Invisible Ben: 10 Scents' Worth story number six

The story

(Evil) Max and I both work for Ben who runs Afia, a brilliant, creative writing agency full of lovely people.  I do some copywriting for his website and language workshops for his clients. Ben took the team up to Langar Hall in Nottinghamshire for a meeting, and his 40^th birthday dinner. So I thought I’d make him his own special scent. Ben does lots of sporty things, and I’d never known him smell of anything but himself, so I decided to make him a body spray for after sport and showering. I wanted it to smell like extra added Ben, so he could use it to smell just like himself again, after washing it all off in the shower. Does that make some sense?

I like using cedarwood for skin scents, plus a couple of the woody smooth synthetics, and I added citrus fruits because I pictured him having an orange juice before going home. It was light and fresh and I was really fond of it. Using masses of originality, I called it Ben.

Well, he unwrapped it and just looked at me as if I was nuts, then smiled and tried to look happy and said, “Scent, errr, great! Thanks Sarah.” He’s a dreadful liar, but he was being kind. (Max, on the other hand, got really excited about the idea of knowing a perfumer, and Evil Max followed on from our conversations on wicked 80s men’s scents.)

I put it in the development drawer ready for later. Then I took it out and did a bit more work on it for the 10 Scents’ Worth project. I renamed it Invisible Ben for reasons that are probably obvious.

The materials

I’ve had to change it a little since the original. I love anthropogan because it smells like people (maybe that’s why it’s got the anthro prefix) but IFRA have banned it, so I put in copaiba balsam instead. 

Sandalwood, benzoin and opoponax (I love saying that out loud and it smells glorious so I put it in just about everything I make) and a synthetic musky/woody/softy scent give it the clean skin impression. 

Another change was adding a coffee CO₂ extract that Hermitage oils have just brought out, because Ben loves good coffee. I put in cognac absolute – birthday celebration – then orange, lime and litsea cubeba for the citrus fruit top end.