Eight years of STORIES Parfums: a founder's story

Eight years ago this month, storiesparfums.com went live from Co. Down. This is how Northern Ireland's first luxury niche fragrance house began, what scent gave back to me, and where STORIES is going next.

I never met my grandmother. She was a hotelier in Northern Ireland who broke glass ceilings for women in her day, and I knew her only by the perfume that still clung to her furs. As a child I would hold one to my cheek and breathe in a woman I would never know. That was the first time scent told me a story.

Scent and memory: what I lost

At twelve, I experienced trauma that silenced me for many years. It took the good memories of my childhood with it. I could not remember being small and safe. Through my teens and twenties I lived destructively, the way people do when a wound has not been tended.

The way back was not a straight line. Counselling removed the root of the trauma, and what followed was a healing I had not known was possible. I came out of it whole. I went on to train as a counselling practitioner so that I could sit with others who had been through the same, and I still give my time to that work.

Something else happened in those years that I had no words for. My sense of smell changed. At moments I would be surrounded by a scent I could not name. It felt like lightness and hope. I remember thinking that if I ever made a fragrance, that is what I would try to bottle.

I did not know then what I know now: smell is the only sense wired directly to the part of the brain where memory and emotion form. A scent can reach you before language does.

Grasse, and the perfumer's organ

Years later, a mother of four with my youngest two growing up, I went to Grasse, the historic centre of perfumery, looking for something of my own. I sat at a perfumer's organ, surrounded by tiny brown bottles, and learnt to smell blind: no names, no labels, no expectations. I arrived certain of the notes I loved and the notes I did not, and I was wrong about a good many of them. That is why our fragrances are numbered, not named. A name tells you what to expect. A number lets the memory arrive on its own.

The first fragrance I made was that scent from years before, rebuilt from memory and intuition. It became STORIES Nº.01: the story of sorrow transformed into beauty, of the dark yielding to the light.

The second changed everything. I blended it blind, and when I smelt it back I wept. I was standing in my grandfather's garden, before I was twelve. Rose bushes standing among orange trees, pots of patchouli lining the patio, the stream that drew me barefoot into the water, and my father and my grandfather watching over me through tobacco pipe smoke. Almost every note I had blended grew in that garden.

The trauma had told me I was unloved and unprotected. That memory proved otherwise. In that moment it felt as though everything that had been stolen was being given back to me.

That fragrance is STORIES Nº.02, an invitation to walk among the flowers, shed your shoes at the river, and recover that which has been lost.

I left Grasse knowing I could not keep it to myself. If scent could do that for me, it could do it for someone else.

Eight years as Northern Ireland's first luxury niche fragrance house

I registered the company in Co. Down in 2017. In October 2018 storiesparfums.com went live, and Northern Ireland had its first luxury niche fragrance house. Wholesale followed in 2019, and our early prestige partners included Harvey Nichols, Fortnum & Mason and Fenwick.

Then the house grew the way I wanted it to, as one connected system. The Hand & Body Collection was made as the foundation for fragrance, because prepared skin is what makes a scent last. The Bougie Parfumée Candle Trio followed: three candles composed as the top, heart and base of a fragrance, an industry first.

Sustainability was built into the structure from the start. Plastic came off the bottles. Return to Refill began, so that a bottle is kept and not replaced. This year our refillable Eau de Parfum moved from the 17% concentration it launched at in 2018 to 20%.

And there is the STORIES Scent Society Gathering, which is the part I love most: an evening of guided scent discovery. People arrive to explore perfume and leave having remembered a grandmother's kitchen. I have watched it happen in room after room. It is my own story, happening to someone else.

Not every year was kind. An independent fragrance house has no cushion, and when a decision was wrong we felt it straight away. I have made mistakes, and I have learnt from each of them.

For eight years STORIES has been self-financed. There has never been a parent company behind us. There has been a small team in Co. Down, and there has been you.

Opening STORIES to outside investment

This year I made a decision I did not take lightly. For the first time, STORIES is opening to outside investment.

I would like you to hear the reason from me. What STORIES does is at its best in a room, with people, and there is a limit to how many rooms one founder and a small team can reach. There are stories I have not yet told in scent, refills still to perfect, and communities we have not yet sat with. Doing that well needs resources beyond what one family can provide.

Some things stay as they are. I am still the founder, and I still lead STORIES. The fragrances stay numbered and are never assigned a gender. The bottles stay refillable. You will not find us everywhere. The people who join us will be those who want STORIES to remain what it is.

What comes next

More STORIES Scent Society Gatherings, in more places. A refillable 500ml option for the Hand & Body Collection, which is in development. B Corp certification, which is in progress.

And early in 2027, something new. That is all I will say for now.

Where STORIES is going

The aim is simple to say and will take years to earn: for STORIES to stand among the world's leading fragrance houses, known as the place where wellness, freedom, storytelling and sustainability meet.

Wellness, because scent can shift how we feel before we have a word for it. Freedom, because no fragrance of ours will ever tell you who to be. Storytelling, because every person has a story inside them. Sustainability, because a bottle should be kept, refilled and lived with.

A birthday thank you

October is our birthday month, and this is our thank you. Until 11:59pm on Saturday 31 October 2026: £20 off when you spend £185, £40 off when you spend £250, and £60 off when you spend £335. It comes off at checkout, with no code to remember. The full details are in our terms.

Thank you for eight years. For choosing STORIES, wearing it, refilling it and giving it to people you love. You are the reason there is a next chapter to write.

With love and gratitude,
Tonya
Founder & CEO, STORIES Parfums

Curated in Grasse, rooted in Ireland.

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