Our new fragrance captures the Smell of the British Summer
There is nothing quite like the thrill of an adventure on the open road. Whether you’re travelling to the beach, countryside or into the mountains, long summer days are made for meandering road trips with family and friends – where the journey is just as important as the destination. This is especially true for motorhome holidays, where the open road counts as both.
Almost all of us will have fond memories of a favourite open road adventure. Sadly, though, as the holiday ends and we return to normal life, these memories can quickly fade. Photographs and videos offer reminders of these happy times but can only go so far in helping us recall the sights and sounds of a trip.
Research suggests that the connection between scent and memory is incredibly strong. In fact, emotional moments may be captured along with a certain fragrance and ‘locked’ away in our brains for decades. All it takes is one hint of the smell associated with that memory and it can bring the feeling flooding back to our minds.
What if we could recreate the smell of an open road trip adventure to help unlock those warm, nostalgic feelings when the holiday is long gone? Better still, what if we could bottle it - and take it with us on our commute, the school run or even the next trip to the dentist? We decided to find out.
How did we define the fragrance?
Everybody will have their own, unique memory of a summer road trip. However, there are inevitably a number of similar threads that run throughout our collective nostalgia. To discover these essential fragrance notes, we asked over 2,000 regular road trippers what they consider to be the key smells of the open road.
They told us:
- “Morning sea mist overlooking the beach”
- “Sunflower fields seen from an open window”
- “My dog’s wet coat”
- “Hot sand and campfires”
- “Flowers, from bluebells to lilies”
- “The smell of tarmac after it rains”
We then took the four most popular answers as our fragrance notes.
How did we create the right blend?
The next step – how to amalgamate very different and highly evocative smells into one unifying fragrance?
Working with a bespoke fragrance company that specialises in custom commissions, we set about turning these four abstract smells into one nostalgia-scented oil.
We sampled different variations of our key ‘ingredients’ to come up with what we believed to be the purest essence of that smell. These were then blended at different ratios to create a balance of two deeper undertones – smoke and damp – and two lighter top notes – flowers and salt.
The next step was to infuse our chosen scent into an air freshener form, which took weeks of testing to get the strength just right.
How can I sample the limited edition air freshener?
We’re proud to introduce our new scent, now available as an air freshener to remind you of the good times - wherever your next journey takes you.
We have a limited run of air fresheners available to sample. If you’d like to find out more about how to get your hands on one, please email pressteam@ripethinking.co.uk
