MAIN PHOTOGRAPH: CHUCK NOBLE
British perfumer Azzi Glasser is responsible for cloaking some of our biggest screen-stars in their transformative scents – moving them into the correct headspace for a role, or returning them back to their old ‘self’ once the project ends.
The fascinating thing about Glasser, who has worked for 25 years mainly as in-house perfume designer for fashion designers and brands from Agent Provocateur to Bella Freud, is that her work is necessarily chameleonic. Moving into the minds of clients involves stepping to one side herself – creating a bespoke scent for an actor, or a perfume for a fashion brand, leaves little room to impress your own agenda, beliefs or instincts onto the project. It’s deeply inti mate – the perfumer must seek to embody that person, inside and out – and hugely creative; the finished story is poetry in motion: a tangible ‘experience’ that links back to the individual.