“Tea helps me create,” said Lyn Harris, the perfumer-founder of Perfumer H, a London-based purveyor of fragrance and tea. She described it as “one of my joys of life.”
It’s a passion that is steeped in her profession and has morphed into an obsession. Harris not only helps develop blends for her brand, but also consumes five pots of tea per day.
“It goes back to my Yorkshire roots, and the fact that tea drinking became this way of soothing and setting a tone for whatever’s next in your day,” said Harris, one of the industry’s most creative thinkers. “So, it just became this ritualistic thing for me over the last 20-odd years,” she continued. “It’s like smoking a cigarette.”
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Tea — of which Harris has now sampled many — stimulates her olfactory process, and delivers clarity and a sense of peace, among its far-flung effects. “It stems back from my grandparents, who always had a cup of tea,” she said. “They were really creative people.”
Harris’ grandmother made tisanes with berries plucked from her garden. “I used to love watching her, how she used to strain it, how methodical she was about making these tisanes,” said Harris. “The smell got me.”
So did the rituals around tea, which the entrepreneur has learned while globetrotting. “You get very naturally high from being with people and drinking the tea,” she said. “Every time I travel, I come back with a new tea idea.”
In Granada, in southern Spain, Harris is partial to a milky tea with cardamom and cinnamon, harking from North Africa. In Morocco, she partakes in gunpowder tea with mint leaves. The perfumer likes bubble tea in Taipei, and by her shop there she goes to Hermit’s Hut, where the tea ceremony centers on temperature.
In December, Harris drank pu’er tea in Jingmai, China, with locals in the 1,000-plus-year-old tea forest. “It was incredible,” she said. “You just carry on drinking from the same tea leaves. It goes on and on and on, for hours.”
Harris sets out to learn everything there is to know about tea, which is infused in religion, history and culture. A cupboard at home is chockablock with Kaikado caddies and bags full of tea.
“I get obsessed with something, I’ll learn all about it, do lots of reading on it, then search for where I can find the delicacies,” she said. “I’m challenging myself and my palette.”
Harris is always pushing boundaries. She was trained in France and became one of the first female master perfumers. Harris pioneered the use of naturals at a time when the market was flooded with flashy scents and novelty bottles. She founded Miller Harris, the successful niche fragrance house, in 2000, and left it at the end of 2012, after selling her stake to NEO Investment Partners.
A decade ago, Harris created Perfumer H, based on a passion for such pleasing smells as fruits, flowers and bread-baking. Her fragrances blend in memories of her grandparents’ house and gardens.
For around 20 years, she has been blending teas with Tim d’Offay, of Postcard Teas, that now include Yorkshire Grey, Morocco, Dandelion, Rose, Violet Leaf and Orange Blossom, which are linked to her scents. “He translates my ideas,” said Harris, who sends d’Offay a little bottle of perfume and might make a suggestion, such as an addition of Chinese mandarin. “It’s all down to his genius.”
Her upcoming, multilevel flagship in Shanghai will stock three of them.
There’s a mystical component to tea. For example, before setting off to Jingmai, she met a monk, who explained that in the forest: “You’re going to gather the mist, the steam, and you’ve got to bring it back with you, because it is going to bring peace and cleanse your home.”
“It’s so weird, because that’s my fragrance,” said Harris, referring to Steam, with a sencha tea note, due out at the end of April. “It’s about cleansing the soul and finding inner peace.” She characterizes the fragrance as fruity, clean and quite precise. It also includes white wood musk to create a steam-like veil, and will be accompanied by a new tea of the same name, too.
“I was blown away,” Harris said. “There’s this mist that comes in early in the morning. It’s like a ghost that follows you around. It goes, and then it comes back. It’s quite magical. It was like: It’s all meant to be.”