episode 1 - Perfumer Maya Njie on multi-sensory design
Join us in London’s Shoreditch as Tiffany spends a morning with perfumer Maya Njie in her studio. They discuss her multi-sensory approach to scent design, her Swedish-Gambian heritage and how she built a much-loved contemporary perfume brand rooted in nostalgia, based on family photographs…
Resources
The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron.
Surface Design at London College of Communication
What is synesthesia?
La Muralla Roja and La Fábrica by Ricardo Bofill
Maya’s Mixtape
Solar by Sault
Etude No.14 by Philip Glass
Just Atmosphere by FYI Chris
Love by Ron Trent
Connect with Maya
Explore Maya’s perfume collection and stay up to date with behind-the-scenes insights and workshops on Instagram @maya.njie.perfumes.
Transcript
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 00.00
What's your earliest scent memory? You know, the smell that instantly takes you right back to a moment in time. I have two. One is a strange fiery metallic mix of blowtorch and polishing block from my dad's jewellery workshop. The other, a hint of Chanel perfume on my mum's brown leather handbag, which told me she was going out and leaving us with a babysitter. A fairly rare occasion, but exciting nonetheless.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 00:25
In this episode, we're flexing our nostrils and engaging our senses as we visit perfumer Maja Njie in her studio in Shoreditch. Born in a small industrial town on the outskirts of Stockholm to a Gambian father and Swedish mother, Maja experienced a mix of both cultures at home. Maja's perfume collection has captured the hearts of many die-hard scent lovers for its unusual compositions and multi-sensory storytelling. Each scent is based on memories from Maja's childhood, some even before she existed, combining family photos to concoct a series of nostalgic scent memories. It might be the smell of her grandfather's tobacco or the sweet hint of vanilla from her grandparents' wedding day. We talk about her childhood in Sweden, how having synesthesia enriches her process and how her multi-sensory approach to design, including her love of film photography, helped her to establish a celebrated perfume collection later picked up by Liberty London.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 01:20
Have you ever read ‘The Artist's Way’? By Julia Cameron?
Maya Njie [: 01:26
No, should I be writing that down?
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 01:28
Yeah, yeah definitely. It's this book that is supposed to completely transform the way that you create and you find inspiration.
Maya Njie [: 01:37
Julia Cameron?
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 01:40
Yeah. There's one thing that she suggests you do which is take yourself on an artist's date once a week and it's anything that inspires you or perhaps something completely different from what you might normally do. And so today is for my artist's date, it's you.
Maya Njie [: 02:03
Oh, no way!
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 02:05
I want to be inspired by your work and your space and your life.
Maya Njie [: 02:12
Oh amazing, I'm very happy to be part of that. Thank you.
[Music]
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 02:21 Intro
I'm interior photographer Tiffany Grant-Riley and you're listening to Curate and Display the Podcast, a short series podcast where we dig deep into the processes of Black and mixed heritage creatives to talk about the highs and lows of their chosen craft, the spaces that inspire them and the music that drives them to create.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 02:40
I was looking at your website and I love the introduction that says that you describe your olfactory practice as a preservation of your past in fragrance. I wondered if you could tell me what your first scent memory was?
Maya Njie [: 03:00
Yes. If I think about my sense of smell as a child and the things that stood out to me from being young, it would be two sort of memories. When I think back to Sweden, it's the smell of the soil in the greenhouses and it's a very, yeah, really earthy, quite a bit musty, maybe. It has also, the environment has some sort of heat to it, if that makes sense. It's like walking into a greenhouse, it's not just the smell, it’s the environment itself and I used to love it, and I still do, but it's a very particular smell that I've actually only smelt back home. Then the other one would be going to Gambia as a child and just the feeling of stepping off the plane, which again is in smell and in temperature, but it's that change that you feel and you know that you've arrived. You're hit by the heat, the sound is different, the smells are different, it's just sort of earthier, smokier, warmer. Yeah, just a real mixture of all the different elements that you might come across.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 04:18
It feels like you were always going to find your way to perfume and scent was hugely important to you as a child, wasn't it?
