La Pyae Apothecary Captures the Smell of Myanmar in Its First Fragrance

LONDON — It has been almost 10 years since the writer and editor Kathleen Baird-Murray Skyped with the perfumer Frank Voelkl — the nose behind Le Labo’s Santal 33, Phlur’s Father Figure and Glossier’s You — about creating her own fragrance brand.

The idea for Baird-Murray’s brand inspired by her Myanmar heritage took a halt as life got in the way, but she picked it all up again last year when she launched her fragrance brand La Pyae Apothecary and its first scent Catch Me If I Fall.

In less than a year, the fragrance has been picked up by Hotel Chelsea in New York, Estelle Manor in Oxfordshire, England and Liberty, where the brand has made its debut to fast sales and a coveted spot in the luxury department store’s window displays.

The making of Catch Me If I Fall has been an emotional journey for Baird-Murray.

Each note and component in the fragrance is a nod to Myanmar, which she visited almost 30 years ago for the first time to rediscover her mother’s history, which the brand in some sorts is a love letter to.

Baird-Murray calls the top notes of Catch Me If I Fall “the instant attraction” which uses bergamot zest, cardamom pods, neroli and green leaves; the middle notes, otherwise known as “the beating heart” are made up of jasmine sambac, ambrette, freesia and iris, and to top it all off, the base notes, or “the grounding hug” uses upcycled cedarwood, sandalwood and white musk.

She asked Voelkl not to use any heavy or suffocating components such as cinnamon, vanilla and tuberose. To guide his nose, she made him a care package using items that carried sentimental value to her: a book of photographs with colors she loved, from pink to primary colored plastic stools found outside tea shops; the gold leaf with the neon signs at the temples; pictures of jasmine petals threaded on strings that are given as offerings at temples and Sandalwood prayer beads; little lacquer coasters and her mother, Maureen Baird-Murray’s memoir, “A World Overturned: A Burmese Childhood 1933-1947.”

“I didn’t want anything that was too perfect because it’s inspired by my heritage. I [wanted the] fragrance to capture everything that I felt about this incredible country: the sense of humor, the nothing being quite perfect and the juxtaposition of gold leaf and neon lights,” Baird-Murray said.

“It’s all of this mishmash, but I wanted it to be contemporary and not something you’d see in a gift shop on your way out of Myanmar. I wanted it to be something that someone in the city could wear,” she added.

Voelkl had nailed the scent by the third iteration of Catch Me If I Fall — though for each iteration, there were at least 10 different samples in the lab.

The fragrance is bottled in a simple ribbed glass bottle with the name printed in red on an off white label that makes it look like an artifact from the 1920s. Baird-Murray teamed up with Farrow, a graphic design agency that works primarily with musicians including Kylie Minogue, Pet Shop Boys, Calvin Harris and Texas. They used a serif font to reflect her career as a journalist — another personal touch that contributed to the making of La Pyae Apothecary.