish, half Gambian, and I actually have this old photo album of images of my family before I used to be born.

“It tells a standard Scandinavian story, but with an African influence in there,” continued Njie, who would visit Gambia every few years when she was a lady. “I’ve at all times been really drawn in by the ’60s and ’70s fashion, and decided to try to tell that story through my designs. Then I began wondering about if I could also tell an olfactory story alongside it. That’s how I began to experiment.”

For her first scent, Nordic Cedar, from early 2016, she had in mind a photograph of her older sister as a baby with three women outside the tiny allotment summerhouse the family had.

“It’s that feeling of being surrounded by the forests,” reminisced Njie, who mixed notes of cardamom (often utilized in Swedish baking), cedar wood and patchouli — amongst her favorite olfactive notes. “So it encapsulates loads for me when it comes to the Scandinavian wilderness and my upbringing.”

Her second fragrance riffs on a snap of a family celebratory gathering, but this time with an indoor element.

“I experimented with vanilla as a note,” she said. “I believed it fitted very well with the photograph and the palette, because unexpectedly it goes from primary colours into something more type of pastelly and warm. It modified the [Nordic Cedar] formula completely.

‘Then from that I worked with an inspiration from my grandfather’s apartment, an image of him and my sister,” Njie said. “It’s type of brown and beige in its tones.”

Njie’s grandfather was a stoker and smoked a pipe. So she called the scent, with tobacco leaf and vetiver notes, Tobak.

“It’s kind of smoky, leathery, sweet, musky and woody,” she said.

Her fourth scent is Les Fleurs (“it’s really shiny green, lush”) and the fifth one, Tropica (“very much a type of sunscreen smell”), relies on her memory of occurring holiday to tropical Gambia, when Sweden was cold within the wintertime.

The genderless fragrances are sold internationally, including at Liberty, The Conran Shop and Alex Eagle Studio within the U.K.; Sniph in Sweden; Parfums Uniques in Germany, and Mr Postman Store in Romania. Muse Experiences and Tigerlily Perfumery carry Njie’s scents within the U.S., and Nose Shop does in Japan.

Njie’s other creations nod to varied things, like a song.

“Music I find really inspiring,” she said, adding that may be every type. “Sometimes it’s characters from something I’ve watched. It could possibly be an imaginary person. Sometimes it’s people who I see on the road. I can get inspired by any person’s style, and it makes me need to create something for them.”

Njie enjoys snapping documentary-style shots along with her Nikon, although hasn’t been in a darkroom for a few years now. She color picks photos, like on her Instagram page, which incorporates some vintage automotive and van imagery.

Njie is keen to explore multisensory avenues more.

“I’d prefer to give you the chance to precise fragrance in multiple ways,” she said. One example is a project for 2022 that involves expressing one’s own tackle an old constructing through scent.

Or it could entail working with other visual artists, reminiscent of those in film or fashion.

“I like the mixture of paper and scent,” she said. “So I’m in the meanwhile different technologies inside that. I’m having my fragrance translated into ink.”

In collaboration with Scent Trunk, Njie conceived a perfume after being given three elements to work with: the month of November, tree moss as the important thing note and a spot — Pelister Park in Macedonia.

“Scent may be so far more than beauty,” Njie said.

Contained in the Mind

Favorite object: A hand-blown [citrus yellow] glass. There may be this glass blower called Michael Ruh, and he makes these amazing things. His colours are incredible. I’ve been keeping my eye on him for a very long time.

Favorite color: I really like many colours, but I’d say perhaps green — like a dark forest green or an Army green. It’s a color that I’ve been wearing since I used to be young. It makes me feel protected and cozy.

Favorite podcast: Dear Joan and Jericha. It’s a comedy podcast written by two female comedians, and it just makes me laugh. They’re very rude, but additionally speak about all these silly things in society that they will’t consider still exist, but do.

A favourite artist: Jamil Shabazz, the photographer. I feel really inspired by his work, and he covers quite a number of many years — the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s — in Latest York. I at all times feel something once I have a look at his photographs. I can really wander away in his world.

I also really like architecture [such as Ricardo Bofill’s]. That’s one other area I prefer to wander away in.

For more, see:

Isamaya Ffrench: Creativity Unbridled

The Art of Hair: Redefined by Charlie Le Mindu

Through the Unique Lens of Harley Weir