For Jocelyn Fullerton, luxury means something far less tangible than a beautiful bottle or an expensive ingredient. It means sitting with someone for hours, listening to their stories and creating a fragrance that could belong to no one else.

That is the philosophy behind Cult of Scent, the Sydney fragrance house Fullerton founded after her journey into perfumery.

Located in a factory in Stanmore that was previously used for brewing ginger beer, her atelier functions as both a laboratory and a cabinet of curiosities. For Fullerton, perfumery was never simply a career decision; it was a discipline that allowed her to be two things at once.

"I think there's a red line: the love of plants and people," she says, a philosophy she credits to her former boss.

"I love perfumery because it's the marriage of the creative and the technical. I get to be a scientist and a poet. I can use science to solve a creative problem."

According to her, each fragrance she creates is an instance of storytelling, whether it is based on the history of Aphrodite or captures the feeling of a lazy Sunday afternoon with a cat curled up next to you.

"A fragrance isn't right unless it connects to an emotion," she says.

Fullerton has been creating bespoke fragrances for almost two decades. Image credit: Sophia Kearns

The light-bulb moment

Naturopathy training in 2000, completed with the NHAA award for clinical excellence, set her on a long path through teaching: botany, pharmacology, cosmetic science and essential-oil chemistry at Endeavour College, Nature Care and ACNT, over more than fifteen years, alongside work as a cosmetic designer and writer for natural-health magazines.

In 2007, two books shifted the course of her career: Chandler Burr’s The Emperor of Scent and Luca Turin’s The Science of Scent.

"It was literally changing my world," she says.

"You know what? I really want to be a perfumer."

The prestigious Grasse Institute of Perfumery in France was next, but the language requirement got in the way.

"I can only speak enough French to order a steak," she admits.

They encouraged her to return once she was more confident in the language.

Rather than waiting, Fullerton began forging her own path in perfumery, testing small batches and refining her craft through trial and error. Cult of Scent launched in late 2008.

Fullerton later returned to Grasse, where she eventually stood in for a lecturer. She has been a professional member of the Société Française des Parfumeurs since 2010, and is also a member of the Australian Society of Cosmetic Chemists.

Teaching has stayed with her ever since, and today it extends well beyond her own studio courses, into workshops for the National Trust, the Art Gallery of Newcastle and Workshop Australia, and a collaboration with NIDA's Sensate Studio exploring how scent can be used in performance.

"What I love about teaching is light bulb moments," she says.

Each bespoke fragrance is created during a personalised sitting. Image credit: Sophia Kearns

Sharing time

If you ask Fullerton what personalised luxury means to her, she won't give you just an answer about the bottle.

"I think the most luxurious thing we have is time," she says.

"Carving out this time to spend together, in our incredibly busy schedules, is a real luxury."

A sitting at her studio can flow for hours. For that stretch, nothing else gets her attention.

"You're coming in, and my full attention and focus is on you," she says.

There was a pot of tea on the table and biscuits within reach. Hospitality, she says, is part of the craft, not a formality tacked onto it.

"It's about sitting down, smelling ingredients, having a talk, and thinking about what the fragrance wants to be, and then creating something for someone."

She won't repeat a scent she's made for someone else. If a client arrives chasing something they already love, she won't reverse-engineer it either.

Instead, she works from the memory or feeling underneath it, building something new from the emotion of the original scent.

"I don't know what they're going to ask for, or what they're going to be like," she says of each new client. "But I quite like the pressure."

Fullerton teaches Foundations and Intermediate perfumery courses. Image credit: Sophia Kearns

Notes from the bench

Every scent Fullerton brought out came with a story, shaped by where it came from, how it was made, and what it had come to mean to her. Some were deeply nostalgic, conjuring a feeling before I could even identify the note behind it.

Rose came up first, and it kept returning in different forms. One rose absolute gave way to another, the same flower reading completely differently depending on soil and process, Turkish against Bulgarian, floral against a stripped-back version that gave up licorice and tobacco instead. One twist, built around Sichuan, Timut pepper and green mandarin, read closer to petrol than bouquet.

"Speeding, crushed flowers, rock and roll," she says of it.

Amber followed, and isn't one smell so much as a family of them.

"When I was in Marrakesh, the amber's sweeter," she says.

"Dubai's amber is more musk."

Her own Fire Amber traces back to an afternoon on a friend's balcony watching a storm roll in, built around labdanum resin rather than the shortcut of vanilla. "It had to glow," she says.

Citron stopped the conversation entirely.

"This is actually sidrat, grown in Calabria in Italy," she says.

"The ancestor to the lemon, but the lemoniest, freshest, most mouth-puckering."

That same precision extends to sourcing, down to the Western Australian company, Dutjahn Sandalwood Oils, that supplies her sandalwood.

A selection of scents explored during a bespoke sitting. Image credit: Sophia Kearns

Not everything she makes is meant to be worn.

One project recreated a fragrance once piped through a Roxy theatre in the years just before the 1920s, when a screening of the Pasadena Rose Parade was accompanied by the actual scent of roses.

Another, made for a World Expo in Japan, was pumped into the Australian pavilion so visitors could walk straight into the smell of the bush at dawn. Both built for a room to hold, not a wrist.

The offering

Cult of Scent's core service is a bespoke scent creation sitting, unfolding over hours rather than a single quick consultation.

For people who would like to understand the art of making perfumes rather than simply ordering a fragrance, Fullerton also offers shorter fragrance-creation workshops and ten-week Foundations and Intermediate perfumery courses.

Situated in Stanmore in Sydney's Inner West, the atelier welcomes visitors by appointment or during regular Saturday openings, offering an accessible entry point for those who want to experience Cult of Scent's unique offerings.