Inside the Collection: Tracy Wan

PerfumeTok’s best storyteller shares her most meaningful bottles.

Tracy Wan makes me feel calm. I first came across her while aimlessly scrolling TikTok maybe a year ago. Amid a sea of sameness, her presence, soothing voice, and original thoughts on fragrance felt like a deep exhale. I wanted to watch every single video.

Tracy is an excellent storyteller, so it’s no surprise she’s also a beautiful writer. She’s written many essays on fragrance and authored Notes, a book that explores scent, memory, and language. Thankfully, there’s more on the way. Her next book will delve into what our sense of smell can teach us about ourselves, and I can't wait to devour it. You can also find her evocative food writing on her Substack,

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Beyond the page and screen, Tracy is an educator and advocate for making perfumery feel accessible—as both an art form and a tool for emotional well-being. She has studied at the Institute for Art and Olfaction and the Grasse Institute of Perfumery, and she brings that knowledge to life with generosity and grace.

She goes by Invisible Stories on TikTok. You can follow her on Instagram here, and explore more of her writing and brand work on her website.

Thank you for sharing your stories with us, Tracy! And for being such a positive force in the fragrance community and giving us very good advice. 💖

As a reminder, this series is about getting to know someone through the bottles they keep—not about suggesting you need a sprawling collection to enjoy fragrance. You can love perfume deeply without owning a lot of it. Samples, decants, travel sizes, and swaps are great ways to do that.

Byredo Pulp—the first niche perfume to stir something in me. I think it'd do well in the desert island heat.

Dior Vetiver—a fragrance I fell in love with when I was in summer school at the Grasse Institute of Perfumery. It's my scent souvenir for a very meaningful summer of my life. Vetiver is a material that I feel a spiritual kinship with, and this fragrance is my favorite rendition of it. It's also cheating because the bottle is the biggest in my collection (250ml) and could be used as a weapon if needed.

Serge Lutens De Profundis—assuming I am dying on this desert island, I would want a scent to accompany me to the afterlife. This one feels appropriate, melancholic, and funereal, like a poem on a headstone.

Tell me a story about a bottle in your collection.

Last summer I traveled to China, where I was born, for the first time in over two decades. I was curious about the perfume scene there, but most of the brands I came across were French-made, working with Yann Vasnier and Dominique Ropion and the like. Then I found this tiny boutique in Shanghai called Nadine Scents that carried mostly Chinese independent perfumers. There, I was introduced to a brand called Yili Olfactory Art, from Beijing—I immediately fell in love with Old Man (老头), which smelled like tea, Chinese medicine, and my formative years under my grandparents' watch. Getting a bottle was a whole ordeal. It was made to order in Beijing, shipped to the retailer in Shanghai, and delivered to my father's house in Kunming. He muled it across the ocean to New York and then later to Toronto on a Thanksgiving visit. Waiting makes the nose grow fonder, maybe. It's one of my great treasures now.

What's a bottle you never wear but will never give away?

Elizabeth and James, Nirvana Black. I'm afraid to wear it because I can't see how much is left in the bottle, and I always want to have a little bit of it in my archive. It's such a special fragrance, one of my all-time favorite sandalwoods, and I curse the perfume gods for discontinuing it.

The first bottle you would bring to a fragrance swap?

Kilian Blue Moon Ginger Dash, which I got in PR. It did nothing for me. This is hypothetical because it's technically not mine anymore—someone bought it from me a while ago when I was selling bottles to fundraise for local food banks—but I've made several attempts to meet up with them, and they've stopped answering. Still, I hold onto it in case I get that DM one day.

If I was over right now, what would you spray on me?

The newest from Xinú, which wasn't included in the sample set that you smelled and reviewed. I picked it up on a recent trip to Mexico. It's a handsome, buttoned-up vetiver that leans fougère, made verdant with geranium and sweetened with tonka. Another Rodrigo Flores-Roux classic. Since you liked Monstera so much, I think you might like this one too.

Which bottle do you reach for when you want to feel comforted?

Tabacco Toscano from Santa Maria Novella was the first bottle I bought myself when I moved to Toronto to start a career in advertising. I consider it my first "adult" fragrance purchase, and it'll always remind me of self-reliance, financial independence, and figuring out your place in the world. The scent on its own is very gentle and comforting, too: a light tobacco, vanilla, sandalwood, a touch of sweetness. Lately my partner has been wearing it, so I now also associate the scent with how he makes me feel, which is very safe and taken care of.

Anything else you want to share?

Since making content about fragrance, my collection has grown expeditiously, and it's not better for it. I experienced a similar feeling when I worked for a few months in a perfume store last year—the more access I had to perfume, the less special it became. So, to anyone reading this who might be feeling the hot urge to acquire more perfumes, sit on that instinct for a little bit. Get a sample of what piques your interest and wear it around. See if that scent stays special. So often, the sparkle of novelty wears off, and the scent is forgotten. It's a good thing. It feels good to not get the things we want right away or to test the limits of our longing.