Widow creates perfume of her late husband's smell to keep his memory alive

France: Grief-stricken Katia Apalategui missed her late husband so much, she found herself sniffing his pillow to keep his memory alive.

Now she has set up a perfume company to allow grieving relatives to buy a bottle of tailor-made perfume that captures the unique scent of their departed loved ones.

The ghoulish fragrances that extract the smell from a deceased person’s clothes are set to go on sale in France later this year.

Company boss Katia Apalategui believes her morbid perfumes will offer “olfactory comfort” to anyone who misses their dead spouses, family members or friends.

Ms Apalategui, 52, is now working with Le Havre University in northern France on a technique to reproduce the human smell.

She said: “We are going through funeral homes to offer families a small box containing a vial of the departed’s odour that we would have extracted from a piece of material provided by them.

“There is a powerful link between smell and memory, which is on a par with photos, videos and other memories and can offer great comfort to the grieving.”

The perfume would be “made-to-measure” and sell for around £400 pounds, she said.

Le Havre University chemist Geraldine Savary said: “We take the person’s clothing and extract the odour, which represents about a hundred molecules, and we reconstruct it in the form of a perfume in four days.

“The science could equally be used create perfumes as gifts between lovers on Valentine’s Day, or for children separated from their parents.”