Karen Gilbert – UK

¨Karen GilbertI fell into the skincare and perfumery industry many years ago by accident and never quite left! When I was younger I worried that beauty and perfumery wasn’t an academic or worthwhile career choice.  Over the years I’ve come to realise that what is important is happiness and that feeling you get when everything is right in your world regardless of the chaos outside.

I originally trained as a make-up artist after working for some major skincare companies in London and then went on to study cosmetic science (both at The London College of Fashion). I accidently did a 2 week work placement at IFF (one of the major fragrance manufacturers) and discovered a whole new world of perfumery. They ended up offering me a job and over the years I trained my nose and worked as an evaluator on many different products from fine fragrance to laundry detergent.

Mostly though I worked on own label toiletries ranges for companies such as M&S, Boots & Superdrug which lead me to study aromatherapy which was becoming very mainstream at the time. I got my first taste of teaching too as I ran fine fragrance induction days for new buyers, which included how to categorise fragrances and the raw materials used.¨