British songwriter Sekou, 21, spoke to Clash about the connection between fragrance, confidence and creativity, in an interview built around his visit to Grasse in the South of France to meet Olivier Polge, CHANEL's Perfumer-Creator. The piece frames fragrance as central to Sekou's sense of self-presentation, tying it to his rapid rise in music, where he has earned recognition from major figures despite his youth.

Sekou, a BRIT-nominated songwriter since his teens, has drawn co-signs from artists including Justin Bieber and Sir Elton John, and has just released his most successful project to date, a two-part mixtape praised for its emotional depth. During the interview he reflects on feeling he has "lived 100,000 lives" despite his age, and describes meeting Polge, who succeeded his father as CHANEL's perfumer, as an intimate lesson in the complexity of scent-making, with Polge explaining how hundreds of olfactory molecules combine and can be adjusted to reshape a fragrance.