Making Scents of the Perfume Content Creator

Cover image courtesy of Han Tang

One click on Han Tang’s account, aka The Perfume Menagerie on TikTok and Instagram, will transport and introduce you into the decadent and luxurious world of perfumes. With videos describing what perfumes certain mythical and historical figures might have worn and descriptions of her perfume recommendations so evocative you might swear you could smell it through the screen, scrolling through Han’s account is truly like walking into a dreamy menagerie of perfumes. A daughter of vietnamese refugees and a two-time survivor of cancer, Han graduated with a degree in religious studies and history, and outside of perfumes is passionate about politics and old churches. Han also works within marketing, as in her own words: “I love telling stories that reach people.”

Growing up, Han often watched her mother apply makeup as if it was armour with awe and fascination. “My mother was the most beautiful woman in the world,” she explains. If her mother put on makeup like armour, she sprayed her signature bottle of Ralph Lauren’s ‘Romance’ as though it was a potion or incantation. In her hunger to tell a story and to find her own medium, the beauty industry was alluring due to its connection with her mother. “I was an okay writer, my poetry is pretty embarrassing, and I don’t have much talent for the visual arts either,” Han explained. “ But something about the beauty industry just spoke to me.” When one goes beyond the industry’s capitalization on insecurities, Han found a place where “women and queer folk can express themselves and gain a sense of agency and power in a harsh world”.

It was in the discovery and exploration of niche perfumery that Han found her story-telling medium. Although she’d grown up wearing perfume and has many memories associated with them- Elizabeth Arden’s Green Tea as a child, Marc Jacob’s ‘Daisy’ when her mother gifted it to her on her twelfth birthday, Dior J’adore Eau De Toilet the perfume she wore when falling in love with the man she is now with- she had never realised the potential of perfumery in storytelling until the beginning of the pandemic. When Han discovered the beginning of #perfumetiktok and the high-information hobby, she fixated on the topic due to her ADHD and delved into blogs, books, academic articles, reddit threads, and Facebook groups. Once she found perfume discovery sets it was, as she says, “off to the races”.

Han realised perfume could not only tell a story, it could evoke “primordial memories buried deep within us.” This was present even before she found perfume tiktok- smelling Delina Exclusif by Parfums de Marly invoked feelings of luxury, while Marc Jacob’s ‘Daisy’ had to be retired due to the fact that she wore it when she was first diagnosed with cancer at eighteen and now reminds her of the chemotherapy wards. Delina Exclusif brought out feelings and a side of personality she thought she’d forgotten about, particularly after the devastation and the low-self esteem that came with being diagnosed with cancer a second time and the side effects of treatment.

Han wanted a space where she could dump her ideas- becoming a perfume content creator was more of an accidental afterthought. She had a short-lived Instagram, but began her TikTok when she realised there was a strong community there. Listening to the podcast The Perfume Room Pod by Emma Vern who interviewed people from all walks of life in the industry, the interview with TikTok creator Valerie @thenichesample’s thoughtful and unique perspective inspired her to join.

Graduating from university and moving to Alberta from Manitoba in the middle of the pandemic was an isolating, lonely experience and something about how the perfume community on TikTok was full of eloquent and passionate people drew her in. The perfume community on TikTok is also variably different from forums such as Youtube and Instagram communities; where the latter in the 2010s focused on fragrance as a status symbol or a way to receive sexual attention, the community on TikTok uses fragrance as a storytelling medium, an art form where one can express emotions that encapsulate the human experience. Han sees the social media app as revolutionary having opened up discourse and the industry to people from all walks of life. Her own work as a social media manager also can be attributed to this view, with little work-life balance as being a social media manager and perfume content creator bleed into each other. “It speaks to how much I love it that I can still fathom it.”

As for the perfume industry itself, Han is not one to shy away from frank criticism of an industry that for decades, if not centuries, has been incredibly western-focused, prejudiced, and has only given importance to perfume houses and consumers from the west. Many perfumers and brands centre French perfume houses as the standard of perfumery, ignoring the centuries-worth history of fragrance from the rest of the world. The euro-centric perfume industry also has a long and storied tradition of being racist, particularly in the usage of the word ‘oriental’ as a catch-all for anything vaguely asian. In reference to these brands, Han believes they are ‘quaking in their boots’ as they try to figure out a way to be more than just vintage antiques. “With new perfumers, who come from groups that are marginalised, being trained and releasing their own independent creations, I think they definitely have competition.”

