Some fragrances come from concept. Others come from a specific moment, a specific place, a specific smell you never forgot.
Spun & Golden came from a crêpe stand in Brittany.
It was April. I was in France—ostensibly working, but mostly just wandering around towns I'd never visited, eating far too much, smelling everything. I'd just started getting serious about fragrance composition, reading about notes and longevity and how to actually build something that felt intentional.
I was in this small village—I genuinely can't remember which one now; they blur together in my memory as a series of narrow streets and pastry shops. There was a crêpe stand near the harbor. The kind you'd barely notice, nothing fancy, just someone with a stall and a griddle.
The Smell
The moment I walked up, I got hit with this smell. Not just the smell of crêpes—I'd smelled plenty of that before. This was different.
It was butter and vanilla and caramel, but also somehow fresh and alive. There was something almost herbal underneath it, something that kept it from being cloying. And it was warm—not hot, not aggressive, just this enveloping warmth that made me feel safe and happy in a way that's hard to describe.
I bought a crêpe (of course I did) and stood there eating it, trying to deconstruct the smell. It was butter, definitely. Good butter, real butter. There was caramel. There was vanilla extract in the batter. There was the warmth from the griddle. And there was something else—something almost neroli-like, some brightness that kept everything from collapsing into pure sweetness.
I stood there for maybe ten minutes, literally just smelling. The person running the stand probably thought I was insane.
Trying to Capture It
When I got back to Grantham, I couldn't stop thinking about it. I had this olfactory memory of something that made me feel a very specific way, and I wanted to understand if I could recreate that feeling in fragrance form.
My first attempts were too sweet. I was thinking "crêpe stand" and heading straight for caramel and vanilla. But that wasn't the smell. The smell had something brighter, something that kept it from being sickly.
I started working with neroli. The smell of neroli—bitter orange—is bright and almost herbal. It has citrus notes but it's not sharp like lemon. It reminded me of that quality in the crêpe stand smell that kept everything balanced.
Then I added petitgrain, which is the essential oil from the leaves and twigs of the bitter orange. Similar to neroli but slightly different—a bit greener, a bit fresher. And suddenly I had an opening that felt right. It felt like the smell hitting you before you even arrived at the stand.
For the heart, I knew I needed vanilla and something warmer. But just vanilla would be too obvious, too simple. I tried tonka bean—the deeper, more complex cousin of vanilla. When I combined vanilla and tonka, I got this rich, almost creamy quality that actually did smell like crêpe batter and caramel.
The base needed warmth without weight. Vanilla, amber, a touch of musk. Something that would sit on your skin for hours without changing the character of the fragrance.
The Name
No. 2, Spun & Golden came together over a few months of testing and refining. The name was obvious the moment it was right. "Spun" for the way crêpe batter is poured and spun on the griddle. "Golden" for the color, for the caramel, for that warm butter quality.
When I wear it now, I'm back there. Not constantly—my nose gets used to it like it does with any fragrance. But in certain moments, when I catch a whiff unexpectedly, I'm standing at a crêpe stand in Brittany in April, the sun is just starting to warm up, and the whole world feels generous and full of possibility.
Why I'm Telling You This
Because fragrance is this interesting thing where the boundary between the material and the emotional gets completely blurred. No. 2 is, objectively, a blend of essential oils and fragrance compounds. It has a molecular structure. It can be analyzed and broken down into components.
But it's also a memory. It's a moment. It's proof that a smell can carry more than scent—it can carry feeling, memory, a whole landscape of experience.
When people wear our fragrances, they're not wearing my memory, they're creating their own. No. 2 might smell like something completely different to you. It might remind you of something from your own life. It might just smell good and make you feel luxurious.
But the reason it works, I think, is because it came from somewhere real. It came from standing in front of a griddle, smelling something genuine, and taking time to understand what that was.
That's what small batch means, in a way. It means the fragrances aren't made by committee. They're made by someone trying to capture something they loved and turn it into something wearable. Something that carries a little piece of that moment.
Even if you never go to Brittany. Even if you never smell a crêpe stand griddle. You're wearing the feeling of one. And maybe that's enough.