live life fully

By: Sara Phillips Chiappetta

Patchouli always invites dramatic groans when my workshop students spot it on the oil palette. Most arrive convinced they despise it, a harsh verdict for a botanical cousin of the gentle mint plant. Yet when they dip a scent strip into the double-distilled raw material, the room falls silent. Skepticism vanishes from their faces, replaced by genuine wonder and surprise. 

Wait, this is patchouli?  

These discoveries are why I teach scent as an emotional time machine.

The oils on our table mirror those used by elite ancient Romans — and patchouli is no exception. Beyond grounding today’s top luxury fragrances, it was recently confirmed sealed inside a 2,000-year-old Roman quartz bottle in southern Spain, waiting two millennia in a family mausoleum to be rediscovered. 

I launched my first botanical perfume brand and workshop series in Washington, D.C., sobbed when the pandemic shuttered it, detoured through a Florence master’s program and a global agriculture NGO, and landed in Rome to rebuild my life from scratch. Perfume is where my creativity lives, and it was patiently waiting for me to come back.

One of my favorite things about living in Rome is the discoveries I make from simply wandering around and seeing a shop that looks interesting. When I arrived in Rome this past winter, I discovered Incenso from Castello del Strega and Confetto from Profumum Roma (Via della Colonna Antonina, 27). Buying a new perfume is a sensory signal that I’m starting something new and that smell will be forever associated with that point in time.

Confetto — Italian for confection—is a party in a bottle: pure playfulness without the tooth-aching sugar. Despite being created 30 years ago, the festivity lives on. The sales assistant sprayed it on my wrist and then said I should step outside because by that point we were in a cloud of different aromas. The sun was shining and as I lifted my wrist to my nose to inhale the delicious sugary almond concoction, it was like the city was celebrating with me.

When you need to take a break from the party, Incenso is for alone, meditative states. The Strega del Castello story drew me in just because of the name and perhaps because I found them in the oldest herbalist shop in Rome, Antica Erboristeria Romana (Via di Torre Argentina, 15). The dark wood cabinets and drawers from the 18th century set the witchy vibe for healing whatever ails you through plants. The nose, Caterina Roncati, draws her inspiration from ancient perfume knowledge, something I teach in my workshops.  

On one of my regular aimless strolls around the city, I stumbled on a perfume boutique, Bertozzini (Via Cola di Rienzo, 192/194), that’s been around since the 1950’s. I asked the gentleman working there if he could help me to smell some niche Italian brands using patchouli in their creations. He introduced me to two brands, Orto Parisi and Meo Fusciuni. Orto Parisi, garden Parisi, is the second brand of Italian perfumer Alessandro Gualtieri.  

Meo Fusciuni is the creation of Giuseppe Imprezzabilea, a brand based in Liguria. After smelling three of the saturated scent strips, I’m creating in my mind a very deep, dark character who has plunged into the depths of their soul and is excavating their shadow self. I was particularly taken with Sogni, which was like putting your face over a pot of freshly steamed rice while sitting in a wood sauna. When I contacted the brand with my questions, it seems my imagination went right to the place where he lives.

”Perfume is a soul that draws our shadow. It is an alchemy, that subtle link between life and our innermost thoughts. It tells us who we are even before our minds understand its true meaning” Meo tells me. “I have gathered from the darkness every fragment of the perfume I have sought for years;  that perfume is memory, root, feeling.”

It was with Orto Parisi that things took a personal, maybe synchronistic turn that afternoon.

In a strange ancestral irony, the scent from the brand that resonated with me the most is Terroni, a derogatory term for people from the south. The perfumer’s grandfather was from Puglia so this is a personal homage, taking something ugly and turning it into a richly smelling loving tribute. Terroni is nothing short of a volcanic explosion of rich, slightly sweet earthy aroma. My journey back here to Italy is also an homage to my roots and ancestry and the sheer lasting power of this perfume mirrors how the land stays with you.     

The color of the deeply earthy juice is a gorgeous burnt red that brings to my mind the origin of the name Rogliano, where my family originates in Calabria. One of the theories about the town’s name is that it comes from Rublanum, the Latin words rubedine terrae, which means ‘red land’.    

According to Orto Parisi, ”Making perfume reveals that every creation is a momentary portrait, a reflection of who you are at that moment, which over time becomes a trace of your evolution, an imprint of your nature, or a construction that ends up defining you.”

Back in the workshop, I watch my students smell patchouli again near the end of our session, after the strip has been sitting in the open air for almost two hours.

Within this short period, something has shifted. 

What’s left is something warmer, and more itself. Perfumers call this the drydown, the moment when everything volatile burns away and the true essence of the material finally speaks. There is no rushing this process, as painfully slow as it can be, all you can do is wait.  I think about my own life drydown.  

Now solidly in my 40s, I’m seeing life as an endless journey of becoming what feels most true for you after all of the masks and societal conditionings have evaporated. Perfumers close our eyes to smell because the external world is loud and disruptive to finding the truth of what we’re working with.  Perfume, to me, will always be a practice of turning down the volume and tuning into who I truly am.     

You can follow Sara on her Substack “Scent in Ruins” here.