Pao Pincerna’s path is twinned with the Jitterbug Perfume story even though he hadn’t even read the book back in 2018, well the truth is he only read it in 2025. Entering the OK! National Beauty Awards with a face cream in 2018, his path to perfumery is one of the strangest ones ever. His globe trotter briefcase contained one vial of elixir that he was working on as a side project. The bombastic fragrance drifted in the air as he presented his organic face cream. The panel asked about the vial so he explained it was just an olfactory experiment. They moved him to the perfume category where he won from nowhere with just this one vial of elixir and some scribbled notes.
The terrible ramifications of this he was blissfully unaware of as he believed destiny had shined down to show him his calling in life. Many years ago he had done a perfumery course with the renowned natural perfumer Alec Lawless who had told Pao that he could be the ‘Jimi Hendrix’ of perfumery but he wasn’t from that world so he took the compliment and carried on being an organic chemist of natural products. Now there was proof that perhaps this could be true as he had been chosen as the perfume of the year.
Like all fairy tales it turned quickly into a nightmare, he had to create one thousand mini vials of this elixir for the awards ceremony. He had no commercial perfume making equipment, no real idea what he was doing, very little time and he was almost flat broke. The vials were late arriving, the ingredients supplier was closed for two weeks for a stock take so three days before the vials were due at OK! he only had 1100 labels for vials that were not here and perfume not made. He couldn’t even practice stickering as he had no vials.
The vials and the ingredients arrived 48 hours before the deadline, he considered pulling out but this was the divine opportunity. Working through the night with the most basic of equipment, blending perfume with measuring cylinders, hand pouring the perfume into the vials, delirious through lack of sleep, struggling to count his progress somehow he finished just before the courier came to pick up the bounty of sniffs.
He went to Brighton to recuperate, Brighton was that kind of place where people went from a pressure environment to find themselves and heal. Staring at the sea he thought about his dreams, the dreams that a couple of months ago he hadn’t even manifested that had become true. Then he found out the reality, the Corporate Perfume industry is cruel and closed to idealists. Viewed as a disrupter he was shunned, reported for violations that were made up by those wishing to silence him. He continued, thinking that the universe was testing him. The OK! National Beauty Awards went live and he didn’t have a finished product, nothing to sell, regulations pending so the buzz went flat, completely flat lined, the terrifying silence of the dead beat.
2019 saw a change in fortunes, he found a beautiful French packing firm who agreed to create his dream marquette for free. A marquette is the box template to make a finished perfume that could sit alongside the best perfume houses in any swanky London department store. The box was beautiful, he created a design based on his fingerprint in textured white cardboard, a high end triple walled coco glass perfume bottle sat on violet plush silk inside the box. The silk was scented with the perfume so you could smell the box. Synthetic perfume doesn’t last on fabric, the same as washing detergent fades but natural perfume sinks deep into the fabric to leave a lasting scent.
Triumphant Pao was ready to present his new perfume, he called it Effrene which means wild from the forest floor. Then COVID hit, not only did Pao catch covid so he lost his sense of smell, the perfumery closed for what he though would be a matter of weeks. Weeks turned into months so Pao took a huge risk to move into an Airbnb in Bedford Square Brighton for the summer. He travelled on a train filled with no-one with just a couple of hats and a case full of clothes. He found even though failure that he could be happy just living in a place surrounded by like minded people.
Then the terrible news, the roof had fallen in on the old bakery floor in Stony Stratford where the perfumery sat unused. Water had poured in as no-one was checking the building; the equipment, the ingredients and all of Pao’s notes were destroyed. Black mould, the plague of anything natural whether paper, fabric or ingredient had finally cursed the perfume dream. The marquette, black with mould had to be thrown away, glassware broken by the elements, he could only salvage a small amount of the perfumery that had been in the storage room.
Wonderful people drove the remnants of the perfumery to West Street and one week later he did a perfumery launch with wonderful newfound friends ‘The Qwarks’ with that same vial of elixir that had won him the OK! National Beauty Awards. Well it was their album launch at the Sailing Club on the seafront so he stood again with this one vial, nothing to sell but realising there are kind people out there.
When you dream, failure is inevitable, in fact you fail more times than you succeed. Scarce is not the destination, it is proof that if you keep going wonderful things can happen so it is the start of an Olfactory journey to scent nirvana. Winning Best Natural Perfumery in the Southeast 2026 at The Global Pharmaceutical awards has given Pao the belief to continue. Follow the Scarce story here, maybe buy his book and realise why scent is more important to you than you actually realise.
To be continued (hopefully happier) but my spirit will always be happy as I tried…