“I think perfume is like synaesthesia,” says Loewe perfumer Nuria Cruelles. “You can close your eyes and feel textures, temperatures, colours, moments.”
For Cruelles, scent is less a finishing touch than a way of viewing the world, and she describes it with the sort of language usually reserved for art, architecture, music and gastronomy.
This approach informs Loewe Perfumes’ Crafted Collection, where individual ingredients take centre stage. Launched in October last year with three scents – Iris Root, Bittersweet Oud and Roasted Vanilla – the collection has now expanded to five new perfumes.
Rather than treating iris, oud or vanilla simply as components in a formula, Cruelles explores their personalities, building compositions around the relationships between them.
“Oud is very rustic, animalic,” she says. “It has a lot of buttery facets also.” To reveal a brighter side, she pairs it with orange, creating what she calls a “contrast marriage”, setting the dark, earthy character of oud against zesty citrus.
The new scents also draw on nature. Field Diary blends citrus, lychee and sandalwood; Sweet Woodland pairs florals with ginger and cognac; Rosetopia deepens rose with amber; Smoky Rain evokes a summer storm; and Verdant Grove layers pistachio and iris with caramel, vanilla and cedarwood.
For Cruelles, however, the interest lies less in individual ingredients than in what happens when they meet. Take timut pepper, used in Iris Root. Despite its name, the Himalayan spice smells far removed from conventional black pepper, and instead has grapefruit and moss-like facets. Against creamy, sensual iris, it creates what Cruelles calls an “explosion”.
Verdant Grove is more harmonious, pairing carrot seed with iris in what she describes as an “affinity marriage”. There are, she explains, three ways ingredients can interact: contrast, affinity or hedonism.
“Hedonism for me is when it’s something unexpected, surprising, elegant and sophisticated,” she says.
That spirit of experimentation has particular resonance in the Middle East, where fragrance has long been woven into daily life. Layering and combining scents are part of an established perfume culture – one Cruelles believes is increasingly influencing the rest of the world.
“For me, the Middle East is where perfume was born,” says Cruelles, who has visited the region several times. “Everything centres around perfume. Every day, people mix, layer and play.”
She sees a natural affinity between that tradition and the growing appetite in the West for fragrance as something to experiment with rather than a permanent signature. “I am happy that nowadays we have this whole range of perfumes to play with, to combine, to choose for each moment.”
The notion of a signature scent worn for years, she believes, can be limiting. The nose eventually becomes accustomed to a familiar fragrance, making it increasingly invisible to its wearer.
“Our nose identifies new essences because we read the air all the time,” she explains. “So we have to re-educate our nose to feel the sensation of new moments, new sensations.” Choosing perfume is therefore closer to choosing clothes or jewellery than to adopting a permanent identity.
“That’s why I always say there are different perfumes for different moments. It’s like clothes. You choose your clothes depending on your day, like your jewellery.”
Cruelles’s method may sound scientific, but at its core it is experimental. “Sometimes I think: ‘I’m going to use this ingredient to make this effect.’ And then, it turns out to be completely different and it surprises me,” she says. Timut pepper was one such lesson. “It ruined my formulas,” Cruelles says with a laugh. “I thought: ‘Why is this amazing ingredient ruining everything?’” The answer was ultimately one of proportion. “The right amount and the right ingredients. That is the key.”
She compares crafting a scent to baking: too much or too little flour can alter the structure of a cake, while in perfumery a subtle adjustment can transform a composition. But there is no recipe book for an entirely new perfume. “You have to play and try. We make a lot of trials.”
Cruelles’s Spanish heritage also informs her work for Loewe, whose roots stretch back to 19th-century Madrid. Native ingredients form part of her olfactory vocabulary, including rockrose, also known as labdanum. Resinous, leathery and woody, labdanum has a forceful presence. Rather than suppressing it, Cruelles uses co-distillation to soften its rougher edges and reveal a more rounded character.“
When I chose this ingredient, I was afraid,” she admits. “It has a lot of personality. It’s very rustic, strong and balsamic.” The experiment succeeded.
“It made the fragrance whole,” she says. “Everything is integrated. There are no facets, angles or sharp edges. Everything has to be round.”
For Cruelles, scent is also a sensory language. Sandalwood feels soft and transparent, almost white, while citrus is sharper and more effervescent, appearing in shades of orange, yellow or even metallic. Aldehydes can feel almost hot. “I have a good nose,” she says, comparing her relationship with scent to someone with an exceptional ear for music. “My nose reads the air for me, and it’s like every scent molecule makes music in my brain.”
That philosophy informed one of Loewe’s most recognisable olfactory creations, Tomato Leaves, which was developed as a scented candle from Cruelles’s childhood memories of summers spent peeling tomatoes with her grandmother. Its pungent green scent offered an unexpected interpretation of a familiar ingredient. The candle subsequently became a social media phenomenon during the so-called Tomato Girl Summer trend of 2023.
Perhaps Cruelles’s most poetic description is reserved for oud. If vanilla feels like a comforting embrace, oud is grounding. “For me, it is roots, because it anchors you to the earth,” she says. The perfumer imagines the human body as a plant: the legs are roots, the body becomes wood and spices, and the face represents flowers. Oud and vetiver belong to that root system. “It’s where you’re stuck on the earth. Because as a creative, we always fly.”
That tension between grounding and imagination neatly describes her creative process. It may begin instinctively, but there is discipline behind it. Every ingredient must have a reason for being there.“It’s like an architect in my brain,” she says. “I am building things, and everything has to connect.”
There may be a commercial brief behind a new Loewe fragrance, but Cruelles insists the creative interpretation remains hers. Ultimately, she sees the bottle and the liquid inside it as two entirely different things. “The bottle is the dress,” she says. “But the perfume is the soul.”For a perfumer who translates landscapes, ingredients, memories and emotions into invisible form, it is an apt distinction. The dress may catch the eye, but the soul is what lingers.