Maya Njie [: 04:27
Yeah, definitely. If I think back at the things that I loved doing and how I would like to spend my time and how people would remember me, it would be all connected to smell in different ways. I think maybe there's quite a few people out there like that, but for sure not everyone's like that. Some people don't consider it at all, but I would say that it has an impact on my day-to-day decisions and it did when I was a child as well, so anything I bought or anything I wore would somehow be connected to scent.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 05:06
Your mother was Swedish and your father Gambian. What was it like growing up Black in Scandinavia and do you feel that you were fully able to embrace both sides of you?
Maya Njie [: 05:20
Yeah, so where I grew up in Västerås in the 80s, we lived in Hammarby, which, the area, the building where I was, was very multicultural. It was on an estate. We had loads of different cultures there within that block, but when you took your life outside of that, you definitely very much felt like you stood out. Yeah. And I feel like probably a lot of people can relate to that. You feel at home in the environment where you feel like you're not an outsider, but even in the broader environments where you grow up, that can vary a lot depending on where you are. I definitely feel like there weren't a lot of Black families around and I would, yeah, definitely have felt as a child that there wasn't maybe provisions that I could have here or anywhere else that would have been multicultural. And I've talked about this before, so something as simple as my hair, you know, would have been a thing. There wouldn't have been any products for me to use. I might not have necessarily known how to look after it and so on. That came when I got a bit older and learnt from my older sisters. Then I moved to London and then realised that there was a whole big world out there.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 06:50
So tell me about coming to London at the age of 19, because that feels like a massive thing to do. Were you on your own? Did you know anyone in London when you got here?
Maya Njie [: 07:00
Yeah, London was on the horizon for a few years before I moved over. So my best friend from being 14, her family, she's half English, so they were here. And then my other best friend had connections to London as well. So when I moved, I'd actually never visited, but I knew I was going to love it. So after graduating, me and my best friend packed our bags and moved over. Did a stint in Rotherhithe for six months. That was pretty rough. And then, you know,
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 07:40
It's funny, I was actually thinking about Rotherhithe this morning and thinking how actually if I moved to London, I'd probably quite like to live there now.
Maya Njie [: 07:48
Yeah, well, I mean, they advertised it as Surrey Quays, but it was actually Rotherhithe and it's completely knocked down now. The whole area where we lived is gone, rebuilt. But then we discovered Brick Lane, so we lived in, yeah, just off Hanbury Street. And that kind of shaped, yeah, my introduction to London, living in and around there.Really, yeah, multicultural area and so different from what I was used to. Absolutely, yeah.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 08:24
And so you went on to study surface design.
Maya Njie [: 08:30
Yeah, so I did that much later. I did a lot of, well, worked within retail for many years for the brand Carhartt. Love Carhartt. Yes, so that was my sort of my little family for many years. And then I had my daughter and it wasn't until after that that I decided I wanted to sort of change my path. And the whole time, you know, from being a teenager, I'd been into photography, like traditional photography and wanted to, I guess, nurture my creativity, but I didn't know what it was. So I decided to try a surface design foundation degree. So by this time, by this point, my daughter was four and she was at nursery, so like three to four. And then I did a course at LCC, London College of Communication, and focused on many different disciplines. So textile printing was my main discipline, but there was also wallpaper and ceramics, many different things. And whilst I was there, I started to think along the lines of a children's brand.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 09:46
I guess it's what you know, isn't it?
Maya Njie [: 09:48
Yeah, that was very much my sort of where I was at the time and really wanted to, yeah, create something that felt like it was sort of Scandinavian, but also with clear nods to West Africa. And the way that I decided to do that was to design my own prints. I made a mini children's range and the clothing was very Scandinavian - knickerbockers, braces, collars, but the prints were more West African.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 10:15
Oh, I'd love to have seen that.
Maya Njie [: 10:23
All West African inspired.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 10:25
Wonderful. So you were actually quite ahead of your time with that then, because when Instagram really got going, you started to see a lot of parents, perhaps with a design background, perhaps not, who were embarking on children's collections. And I think Instagram really helped them take off that way. But you were obviously doing this before…
Maya Njie [: 10:47
Yeah, I had a curiosity around it. And I felt as though looking back at my family and my sisters, so my sisters are… there's quite a big age gap. And so when I was born, they would look after me. So when I then started thinking about children's clothing, I looked back at how they dressed. And I looked back at the photographs of when they were kids. So these are photos then from the 60s and late 60s, early 70s. And, you know, they would have clogs and braces and like, you know, full-on 70s clobber, which is amazing. And I wish, yeah, I felt it was like, really inspiring. And I also found it really interesting how their environment was captured visually as a moment in time that tells a story of a family that is different to your average Swedish family. So the setting, surroundings are very Swedish. But looking at the photos, you can definitely see that there's a multicultural story. Absolutely.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 11:55
Yeah, I've been very drawn to your family photos for years now, actually. There is something that sparks a real sense of nostalgia in me.
Maya Njie [: 12:09
That's so nice.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 12:16
Yeah, I can see myself in your family photos. I was just going to say that you seem to communicate universal feelings of nostalgia so effortlessly with your fragrances. How did the fragrances come about in the end through those photographs?
Maya Njie [: 12:31
Having the photographs being part of my creative output meant that I started looking at all the aspects. So, you know, colour was important and that's why I would scan in the images and colour-pick them because I felt that the palettes were different from the palettes that we have in photography today. And I also found them inspiring and I felt like the pictures come alive even more when you get to put a colour palette underneath. So it just became like this exercise that I really enjoyed doing. But in that process, I felt like there was something missing and that was me then taking it back to what I've always been drawn in by, which is smell and scent. And so I started thinking along the lines of whether there could be a multi-sensory expression in there. And if I could tell, yeah, tell the stories, the visual stories or make them come alive even more through perfumery or scent, whatever you choose to call it. And with that curiosity came my experimentation with different materials. And yeah, just considering what the place could have smelt like because this is, these images are before me. So some of these people I've met, you know, I know, you know, like my uncle and my grandad and obviously my sisters, but I wasn't there at that time. So it's my interpretation of those snapshots in time.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 14:04
You embody this multi-disciplinary, multi-sensory approach, which you've just been talking about where scent and visuals are intertwined. Does having synesthesia influence your process at all? Is that a big part of it?
Maya Njie [: 14:17
Yeah, I think, yeah, it must do. I mean, when I experience new things like ingredients, for example, which is probably a good example, because there might be ingredients that I've never come across before. My brain interprets how that smells through different, not channels, but different senses. So a colour comes into my head or a shape, or potentially I want to describe it as in a tactile way, how it could, you know, how that smell could feel like if you could touch it.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 14:52
That's fascinating.
Maya Njie [: 14:44
Or it could be, yeah, those are generally the ways that it comes through, or I think about it as a musical note. Again, I think there's a lot of people that experience synesthesia without even really knowing what it is, and perhaps there's different levels of it, and perhaps some of these things we get taught, you know, that, you know, we connect colour with scent, like that's the most obvious one, but if you look outside of that, yeah, you can express it in many different, through many different senses and in different ways. And that's why I think scent should be, when you express what you're smelling, to use any language that you want. And not feel like it needs to be, like, perfume chat. And that's especially why kids are good, because you can ask them and they'll be, yeah, kids will tell you in their way what something smells like, and there's a lesson there, I think.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 16:00
Oh, absolutely. I remember my daughter, when she first started trying strawberries, she'd say, “Mummy, these are soury”.
Maya Njie [: 16:10
Oh, nice. I love that word. Soury. They are. She's right. They can be.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 16:20
So you're embarking on perfume, but you're not trained in scent design, as it were, so where do you start?
Maya Njie [: 16:28
Yeah, I started by buying in loads of samples, well, smaller amounts of ingredients, wherever I could find them, and then just spending time with them, smelling them, writing down, you know, how I felt about them and what they would remind me of, and then trying different combinations and just working out what I like and, you know, what I liked and what I didn't like. But I found that blending ingredients was a lot of fun and an expression that I never tried before, but it felt like it was something that I was supposed to do. That's the best way I can describe it.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 17:07
Absolutely. It just felt right.
Maya Njie [: 17:10
Yeah, it just felt right.I got super excited by it, as you should do, you know, if you're doing something creative, that should be the whole reason for doing it. And I was doing this as a side thing, and any time I, you know, made a formula that I liked, I would bring it in to work, because at this point, I was working as front of house in, yeah, a multi-use building in East London. And the purpose of that was just to work in an environment that smelled nice. And being front-of-house, I met a lot of people throughout sitting behind that desk and had a lot of conversations with people about smell, because when people come into the building, they might not consider that there would be a smell. I mean, now, these days, there's smells everywhere, but there wasn't necessarily back then. And so people started to ask and then try to buy what I was making. And so my first customers were through that building, you know, visitors, tenants, workmen…
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 18:20
It's like the ultimate case study, isn't it? You get such a broad range of people coming in and out.
Maya Njie [: 18:28
100%.It was my, I always say this, it was like my market research without knowing that that's what it was. So when I decided to take it further, I sort of had that knowledge.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 18:40
So that led you to the collection that you have today?
Maya Njie [: 18:43
Yeah, I learned, did a course on cosmetic legislation to make sure, obviously, that it was feasible to run a brand and to do it myself. I didn't even know if, you know, that was a way of running a perfume brand, because I hadn't really seen it before in that sense. But then, yeah, I started building the formulas and then started sharing the images, the photos with people and got a really sort of good response. And this is just from people that I met or friends.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 19:12
So can you explain the anatomy of a good perfume? Is it to do with the oil content? Is it ingredients? Is it the notes? How do you..?
Maya Njie [: 19:22
What defines a good anatomy?
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 19:25
I don't know. One of your perfumes!
Maya Njie [: 19:30
Because it's an interesting question. I think it's so individual, you know, some people think that if a perfume is super strong and you can smell it 14 hours down the line, then that's the definition of a good perfume. Whereas other people do not even like perfume. They don't want to wear it for that reason. And I have people, for example, that don't wear perfume wearing my perfumes because it's not polarizing to them. They don't walk around and smell themselves constantly throughout the day. But you get sort of wafts of it, sort of comes and goes and creates an aura around you or whatever. For some people, that's, you know, the definition of a good perfume. So then fragrances wear differently on different people. So it's all, you know…
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 20:20
It's a whole other thing, isn't it?
Maya Njie [: 20:23
Yeah, it really, it really depends. But for me? I would say if it evokes inspiration or happiness or comfort or confidence, gives you sensuality, just if it makes you feel better.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 20:43
(20:43) Do you think that being self-taught has given you a greater sense of freedom to experiment with scent (20:48) design in the sense that you're not, you're not aware of certain boundaries and rules?
Maya Njie [: 20:54
The perimeters are definitely different. And I'm sure sometimes I do things in ways that I wouldn't have if I would have been professionally trained. Yeah, maybe there is a freedom in that, I think, equally, if I had been professionally trained, you know, there's confidence in that. And you feel like you can maybe, I don't know, take up more space, potentially, because you've got the, I don't know, you're armed with the knowledge already. So it's, it's double-edged, I'm sure, in those aspects.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 21:37
Okay, as a black female perfumer, have you come up against any resistance or not-so-positive experiences?
Maya Njie [: 21:46
Largely, for me being a black perfumer, female perfumer, has been a positive experience. And when I say that I'm talking from or speaking from the view of feedback from the public. Yeah, so there's a lot of people out there that maybe might not have ever considered what a perfumer does. I feel like it's an industry that's been quite closed for a long time. And now consumers are starting to see more and more behind the scenes and who the perfumers actually are. So that's just been like positive reactions from people that like seeing someone that looks like them, and maybe seeing someone not taking the traditional route, and carving their way in, in their own way. So I've welcomed that. And that's been great. But there's, there's other aspects to it as well. And I think as a black perfumer starting a brand, and you get to a stage where other larger corporations start looking around, especially after 2020. And they start looking around and make pledges to make an effort to onboard more black businesses.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 23:11
That old chestnut.
Maya Njie [: 23:13
Yeah, to make themselves look better. That's a not so very nice experience, because you realize quite quickly that they're doing it for the benefit of themselves and it's not for the benefit of those Black brands.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 23:30
Yeah, you're the commodity.
Maya Njie [: 23:31
Yeah. Yeah. And it's a lot of lip service. And the important thing, I suppose, is to say that if big corporations are going to support Black businesses, they need to really support them. You know, they need to nurture them, they need to support them. They need to guide them because these businesses are not the same as the already established big brands. So you know, put your money where your mouth is, and make sure that if you're there to show genuine support, then support.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 24:06
Yeah. And it's continued support as well, not just a tokenist year.
Maya Njie [: 24:16
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. They should be held accountable, you know, and I feel as though, again, if pledges are made, you know, how are those pledges working out three years down the line, and I feel as though there should be accountability for that.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 24:32
Do you feel that now is the time for other perfumers of colour to reclaim the scents and ingredients that are part of their heritage and redirect the narrative?
Maya Njie [: 24:45
Yes, 100%. I think it's important that the people that have cultural stories to tell through scent get to tell them. We all know that that hasn't necessarily been the case. And that these have been told by people that actually don't know a lot at all about these different cultures. And so I think it's, yeah, it's important to be able to own that narrative, I suppose. And I think as a wearer, as a perfume wearer, I definitely, you know, take that into account. And I think other consumers also should. And yeah, if you go somewhere, you're inspired by something, seek those people out, you know, look around you and see if there's local people or people from that country that can tell that story.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 25:45
So let's talk about 2019, the Liberty Window campaign. And being stocked in Liberty. I mean, what? What a moment!
Maya Njie [: 25:55
So that was a big change for me as a business. I was still working from home, producing from my loft. And a girl that I know, she was wearing ‘Vanilj’ at a Liberty campaign shoot.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 26:14
It's one of my favourites.
Maya Njie [: 26:16
Is it? And the art director asked her what perfume she was wearing and was following her around. Allegedly. I can't claim that. I might have hammed that up a little bit. No. And that's how they found out about me. So then they emailed and I went to visit them and they offered to launch me as an exclusive brand. And yeah, as I was saying, it changed the landscape, it changed how I could operate as a business. I could take on a commercial space.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 26:50
Mmmmm, I bet that was a massive change.
Maya Njie [: 26:53
Yeah, it's a big change. And also creatively to be, for them to trust me with a campaign that I did with Maria Lax, the photographer who I work with still. And yeah, it was just an amazing feeling because that was the dream location to be stocked at. And yeah, they've looked after me and I'm proud to be there.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 27:20
I'm proud that you're there. I think it's incredible. But, you know, justly deserved.
Maya Njie [: 27:26
Thank you.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 27:28
I wanted to talk about Maria Lax because - do you work quite regularly with her on your campaigns or was it just for Liberty?
Maya Njie [: 27:34
Yeah, we've worked together on a few things. There's something that, yeah, we've been working on last year that's being edited. So I can't disclose too much about that. But in due time, there will be more work, collaborative work coming out. Yeah.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 27:50
She's a Finnish photographer?
Maya Njie [: 27:52
She's a Finnish photographer. Yeah. And I came across her work and I just knew that I needed to work with her.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 28:02
What is it about her style that really draws you in?
Maya Njie [: 28:09
I feel as though she has this, I always say this, she has this magic about her work. Sometimes it can be a little bit eerie, you can be quite sort of still, but then it can be very also energetic in its output. It's sort of hard to put into words, really. I feel like I really want to do her justice, but you really need to just see what she does in order to understand it. But I felt a connection with it because a lot of it was, you know, set in Scandinavia and it's like a remote part of Finland. But then she's, yeah, she shoots a lot all over the world.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 28:55
I really love the way she brought a sense of warmth and intimacy into the photos that she took for your window campaign. And did your brother feature in one of those shots?
Maya Njie [: 29:09
Yeah, he did. Yeah, Abdu.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 29:11
I love that. It's like a family effort.
Maya Njie [: 29:13
Yeah, we did, I wanted it to be a contemporary take on the family photos, I suppose. And my sister is in there as well. And my daughter.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 29:24
As a photographer myself, I'd love to gain some insight into what fuels your own practice in photography. I think you work with film quite a lot? What do you prefer to use, camera, film..?
Maya Njie [: 29:38
Um, I've had my trusted Nikon FG for as long as I can remember. So it's just a really simple film, 35mm film camera that I take with me and tend to use colour film, sometimes black and white but it’s yeah, it’s all pretty simple. It’s more about, yeah, the composition and the colours that I can capture usually, yeah, I never know. I like working with film just for the feel of it but also because obviously we have our camera on our phones and it's changed how we relate to photographs and photography in general.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 30:24
Absolutely. I would love to work with film but I'm a massive control freak in a certain sense with digital, you know, you can line it all up, you can get the right light, you can time it, you know, you've got plenty of goes to get it right but with film, it's so, it's quite limited so you've got to be, I don't know, I feel like you've got to be quite careful and you've got to time it right and there's that element of just leaving it to see what happens which is just, I'm not a “see what happens” kind of person.
Maya Njie [: 31:01
No, but you know, it's true, I've definitely had moments where I thought I've had something and then haven't and then that moment's gone, you know, and I actually have those dreams as well, the kind of the reoccurring dreams where I'm like fumbling around with the camera and then the moment is gone, it's gone forever.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 31:24
It's just, it's so frustrating, isn't it?
Maya Njie [: 31:26
But I think, you know, that's part of it too, isn't it?
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 31:34
Yeah, yeah, trying to convince myself. Yes, now I've got a reconditioned Olympus that my brother gave me years ago with some film in it, I need to finish that roll and just get on with it.
Maya Njie [: 31:49
Yeah, you can have two cameras though, can't you? Yes. It's a lot to carry. But I'm considering, yeah, for my next trip maybe I'll have both.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 32:03
Can you tell us about a space or interior that you absolutely love spending time in?
Maya Njie [: 32:10
I will talk about Ricardo Bofill then, yes? So Ricardo Bofill is a Spanish architect and he has a building called La Muralla Roja, he designed it, it's in Spain, southern Spain, on the coastline of Calpe and I've been going to Calpe for about 15 years and I've seen this building from afar and actually made a fragrance based on it last year. So I got to stay in the first time after sort of admiring it for a long time and yeah, it's just the best place, he plays around with shade, with colour a lot, with how the sun moves across the building throughout the day and it's sort of a colourful maze of sorts.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 33:04
It's very surreal to look at, isn't it? It's got these rich earthy reds and soft pinks and then the contrast of the blue sky and the ocean and…
Maya Njie [: 33:17
Yeah, it's quite a big like Fort-looking building. I guess it's the colour that makes it look friendly from the outside because if the colours weren't there it'd look quite intimidating. Yeah. So just that in itself is interesting and then when you come in then you feel like you're within it and that's a special feeling in itself. So yeah, I love his work, La Fabrica is his home, I mean he passed away, I think it's two years ago now.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 33:47
Yeah, 2022.
Maya Njie [: 33:50
But yeah, La Fabrica is in Barcelona and that's a beautiful building.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 33:55
Yeah, it's a former cement factory isn't it? And he manages just to bring this balance of warmth even though there's a lot of life and warmth in it and I think he said that “I want to live there for the pleasure of the challenge” which I quite like the idea that he was living in a ever-evolving project in a way which is a little bit like our house which we've been living there for seven years and it's just there's never one room that's completely finished!
Maya Njie [: 34:33
You've adopted the same approach!
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 34:35
Totally, yeah, I totally relate to that. Do you have a piece of advice to help listeners who are exploring their own creativity or perhaps have a dream to launch a creative brand?
Maya Njie [: 34:47
Well, for me having launched a brand it's taken me a long time so I would say keep practising the area that you're taking on, try and perfect it and make yourself as good as possible and I don't know, expect it to take some time. Sometimes when you look at brands they might seem like they're new but then they might have you know 10 years behind them so, patience. I think that comparing yourself to others can be a destructive thing sometimes.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 35:24
Yeah, it's a huge trap, isn't it?
Maya Njie [: 35:35
Yeah, be aware of what's going on but stay on your own path and work at that, keep improving that.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 35:37
So I'm always intrigued to know what other people are listening to and what's driving their work as they listen so I'm putting together a playlist to share at the end of this season. What four essential tracks would you put on a mix tape to motivate you when you're creating in your studio?
Maya Njie [: 35:56
Yes, so I've chosen Solar by Sault, yes and I just, it's a piece of music that I really love. I love the layers of it, how it builds. I think I know their music now but it was quite an unexpected track on that album and I listened to it again referring going back to ‘Syren’ which is the fragrance that I made based on the La Muralla Roja building. When I make a fragrance, I tend to choose a few tracks that I listen to that I connect with that formula and Solar is that track connected to Siren.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 36:38
It's very expansive isn't it and it's got the composer Holst, he wrote The Planets, it's very famous, I can't remember his first name now. It's got like a contemporary feeling of that, hence the name Solar, probably.
Maya Njie [: 36:55
Yeah, it's really, when you listen to it, I've listened to it on flights and actually it's perfect because you're sort of up in and amongst the clouds and it really depicts the sun really well, like as the song tails off you can really feel like how, yeah, just how the sun is behaving. And then ‘Etude No.14’ by Philip Glass and it's performed by Vikinger Olofsson, an Icelandic musician. It's something that I heard on the radio one day, just really fell in love with it. Again, it's just an amazing piece of classical music, piano-based and it really just builds and builds and then goes off into euphoria as far as I'm concerned and that can be quite an interesting thing to listen to when you're putting notes together because you're considering the structure of the music and how you would compare the two, maybe. Not always easy.
‘Just Atmosphere’, FYI, Chris. So that's a song that always gives me energy. I listen to it in the studio, I listen to it at home, if I go out. I don't actually want to classify what type of music it is but it's definitely dance music. I'm not going to go further than house, potentially. But it's just the production of it, again, it's really interesting. I can see there's a pattern here within the songs because they all start somewhere and then like lift and lift and then kind of go off.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 38:37
Takes you on a journey, doesn't it?
Maya Njie [: 38:39
Yeah, they really do. And then Ron Trent, I chose ‘Love’. This is a song that has a slower tempo for sure and it's really relaxing, kind of almost hypnotic in a way. It's quite long so it has, he's really taken his time with the production and it sort of slowly builds as it goes and then you end up in this house piano string scenario which is, I don't actually know if there's strings in there. Feels like there would be but it's piano based for sure.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 39:20
I do find it so interesting that all four tracks that you've chosen are mostly without lyrics.
Maya Njie [: 39:28
Yes!
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 39:29
I think there are some in Love.
Maya Njie [: 39:30
There's some talking.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [ 39:33
Yes, but it's not direct sung lyrics. They're all mostly instrumental.
Maya Njie [ 39:40
That is so true.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 39:41
And atmospheric, which just works perfectly with your perfume.
Maya Njie [: 39:39
Yeah, that's interesting.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 39:50
Thank you, Maya, so much for allowing me to come and visit you in your beautiful Shoreditch studio and hope I get to have a little tinker around with some of your scents before I leave.
Maya Njie [: 40:04
You definitely will, yes. I'll show you around and thank you for the opportunity. Yeah, it's been really nice.
Tiffany Grant-Riley [: 40:10
Thank you.
If you'd like to explore Maya's perfumes, then I suggest you run and get yourself a discovery set online at mayanjie.com. She also runs bespoke perfume blending workshops from her studio and you can find her on Instagram at @maya.njie.perfumes for updates and insights.
Curate and Display The podcast is produced by Tiffany Grant Riley with audio and music by Rob Riley.
To continue the conversation, find me on Instagram at @curatedisplay or head to the show notes page on curatedisplay.co.uk.
