For the founder of La Pyae Apothecary, Kathleen Baird-Murray, distilling three decades of experience as a beauty editor, including hundreds of hours of interviews with leading fragrance experts and thousands of ideas about scent and storytelling, into her own fragrance line has been the achievement of a lifetime.
After almost a decade in the making, La Pyae Apothecary launched at the end of 2024 with Catch Me If I Fall, its debut scent created in collaboration with renowned perfumer Frank Voelkl, the man behind cult compositions for the likes of Le Labo, and Glossier, including Santal 33 and You. So unsurprisingly, Catch Me If I Fall is just as unique and expertly crafted as one might expect.
The story behind La Pyae Apothecary’s perfume Catch Me If I Fall
Catch Me If I Fall by La Pyae Apothecary
Catch Me If I Fall is also the culmination of Baird-Murray’s lifelong journey to reconnect with her Burmese heritage, which began with a trip to Myanmar in 1994, just as she was starting out as a journalist. Here, after a separation of over 50 years, Baird-Murray was able to meet and grow close to family members, while also becoming acquainted with the country in which her Burmese-Irish mother was born, alongside its culture and visual language in a broader context.
‘I have so many vivid memories of being there,’ she says. ‘You’ll see this mix of neon signs, neon-decorated temples next to the more classical, gold leaf-covered temples. And I used to see lots of flower petals threaded together on a string that people would give offerings to the Buddha. So many visual references I just loved.’
The journey to bottling these feelings and experiences in Catch Me If I Fall began when Baird-Murray sent Voelkl a small treasure box to reference. It contained sandalwood prayer beads, old family photographs, a childhood memoir and a book of more recent photos taken on a trip.
This close dialogue between the two has resulted in a fresh and evocative perfume that is floral without being cloying; musky, but simultaneously zingy. This was achieved via top notes of bergamot zest, cardamom, neroli and green leaves; jasmine sambac, ambrette, freesia and iris at Catch Me If I Fall’s heart; and cedarwood, sandalwood and white musk at its base.
Kathleen Baird-Murray’s grandmother Khyin Nyun with her mother Maureen c.1930s
La Pyae – pronounced ‘La Pea-yay’ – is the nickname of one of Baird-Murray’s relatives, meaning ‘full moon’ in Burmese. Referencing the name of the fragrance itself, Baird-Murray acknowledges that it is ‘a bit of a love story.’ ‘It’s a love story for Burma and a love story for my mum, who’s not around anymore,’ she continues. ‘She died 20 years ago. It’s for all those people I love, whether they’re near or far away.’ (Baird-Murray’s mother Maureen, wrote a 2012 autobiography about her childhood, A World Overturned, which the ‘journal’ section on Ly Pyae’s website details).
For La Pyae Apothecary’s visual identity, imagery comes courtesy of Maison Racine (formerly known as Metz + Racine), with London-based design agency Farrow behind the perfume bottle for Catch Me If I Fall. With a pleasing weight and tactile ridges, the bottle’s cap is 100% compostable, a detail that took some time to secure, sourced from a small British brand recommended by another perfumer that Baird-Murray knows. ