Some brands often seem to amount to no more than coloured chemical water. Unlike natural perfumes, synthetic ones don't react with your own biochemistry. Fragrances are simply too fleeting.

Your very own signature scent, on the other hand, is a melting, merging extension of yourself. Bespoke and customised scent is a fast growing trend. The discerning can embark on their own olfactory journey to create a perfume of their own.

The cost of this varies enormously. However, fragrance consultations can be had for £40.

For £40-£200 Isabelle Gelle will compose a bespoke scent using only natural oils and absolutes and neat vodka to dilute them. Perfumers use the same terminology as musicians, apparently. Cadenzas in perfume are made up of top, middle and base notes, and an exquisite perfume is a symphony of scent.

Isabelle's clients can choose from 150 essential oils and absolutes: Far Eastern spices, German chamomile, North African neroli culled from orange flowers, tropical notes of Tahitian Monoi, a subtle Greenland flower, Ledun, similar to edelweiss, and desert resins like frankincense and myrrh, the gifts of the Magi.

Following a scent tasting, Isabelle, who lives in Hull and was brought up in the Seychelles, made a bespoke scent for me. Being French, she asked me what I liked cooking. I told her I loved nutmeg and grated it into creamy sauces. A week later, when I opened Isabelle's bottles, ambrosial aromas lifted from the bottle of nutmeg and then other notes of vanilla, pettigrain, lime, patchouli, ylang ylang and cloves started floating as the hours wore on.

Founded in 1878, Guerlain use 80 per cent natural ingredients. La Maison Guerlain re-opened recently in Paris and offers a bespoke scent service for £20,000.

Although, for considerably less, you can experience the Guerlain alchemy with a fragrance consultation for £40 that entails a little psychological probing and will help you decide which of the classic Guerlain perfumes is best suited to you.

Jo Malone's fragrance combining is bespoke scent made easy and because her perfumes are relatively light, it is possible to layer them to make an alluring cocktail. Malone recommends spritzing different scents on the body. I was given a hand and arm massage in order to prepare my skin, as when it is hydrated it absorbs the scent more. After much deliberation, I chose tuberose: carnal and rich, with an overlay of cassis and fig that brought vivid recollections of al fresco suppers on my Greek holidays.

Roja Dove's art deco temple to perfume adorned with Baccarat fountains of scent is also a shrine to coveted French scents. Here (£50 to £100 to find your signature scent) you begin by sniffing Diptyque candles to track your scent. Next, Derek Barker, the perfume specialist, steered me to the computer to discover my perfumality. I choose Annick Goutal's Hadrian's Water. Then a fan of blotters were wafted under my nose. I chose a powdery number of vanilla and creamy marzipan: Bal de Versailles by Jean Desperez.

CONTACTS
Guerlain, House of Fraser, Briggate, Leeds, contact Marilyn Underwood on 0870 1607250.
Jo Malone, 15-17 Queen Victoria Street, Leeds, tel 0113 245 5588.
Isabelle Gelle, perfume composer of Lilly Moon, tel 01482 631975, wwwlilymoon.co.uk
Roja Dove Parfumerie, House of Fraser, Manchester, tel 0870 1607270, www.houseoffraser.co.uk
The Scent Trail, An Olfactory Odyssey by Celia Lyttelton is to be published by Bantum in 2007.