legends · 3 min read ·
Homeward
A new perfume leads its wearers, by scent alone, to an unlocked house with a table laid for one.
**FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE**
**Aldermere & Voss launches HOMEWARD, a fragrance for "the house you carry with you"**
LONDON — Aldermere & Voss, the heritage fragrance house, today announced the launch of HOMEWARD, a unisex eau de parfum developed over four years with master perfumer Ines Calloway. Notes: woodsmoke, cut grass, warm linen, rain on slate, and "something baking, a long way off."
"We wanted to make the smell of a place you can't quite remember," said Calloway. "Everyone who tries it recognises it. No two people recognise the same house."
HOMEWARD is available from 3 October in 50 ml (£95) and 100 ml (£140). A limited-edition candle follows in November.
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**Customer feedback extracts (Aldermere & Voss, 6–19 October)**
*#041 — "Wore it to the office. Three colleagues asked what the smell was. One went quiet and said it was her grandmother's kitchen. She's from Lagos. I'm from Leeds. I've never been in a kitchen like the one she described, but I could have drawn it."*
*#058 — "My husband says I smell like the house we're going to move to. We aren't moving."*
*#072 — "Lovely, but it lingers. I sprayed it on a scarf and left it on the radiator. The scarf smelled like a house the next morning. I mean the whole flat did. The spare bedroom has a different smell from the rest."*
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**Customer feedback extracts (continued)**
*#091 — "I followed the smell. I don't know how else to say it. I put it on, went out for a walk, and the smell got stronger when I turned left and weaker when I turned right. After forty minutes I was standing outside a house on a street I didn't know, in a town I hadn't planned to visit. The lights were on. The smell was coming from the open kitchen window. It was my smell, the one in the bottle."*
*#094 — "The house is on Brindle Row, in a village forty minutes from the shop. I have been three times. Nobody lives there. The front door is never locked. The kitchen has a table laid for one."*
*#103 — "I asked the perfumer. She says she doesn't know the address. She says she only made the smell. The house, she said, was already there."*
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**Internal memo — Legal (Aldermere & Voss, 21 October)**
**To:** Marketing, Customer Care
**Re:** HOMEWARD — customer correspondence
1. The company does not accept that the product causes persons to relocate.
2. Please do not use the phrase "the house you will find" in any customer communication.
3. Please do not confirm to customers that the address referred to in feedback items #091, #094, #103 and others is the same address. There is no evidence that it is.
4. Customer Care should note that of 61 complaints received, 58 name the same street. The company has no connection to that street.
5. The company has no record of a property on that street having been purchased, leased or visited by any employee.
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**Product recall notice (Aldermere & Voss, 30 October)**
HOMEWARD eau de parfum (all sizes) is withdrawn from sale with immediate effect. Customers are asked to return unused product to the point of purchase for a full refund. Customers who have already used the product are advised not to follow the scent.
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**Retail returns report (Aldermere & Voss, 6 November)**
Bottles returned: 1,204. Of these, 1,204 are lighter than the sold weight, by between 4 g and 31 g. The product has evaporated, in the amount of fragrance a person could use in a year.
The returns warehouse at Harlow reports that the room in which the bottles are stored now smells of woodsmoke and rain, and that the roller door, which was locked at 18:00, was found open from the inside at 06:00 with a single lamp lit at the far end, over a small table, laid for one.