Hollywood’s Sorceress of Scent

The Essence of Personality

Johnny Depp loves the smell of old books: ancient, dusty leather-bound tomes whose yellowed pages crackle with age. Helena Bonham Carter prefers to envelop herself in “a protective cloud like invisible armor that serves as an emotional anchor as well as a gateway to a fantasy world.” Austin Butler launched London perfume designer Azzi Glasser into the spotlight when he happened to mention in an interview that he never travels without her scented candles Rain on Earth.

Azzi Glasser is not merely a “nose.” She’s an alchemist, a character analyst, a storyteller, a knower of souls. She designed her first perfumes for Agent Provocateur when she was 23, and the pink, oval bottles are bestsellers to this day. Today, Glasser specializes in bespoke fragrances that fully reflect a particular personality – scents that give material form to a person’s essential self.

When you meet the petite, attractive perfume designer, you can tell very quickly that Glasser doesn’t think in individual fragrances but in narratives. It’s not for nothing that she calls her label The Perfumer’s Story. Each of her creations begins with one. “I interview people,” she explains, “like a journalist does, or even a therapist!” Glasser spends two or three hours with her clients, asking about their families, their childhoods, their dress style, their dreams, their anxieties. Lord David Linley, Earl of Snowdon, is one of her clients. After his interview, he stood up and said: “That was the best therapy session I ever had. Could I book another appointment for next week?”

Two Sides, One Scent

Glasser laughs as she recounts the anecdote. We’re sitting together on the hotel terrace of Le Majestic in Cannes across from the Palais des Festivals. The 56-year-old sorceress of scent enjoys attending cultural events. And she believes that everyone has two personas: a public and a private one. The genius lies in making both discernible to the olfactory senses – as a perfume.

How Glasser discovered Cindy Crawford’s core essence is an astonishing story in itself. For her 50th birthday, Crawford’s husband, Rande Gerber, wanted to surprise her with a custom fragrance. The problem was, Crawford hated perfume and had never found anything she liked. After having Gerber tell her all about the supermodel, ­Glasser developed two scents and flew with them to California. Crawford announced: “I’ll only accept the gift if Rande and I choose the same scent independent of each other.” He took a sniff, she took a sniff – and they both chose the same bottle. “Bingo!” You can hear the gratification in Glasser’s voice even today. Crawford immortalized the moment on Instagram, posting: “Even though I loved them both, I was drawn to one immediately because it felt like an old friend.”

Where Imagination Takes Shape

The Hollywood buzz around Azzi Glasser came about quite by coincidence. Her son attended the same school as Helena Bonham Carter and director Tim Burton’s child. What began as parents having a chat soon turned into a friendship, and it was at a children’s birthday party that Bonham Carter discovered Glasser’s profession. Between them, they had the idea to create a bespoke scent for a character in a film. Why not?

So, Azzi Glasser began developing scents to help actors flesh out their characters – creating a kind of olfactory guide to making them come alive. Over the years, for Bonham Carter alone, she designed scents for the Bellatrix Lestrange character from “Harry Potter,” Princess Margaret from “The Crown” and the iconic Red Queen from “Alice in Wonderland.” When the British actor played a down-and-out psychiatrist in Tim Burton’s “Dark Shadows,” Glasser helped her reek of bourbon and Gauloises. So much so, in fact, that fellow actor Johnny Depp was perplexed and asked the actor if she hadn’t perhaps gone a bit too far preparing for her role. When she told him her secret, he immediately asked for Glasser’s number. “Azzi possesses a certain sorcery in that she is capable of capturing the perfect essence of a character in scent,” he says, and became a loyal fan.

For Depp’s role in “Dark Shadows” Glasser created the essence of vampire in a bottle. Then, for his London townhouse, she designed Old Books, a scent evocative of libraries, eccentricity and rock ’n’ roll. Glasser’s name soon made the rounds in Hollywood and beyond. Laura Linney’s alternating characters in the play “The Little Foxes” each had their own scent – created by Azzi Glasser. In only two days, she designed a double identity for Cate Blanchett’s stage performance in “The Seagull.” Glasser’s client list goes on, and includes  Kylie Minogue, Orlando Bloom, Stephen Fry and Noomi Rapace.

More Than Just a Perfume

The perfumer's most spectacular achievement was arguably the fragrance she created for "Firebrand," the historical drama in which Jude Law played King Henry VIII – a tyrant with such bad physical health that he had open ulcers on his legs. So, the perfumer created a scent that smelled of sweat, excrement and decay. She filmed Law's reaction on her phone when he was testing it. The actor grimaced and proclaimed it disgusting, before adding straight away: "It's fantastic!" Alicia Vikander, who played his wife, Katherine, greeted Glasser at the film premiere with a mix of humor and desperation, saying: "Do you even know the hell you put me through?"

Azzi Glasser has gone beyond film characters to create fragrance for any number of hotels, private homes, exhibitions – and even an entire country. When David Cameron was British prime minister, he asked her to capture the scent of Great Britain. The result? Rain on Earth, a scent for which she took inspiration from rain falling on dry cobblestones. Later, it became Austin Butler's favorite fragrance.

Her current collection consists of thirteen fragrances and is available at select retailers, including London’s luxury department store, Liberty.When she launched her brand at the ABC Store in Manhattan, it became an instant bestseller. Fancy a bespoke fragrance? A trip to the London lab where the sorceress of scent works her magic will set you back 18,000 British pounds. 

Despite regular dealings with a celebrity clientele, Glasser talks about perfume with the enthusiasm of a child. It used to fascinate her to watch her mother get dressed for the evening. The crowning moment came when her mother applied her perfume and then left the room trailing a cloud of fragrance. This captured young Azzi's imagination and is something she never forgot.

Perhaps this is the secret to her success. Azzi Glasser doesn't sell fragrances, she distills memories, desires and identities. She helps actors slip into their roles and become someone else. And sometimes she even helps people become their true selves.