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Sarah McCartney

@4160tuesdays

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There are 4,160 Tuesdays in 80 years. We spend ours blending original perfumes for adventurous people.
By @sarahmccartneythinks at @scenthusiasm_ltd

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A fragrance collection with an accompanying reading list. Order in advance for signed, numbered bottles, to be delivered this autumn.
If flowers grew in heaven, hell and limbo, what would they smell like?

These Are The Good Days: a perfume for committing to getting your tasks done. The aroma of earth, roots, stems, leaves, petals and pods, with the occasional cup of tea to keep the spirits up. Vetiver, hay, attar mitti, barley, black tea, brown sugar, carrot and carob cake, gurjun Balsam, sugi wood and oakmoss.

It's complicated, but the ones you can always rely on aren't necessarily the ones who always give the right impression. If you really want a creative answer to a different question, and non-judgemental help with a problem that seems insurmountable, ask someone with an appropriately relevant past. Or wear this. More roses, extravagantly bitter, smooth vanilla absolute, brandy, tobacco, a hint of blackcurrant bud, four balsams, a touch of dark ironic incense, and Bulgarian moursalski tea.
18 months and dozens of versions.

Stop and take stock. Still, while observing the changing world. Equilibrium is for quiet assessment, for balance and consideration. The original idea was fire, earth, water, air: an equality of the elements, a pause before taking a decision. Possibly the most unusual perfume we've made yet. Made in a day. It formed itself in one go and wanted to be left in that exact balance if four materials.

Some days we need to escape the overwhelming weight of everything, and allow ourselves to drift lightly away. Linden blossom lifts us, with rose oil, elderflower, broom, barley, light incense, green tea (because that's the modern nectar) and soft clouds of floaty musks. taken in 4160Tuesdays by @4160tuesdays

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2 months ago

Happy 7th Birthday to the studio!
We've been at our 'new' place since 2019, 42A Raynham Road, London W6. Here's a small collection of photos showing the team, students, fellow artisans perfumers, work experiencers, film crews and photoshoots, Keanu the cat from next door, and my daily fuel: outstanding coffee made by Nick and roasted by Element.
#4160Tuesdays #PerfumeLife #ArtisanPerfume taken in 4160Tuesdays by @4160tuesdays

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a month ago

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a day ago

SOTD: Courteous Revellations, 4160 Tuesdays. Sarah McCartney 2026.
Again.

It’s been a funny ol’ week. Both nothing to speak of and everything to talk about.

Felix had his first proper haircut.
After 7 years of huge resistance to “anything hair”, either cutting or brushing, he sat in a barber’s chair of his own volition and had it all clippered off.

Well, strike me down with a feather.

His sensory needs means that since birth he has fiercly defended his head space.
Mornings & evenings had become a place of arguments as we tried to do “just 20 brushes”…”let’s count them together!”

Ach! No.

“Get away from me!”
“Stop this, this instant!”
“I don’t like your plan!”

His austistic echolalia has learnt phrases of resistance that he repeats by rote and are funny for us, but also not funny in his distress.

Elf locks and knots have been the bane of our lives for many a year: I guiltily cut them out in his sleep.

Yet somehow he watched his brother get a hair cut and for the first time decided he would get one too.

The barber was young, about 12, and his training hadn’t included SEND kids. And yet…and yet, he was most prodigious in his patience and kindness until it was finished.

I left a massive tip.

On the way home Felix looked into the sky and pronounced an elephant in the heavens!
And yes, it was there to behold.
A marvel.
A double joy.

This hair cut has changed our lives in many respects. No more fights. No more stress in the mornings.

A haircut.
So inconsequential.
So normal.
And yet so, so important.

I’m wearing Sarah’s @4160tuesdays audacious creation again today.
It smells entirely different to last time.
Fresher.
More open.
Clean and marine like.
The smoke lighter.
The roses less dense.
Like a soft cloud lifted.

These artisanal creations are so open to interpretation. So wavered by our mood or the heat of the day.
Ever changing.

They are a reminder that everything we see and feel, and smell, is coloured by our own experience of the day.

I feel as if I could wear this every day and still experience it anew every time.

If I won the lottery I wouldn’t go mad, but there would be signs…

…like a bottle of this in my closet.

