Anya McCoy has launched her own line of natural perfumes, Anya’s Garden. There are three fragrances, Riverside, Pan and Fairchild:
Riverside is an homage to the gardens of the University of California, Riverside and includes notes of pink peppercorn, citrus, Turkish rose otto, neroli blossom, petitgrains, vanilla Bourbon, Tahitian vanilla, beeswax, distilled soil (mitti), Vanuatu sandalwood, tonka bean and musk seed…
If you’ve ever been tempted to start mixing your own scents, Anya McCoy’s story will be instructive. Anya started collecting essences, then started selling, then started blending, and eventually founded the Natural Perfumery discussion group on Yahoo. Recently, Anya has launched naturalperfumery.com, a clearinghouse for information on this expanding field. She plans to launch her own line of perfumes early next year.
How and when did you first become interested in perfume?
My first scent memories involve the lush perfumes that my mother and her friends wore. They gave me the almost-empty bottles so I could play with the bits left. I was only two or three, yet I could differentiate the varied perfumes by name. I connected them with the real world, like the roses and irises and crisp green succulent leaves of the hedges that grew in our garden. I found that picking and rubbing the flowers or leaves on my skin didn’t produce a fine perfume, so I thought there was something magical about how the scent went from the plant to the bottle — and there is! I knew I would be fascinated with perfumes for the rest of my life, and the natural world of plants and perfumes has always been intertwined in my heart and soul…