Beauty, Scent, and the Courage to Start Over

When Isabelle Ramsay-Brackstone lost her husband, she didn’t flee Bermuda—she stayed, turned grief into craft, and built a perfumery that captures the scent of a life fully lived.

Standing in Isabelle Ramsay-Brackstone’s tropical walled garden, surrounded by oleander, passion flower, jasmine, and more, it was easy to imagine why a person would choose to reboot her life here. The sun beat down on the 400-year-old house that’s the office, factory, and store for local brand Lili Bermuda perfume, but Ramsay-Brackstone showed no sign of melting in the heat. Enviably, she remained cool and poised, moving confidently among her blooms as she pointed them out to me.

I love getting to know new locations through perfume, which is how I first found Lili Bermuda and, consequently, Ramsay-Brackstone. I’ve sniffed my way through many vacations, but Isabelle’s story feels like a Nancy Meyers movie. It would start briefly with her life in Montreal, but quickly move to Bermuda, where she transplanted the family she’d started with her Bemudian husband, creating a new, utterly different existence.

From Montreal to Bermuda: A Leap Into the Unknown

Where she found her old life in Canada limited her options, Bermuda opened doors for new opportunities. “I love it with all my heart,” she said. It’s clear in how she picked jasmine blossoms and rolled them between her fingers, continually sniffing them as she talked about her flowers like friends. Her roses were unhappy; her passion fruit buds were shy, yet the flowers lacked humility. She cares deeply about her work, but it’s completely rooted (no pun intended) in her adopted home. The fragrances she creates and the inspirations she draws are her environment and the life she’s created here.

She Could Have Left. She Chose to Stay.

That life sustained her when, in 2012, her husband Kirby died of a heart attack. He was 43. Suddenly, she was both a single mother of three and owner-operator of a business. “The love I received from my community was unbelievable,” she said. “I don’t think I would have received so much if I had been […] in Montreal. Everybody stepped in. My children were very young back then, and the wave of love we received was unbelievable.” People expected her to go back to Canada, but she had no intention. One of the things she loves about Bermuda is the support. “There’s genuine care for each other,” Ramsay-Brackstone said. That care was abundantly clear in the time following Kirby’s death. She chose to stay in her new home, bottling her grief into beauty.

As much as she loves it, however, the island isn’t for everyone. She was an accountant in Montreal, because her parents saw it as a practical career, but, as she put it, “Bermuda doesn’t cater to all talents.” When her expertise didn’t directly align, she pivoted into perfumery, making a lifelong interest and passion into her new profession. While she always loved fragrance, she knew she had to learn properly to be a hands-on creator and not a figurehead.

Image: Courtesy of Isabelle Ramsay-Brackstone

Learning the Art of Perfume—and Reinvention

“I learned perfumery from scratch, from David Bothello,” she said, crediting the previous perfumer who was Lili Bermuda’s nose for 45 years. She also undertook formal training to round out her knowledge, aware that she’d need some serious schooling. “Perfumery is like playing the violin,” Ramsay-Brackstone said, smiling. “You don’t just pick up the instrument and make music. You’ll make a lot of cacophony, but I wanted to make music; for me, that was important.” It was three years before she launched her first creation, Coral, to represent Bermudian springtime.

Perfume as Legacy—and Defiance

Isabelle has goals and dreams for her brand, but she’s simultaneously cautious. She’d like to expand into Europe—she describes many of her scent preferences as more European—but she doesn’t want to compromise her foundation. Right now, she runs everything and she likes it that way, mentioning  a recent trip to visit her glass manufacturer in Poland. European tastes align more closely with hers; while she appreciates her American customers, “Americans like things they can eat,” she said with a sigh.

Her most recent creation, Golden Hour, was a collaboration with her eldest daughter, who thought they should have a scent that evoked a cocktail cruise. “She likes sweetness a lot,” Ramsay-Brackstone commented. Its praline note reminds me most strongly of New York City’s roasted nut carts. SunKiss, her collaboration with her younger daughter, was inspired by a sunscreen encountered while sailing. To me, it smells like a creamsicle. These are her best sellers, although she’d like to have a market that’s closer to her own preferences as well.

But she’s undoubtedly happy. Surrounded by beauty, fragrance, and community, Ramsay-Brackstone doesn’t see the need to compromise her vision—or her life. She claims she only hires people; they don’t leave. When I asked her about bringing her children into the family business, she smiled and shook her head. “I tell my children that this is my dream, and they should have their own dreams,” she said. Her eldest daughter is a music teacher, and her younger daughter just graduated from college. Her son wanted to work for her this summer. “I said no,” she stated. “Try other things, because that’s how I found my talents. Go work in retail, go work in construction, go work in garden centers. Try stuff. That’s how you discover things.”

When I ask her what the future holds, she sees it offering more of what she already has. “I think I see myself in the same place,” she said. “I like to say that my best perfumes are yet to be created. I have a lot of ideas. I’m always working on something.”

Even so, she’s always thinking about her customers—her pleasure comes from offering them something beautiful. “It gives me so much joy,” she said. “Because that’s what a person is about. It’s about giving joy.” That she does, from the tour groups of teenage girls who wander into the store, sniffing everything, to the woman who calls while we’re talking, worried that her perfume of 50 years has been discontinued. It’s a responsibility Isabelle treasures, knowing the deep connection scent holds. “I don’t kill a fragrance because when you kill a fragrance, you kill a soul,” she said seriously. “It’s very important.”

A Fragrance That Lasts

If our sense of smell is our most evocative of memory, it stands to reason that Ramsay-Brackstone feels personal purpose in its preservation. “I’m emotionally invested in this,” she said. “It’s not just a business. It’s people.”

Perfume, it turns out, is more than just vanity. It’s a mark of who we are, and a way to remember what—and who—we love.