Night night loves. Xx by @4160tuesdays

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3 days ago

Complicated Shadows is a fragrance I made in 2021 as part of the Clouds Collection, the darkest of the range, and my own favourite. I take it with me when I'm staying away from home, to spray on the pillow and help me sleep by surrounding me with a comfortingly familiar aroma.
It has layers of sunshine, fluffy white clouds and dark, thunderous ones:
Orange flower, narcissus and bergamot
Vanilla, musks and lily
Orris, black tea and oakmoss
Ever since it got itself named after the Elvis Costello song, I have been taking photos of complicated shadows and this one appears on the wall opposite the Dartmouth Castle, only when the light hits a roadsign just in the right place.
#ComplicatedShadows #4160Tuesdays #ArtisanPerfumery taken in 4160Tuesdays by @4160tuesdays

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5 days ago

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8 days ago

This is the 4160Tuesdays "warehouse" (and before anyone scolds me, we rinse the pipettes with ethanol) at our studio in Hammersmith. We have some bottles of our most popular fragrances filled ready to send out, but most are bottled to order from the glass litres with green labels. Red is concentrate, and yellow needs filtering.

We're currently getting about 10 emails a day asking for free stuff, all saying pretty much the same thing and this here is the reason why we say no. That's all we've got! 😃 by @4160tuesdays

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9 days ago

SOTD: Courteous Revellations, 4160 Tuesdays. Sarah McCartney 2026.

What’s life without whimsy?

One of the things I love most about perfume is the idea that, whilst being a hugely undervalued socio-political/economic discourse, it is ephemeral and fleeting and, like all art, can also be fun.

On April Fools’ Day, Sarah @4160tuesdays announced she would make the most expensive perfume at her disposal. 60% 8yr old natural ambergris tincture, 40% perfume absolute including vanilla beans matured for 12yrs…the rarest and most exquisite materials in her collection:

A never to be repeated batch of 5 bottles priced at £20,000 per 100ml.

How audacious!
How deeply fun and whimsical.
What a joke!

Except now, she’s done it.

I swooned at the idea and casually asked how much a ml would cost. Well, do the maths.

Yet here I am with a ml in my hands, kindly gifted for no other reason than “just because”.

Whimsy has left the room: it’s time to get serious.

I know I have to go gently.
One spray on my forearm.
This stuff is precious.

Christ it smells PHENOMENAL.

Rich and dense.
Buttery and smooth beyond belief.
The rose, jammy and indulgent.
The ambergris, leathery and salty.
Perfectly balanced Utter Opulence.
This is not in any way mainstream.

This sample has a retail of, let’s say 2-300 quid. And I don’t want to get into “is it worth it?” territory.

What Sarah has done is create an art piece that discusses “value” whilst also sating her desire to have fun with her collection of materials. Acknowledging that those rare materials MUST be in a creation or they are no more than a tube of oil paint in a drawer.

The joy is in the painting, not the paints.

She has taken things she deeply values and created something beautiful both for herself and the world; she challenges the current commercial model and comes up smelling of roses and many other delights.

Hemmingway said, Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk.
Sarah says, Do the thing you joked about on April Fools’ Day.

Today’s lesson: Be audaciously yourself and do the thing that you are frightened of that gives you unbridled joy.
And then share it with the world.
You have nothing to lose.

Night night loves xx by @4160tuesdays

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15 days ago

Courteous Revellations, all of it, 784ml in a 1L Miron glass bottle. I put a drop on my arm at 16.30 hours and it still smells gorgeous at 22.45. I'm now taking appointments for anointments. 🪷
Not everyone who has tried it likes it (13 people so far: 12 for, 1 against) but I love it. I plan to keep enough to wear a drop a day for the rest of my life. In fact the longer I own it, the less inclined I am to sell any of it at all.
Front, left, that's the ambergris I'm about to grind down to make the next batch of tincture, so I'll possibly be able to create a second version in 2034, assuming an awful lot of other assumptions.
My ambergris was washed up on a Bahamas beach in 2016 during a hurricane and brought to the UK by @ambergrisconnect and my money went to refloat the fishing boat that belonged to its finders, as that had been washed up 100m inland. (A big metal thing, not a cute Instagrammable wooden one.)
My Bulgarian rose otto is from @roseoverdosed from Silvia's own fields. I bought the two vanillas and the three CO2 extracts direct from the producers too, and the sugiwood essential oil too.
This is without doubt the most audacious and possibly the most bonkers fragrance I've ever made, and I doubt I'll ever surpass it for "Why ever not?"-ness.
60% ambergris tincture, 40% ultimate gorgeousness, technically natural if we're counting white biotech molecules, which we are.
#CourteousRevellations #4160Tuesdays #AmbergrisPerfume #LimitedEditionFragrance taken in 4160Tuesdays by @4160tuesdays

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16 days ago

Scents that don’t try too hard. They just sit close, warm up on your skin and make people nuzzle in….

