Discovering The Smell of Space with Marina Barcenilla

Marina Barcenilla leads a double life, but this is not a secret: she’s an Independent Perfumer, a fragrance educator, and a Space Scientist currently finishing her PhD in Astrobiology.

With over two decades of experience as a nose and fragrance educator, founder of and the fragrance creator for other British brands, she also founded her own school where she teaches in English and Spanish, and is an Academician at the Spanish Academia del Perfume.

Her long list of accolades, including two Fragrance Foundation UK Awards for Best New Independent Perfume, makes her one of the driving realities of independent British perfumery. In this interview, we learn about her two brands, MB Parfums and AromAtom, and the role education occupies in today's fragrance market.

What are the inspirations behind your two brands, MB Parfums and AromAtom? What was the starting point for their creation?

The inspiration behind Marina Barcenilla Parfums has always been personal.
Each perfume is the expression of a personal memory that I treasure, from the love I feel for my mother to the feeling of kissing my first boyfriend.

I created some of these perfumes years before the brand was launched and acted as the catalyst for its creation in 2011.

AromAtom, on the other hand, is inspired by my work as a Space Scientist and the original space-smells that I created for my education and science outreach project, which is really at the heart of AromAtom. With this brand, I wanted to make space more accessible to everybody.

How does their perfumery offer differ, and which product would you recommend to start with for a customer approaching your two brands for the first time?

The fragrances from my MB Parfums line are entirely natural, something many perfume lovers haven’t encountered outside of aromatherapy, but they’re nothing like aromatherapy blends!

They go far beyond essential oils and use precious essences from around the world that I’ve spent years sourcing and collecting, and range from exotic florals to fresh Fougères and leather Chypres.

The AromAtom fragrances are a mixed- media offer, blending natural ingredients with other types of molecules to create versatile scents inspired by my research as a space scientist.

They’re unusual, but wearable scents, and the story behind each fragrance invites the wearer to ask questions and initiate a conversation about the planet or part of space each perfume encapsulates in fragrance form.

Perfume is very personal, and all my fragrances are very different, so I can’t recommend a particular perfume to anybody without knowing what they like.

I always advise people to start with a sample before investing in a bottle of any perfume, which is why I offer 2ml samples of all my perfumes.

How do you converge your love for space science and and research with fragrance creation in AromAtom?

Both perfumery and scientific research are important parts of my everyday life.

They’re not just my work but genuine passions, so it comes easily to me.
It all started in 2017, when I founded my science outreach and public engagement project, AromAtom, an olfactory tour from our planet to the centre of the galaxy.

The space-smells I created are based on scientific data and my own research as a space scientist.
By scientific data, I mean the chemical molecules we have identified within gas and dust clouds in our galaxy and on the surfaces and atmospheres of the planetary bodies of our solar system.

What I’ve done with the AromAtom fragrances is to create wearable and more perfume-like versions of the educational smells.

Describe your brands in three words...

Marina Barcenilla Parfums: natural, personal, artisan. AromAtom: unique, innovative, futuristic.

What can we expect from MB Parfums and AromAtom in the future?

The next thing on the list for MB Parfums is a perfume inspired by the birth of my niece. It’s not just about the smell of babies, but about the feeling of wonder and renewed hope in my family and my unconditional love for my sister, which now extends to my niece.

There’s also the return of bath and body oils my customers keep asking about. For AromAtom, I’m currently working on scents for two more planetary bodies and a very special star, but I can’t tell you what they are yet!

I don’t know if any of these fragrances will launch this year as I’m currently focused on finishing my PhD, so nothing will happen until I submit my thesis this summer.

In addition to fragrance creation, you're running a perfumery school. What role does education play in perfumery in your opinion?

I think education is essential not just for perfumers but also for anybody who uses perfume. The perfume industry is infamous for being secretive and elitist, and perfumery education has been inaccessible to most people for decades.

Until recently, only those with financial means could afford to give up their everyday lives and set off to study in a perfumery school.

The right name or the right contacts were also important. I’m an excellent example of this; there’s no way I would have ever become a Perfumer following the traditional trajectory.

I had no help and found nothing but barriers and suspicion in my quest to learn. I believe that people have a right to access education and to create their own future at any stage in their lives, and they shouldn’t be expected to abandon their families, their homes, or their entire lives to do this. They need accessible options. Fortunately, this has changed over the past decade, and the educational offer is growing.

Education is also important for people who use fragrance. Let’s not forget we’re here because they chose to buy our perfumes. We owe them respect and transparency. They have a right to know what’s in their perfume, what the brand that sells it stands for, the hard work and years of training behind it, and the name of the perfumer who created the fragrance. Teaching perfumery is not just about training new perfumers. It’s about sharing information about ingredients and the way perfume is created, and about providing tools that anybody can use to find out what’s behind their fragrance while protecting the intellectual rights of perfume creators.

Who is your perfumery school for, and what courses do you offer?

My school is for anybody who wants to learn how perfume is created. Many people don’t want to become professional perfumers but love perfume and want to know more about the ingredients we use or how we create them. Others want to learn so they can blend their own perfumes at home, create something personal that they like and is unique to them, their friends and family, or enjoy learning something new! Then, there are the people who want to change careers and are considering perfumery as their next step, but who must work and have families and lives that they can’t abandon.

At my School of Creative Perfumery, they can continue living their everyday lives while studying perfumery online. They can also supplement their online learning with face-to- face courses or personal mentoring sessions if they have the time and wish to do so.

Finally, what is one of your most treasured scent memories?

One of my most treasured scent memories is the smell of patchouli, which reminds me of my mum. The angriest I remember seeing her was when my sister and I smashed (by accident) a tiny vial of patchouli oil which mum had treasured for over a decade, whoops! It was small, maybe a couple of ml, but the house smelled of patchouli for weeks. Our mum cried because she was so upset, my sister and I cried because mum was so angry with us, our dad cried tears of laughter because he thought the whole thing was amusing, and after a few days, we all cried because the smell just would-not-go-away!