***“I think the brands of our mothers and grandmothers are quaking in their boots, trying to figure out how to evolve beyond being artifacts of the past.”***

Rather than looking towards fragrance houses of the past, Han prefers to look to those living in the present. The Canadian perfume industry, while young, is particularly robust and full of intriguing brands. There’s Montreal-based Jazmin Sarai, founded by Egyptian-Canadian el-Masri, Edmonton-based perfumer Joshua who created niche perfume brand Libertine, Toronto’s Universal Flowering by Courtney Rafuse, and experiential house Zoologist by Victor Wong, among many others.

Han’s inspirations for her content and the ways in which she uses fragrance as story-telling on her account are varied. Her all time favourite house, Frederic Malle, is named after the founder who rather than being a perfumer, preferred to give perfumers opportunities to create their dream fragrances, and is one of the only houses that puts the name of the perfumer on the label. Han converted to Episcopalian, a denomination of Christianity in 2017, and chose Mary Magdalene as her patron saint after majoring in religious studies and writing about how her status reflects contemporary views of women in antiquity. In a happy coincidence, Mary Magdalene also is the patron saint of perfumes- she is often depicted holding a vial of nard (a costly aromatic ointment) in her hands- something Han only learned this year and did not know prior to becoming involved in perfume content creation. Academically, Han has been unable to find books and knowledge on perfumery outside of Europe and North America written in English, revealing untapped knowledge. “I know Vietnam has always been hailed as the place to get the best oud and musk even in early 400 AD. So I feel the need to translate this and get the information out.”

Of this year’s new releases and discoveries, Han’s favourites are Dries Van Noten’s Soie Malaquis, L’Artisan Parfumeur’s Couleur Vanille, Frederic Malle’s Monsieur, James Heeley’s Note de Yuzu, Czech & Speake’s Villa Ausonia, Le Labo’s Mousse de Chene 30, YOSH U4EEAH!, and everything created by Universal Flowering. Other favourites include Frederic Malle’s Lys Mediterranee which ‘felt like coming home’, and Sweet Grass by Libertine which makes her feel she is a participant in a ‘secret and saccharine love affair and declaring [her] everlasting devotion’. Her favourite perfume notes include vanilla, cinnamon, oakmoss, saltwater, resins and incense such frankincense, myrrh, and galbanum.

Han recommends starting with an addiction to sampling and discovery sets if you’re wanting to dip your toes into the world of fragrance. Discovery kits contain one to two millilitres samples of a brand’s perfumes, with Sephora selling discovery sets from well-known perfume brands such as Juliette Has a Gun, Skylar, and Commodity. For niche perfume sample sets, Dusita Parfums and Maison Crivelli’s sets come with a voucher for a full bottle of one’s choice. Canadian niche brands Libertine Jazmin Sarai, and Universal Flowering sell discovery sets on their sites, and Canadian retailer Scentrique creates samples of popular niche perfumes. She recommends saving your discovery set boxes, to treasure them and make them feel like collectibles and savour the process of coming to understand your own perfume nose.

For anyone wanting to become a perfume content creator, or a content creator in anything, Han has a simple piece of advice: “Just start.” Her other words of wisdom include advising potential creators to practice, make friends, build a community where you can support each other, know when to take risks and to say yes, be brave and speak up, and be unapologetically yourself. “I know that’s super corny,” the content creator admits, “but really, be yourself because it is so easy to become a forgettable face that talks about the same perfume that everyone has smelled. Being distinct and recognizable in your actions and your style and your way of speaking, [...] you’ll find a community that will become attached to you.”

From the present to the future, Han is hoping to use her account to foster an environment where those who are loudest learn to listen, and those unable to speak up feel supported to do so. “I hope we’re able to have uncomfortable conversations, to create things that are challenging and able to tell stories in a language we can’t even fathom.” She’s hoping that there will be more literature and books on perfumery outside of a Euro-centric lens in the future that she can read. “I just want to do enough cool things that I can look back at- I want to be the cool aunt with a million stories to tell. I want to keep telling stories with this medium.”

Follow Han on TikTok and Instagram with her handle, @theperfumemenagerie, to learn more about all things fragrance!