Capture a place in a fragrance? Now you're talking scents

LUXURY BRANDS:HOW DO YOU evoke a personal memory of a place through scent? Or create scents inspired by holidays?

Translating travel into perfume is the idea behind Memo, a new French luxury fragrance brand with a lovely little shop in Paris, on Rue des Saints-Pères, that opened last November.

Memo has four fragrances that evoke four very different places: Lalibela, in Ethiopia; Siwa, in Egypt; Sundance, in the US; and Inle, in Burma.

And now the owner, Clara Molloy, wants to capture Ireland in a fragrance.

Molloy, a 35-year-old well-travelled Spaniard who is married to an Irishman, said she loves Ireland and spends most of her holidays in Ballycastle, near Thurles, in Co Tipperary, where her husband's family has a stud farm.

It was while working as an independent publisher for luxury brands in Barcelona that she met the perfumer Alienor Massenet in Paris and the idea of creating evocative travel fragrances became a reality.

Both women have extensive travel backgrounds.

"We are working on the Ireland fragrance, but it is very tough, because I want something that is very joyful, happy and fresh but with a strong character."

Her four Memo fragrances are made in Ireland but sold only in her shop in Paris (which also sells candles, soaps and body lotions), at the department store Le Bon Marché in Paris and at Harvey Nichols, including the Dublin branch, where they cost €107 for a 50ml bottle of eau .

Memo, 60 rue des Saints-Pères, 75007 Paris, 00-33-1- 42229663, www.mymemo.com