If you’re over those loud, room filling, blunt force smells and want something that actually whispers loudly, here are four scents from the collection that are built around warm tea, quiet woods and skin musks.

@4160tuesdays – The Sexiest Scent on the Planet. Ever. (IMHO) (Sarah McCartney)

A burst of fizzy bergamot over smooth cedarwood and soft vanilla. It just melts into your skin and is honestly kind of addicting.

@memo.paris – Winter Palace (Aliénor Massenet)

Feels like drinking warm spiced tea in cold weather. Vibrant citrus and red tea that dries down into a really cozy amber vanilla.

@initioparfumsprives – Musk Therapy

So creamy and smooth. Fresh citrus over white musk and sandalwood that just feels like beautiful luxury on your skin.

@escentric_molecules – Molecule 01 (Geza Schön)

Just pure Iso E Super. It’s not really a traditional perfume, but more like a warm cedar that moves with your body heat. Wear it solo or throw it under the others to make them last all day.

Which one are you grabbing first?

@sarahmccartneyperfumer @uppublicrelations @kgabeauty @purplepr @theprstudiouk @aspectsbeauty @alienormassenetperfumer @albertomorillas @alexandracarlinperfumer @geza_schoen_molecules by @4160tuesdays

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20 days ago

Moja gošća ovog meseca je Sarah McCartney, osnivačica avanturističkog, umetničkog brenda parfema 4160Tuesdays. @4160tuesdays

Sarini parfemi nastaju inspirisani scenama iz knjiga, zanimljivim ličnostima, društvenim događajima, oni nose i pričaju uzbudljive priče, ali i komentare na političku situaciju, uz dozu nezaobilaznog britanskog humora.

Intervju: Taodora Kovrlija @teodora_kovrlija
Foto: Arthur McBain

Nisam sigurna da sam se ikada zaista zaljubila u parfeme. Jednostavno su mi bili dovoljno intrigantni da ih pratim sve dublje i dublje, kao Alisa kada se zaputila niz zečju rupu. Napisala sam kratak roman i poželela da opišem mirise o kojima sam u njemu pisala. Svaki od njih bio je vezan za određeno vreme i mesto, tako da je pripovedanje oduvek bilo sastavni deo tog procesa.

Osim po izradi vaših originalnih kreacija, mnogi vas znaju i kao „Fairy Godmother of UK Perfumery“ budući da ste razvili svoju školu Scenthusiasm i onlajn zajednicu, kroz koju je prošlo mnogo zadovoljnih entuzijasta koji uživaju u eksperimentisanju u slobodno vreme, kao i najboljih učenika koji tokom godina bivaju nominovani za priznanja i pohvale na Art & Olfaction Awards i The Fragrance Foundation Awards. Recimo, vaš učenik Amer Alradhi @amer.alradhi već je osvojio dve nagrade Golden Pear.

Koliko i vama kao pedagogu i kreativcu pomaže da rastete i razvijate svoju praksu kroz interakciju sa vašim učenicima i parfemskom zajednicom?

Sve je to odavno prevazišlo moja prvobitna očekivanja. Na početku sam samo želela da od radionica pokrijem kiriju za studio. Plan je bio da organizujem nekoliko radionica mesečno, kako bih ljudima omogućila da pomirišu sirovine, zatim parfeme u kojima se one nalaze i da se potom i sami malo poigraju mešanjem.

Kako je veoma malo mesta nudilo takav uvid u svet parfimerstva, radionice su vrlo brzo postale izuzetno popularne. Posle toga usledili su onlajn kursevi, a zatim i Patreon zajednica. Volela bih da mislim da sam barem malo doprinela tome da se zanatska, nezavisna parfemska scena više drži zajedno, umesto da se njeni članovi međusobno nadmeću dok se svi zapravo bore protiv milijardera koji upravljaju sa pet ogromnih multinacionalnih kompanija.

Dan by @4160tuesdays

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