Watch the story of STORIES
Tonya Kidd-Beggs
my story
I am the founder of STORIES Parfums, Northern Ireland’s first luxury niche fragrance house. I am a wife and a mother of four, and I live on the North Down coast.
I lost memories of my childhood to trauma. I trained as a counselling practitioner, then studied perfumery in Grasse, where scent began to give those memories back.
Few fragrance founders know the link between scent, memory and emotion from both sides: as a practitioner, and as the person it happened to. That is the power of story, and it is what STORIES is built on.
Chapter one · The start
my grandmother
It began with my grandmother, whom I never met. She died before I was born.
My mother always told me she wore one particular perfume, and that scent, held in my mind, is what connects me to her today. I remember playing with her necklaces and the special clothes my mother had kept.
She was a remarkable businesswoman, and she broke glass ceilings for women in Northern Ireland in her time. Her entrepreneurial spirit lives on in STORIES.
Chapter two · Childhood memories
what was lost
For most of my adult life I could not recall my happiest early memories. They had been clouded by trauma at a young age.
Counselling reached the root of that trauma, and it worked so well that I trained as a counselling practitioner to help others. Even so, the memories themselves stayed out of reach.
Chapter three · Grasse
a hobby in Grasse
When my children were older, I went looking for a hobby and found my way to Grasse, to learn the basics of perfumery and create a fragrance of my own. I had no idea what it would give back to me.
Chapter four · The perfumer’s organ
the dark yielding to the light
Surrounded by the tiny brown bottles of the perfumer’s organ, I chose each note by instinct, and found myself confronted by my most painful memories. Each scent lit the shadows of a difficult past, and marked the beginning of healing.
That is the story of STORIES Nº.01: sorrow transformed into beauty, of the dark yielding to the light.
Chapter five · Reconnection
my grandfather’s garden
I created STORIES Nº.02 blind, choosing every note without knowing why. When I smelled it back, I wept.
I was a small child again, in my grandfather’s garden: 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 grandfather watching over me through the smoke of their pipes. Almost every note I had chosen grew in that garden.
I discovered that I did have a good childhood. Unhealed trauma can tell you a different story.
Chapter six · STORIES
bottled memories
I left Grasse with my memories in two bottles, and STORIES Parfums began. STORIES Nº.01 and STORIES Nº.02 launched in 2018, and STORIES Nº.03 and STORIES Nº.04 follow in February 2027.
I chose numbers rather than names so that nothing tells you what to expect. A name suggests a mood or a memory before you have worn the fragrance; a number leaves that to you. None is assigned a gender. Wear it first, read the notes afterwards, and notice what comes back.
Curated in Grasse, rooted in Ireland.
the power of story
STORIES was born on the rugged North Down coast. The woods, hedgerows and meadows here are the scents of my childhood, and they shape every fragrance I make, alongside the creative spirit of Ireland, an island of artists, musicians and new ideas.
Smell is the sense most closely tied to memory and emotion. The olfactory bulb is closely connected to the limbic system, the part of the brain that forms memories and governs how we feel, which is why a scent can return you to a moment before you have time to think.
I create refillable Eau de Parfum, bodycare and home scent as one connected system, shared through the STORIES Scent Society. My hope is that they help you find the power in your own story.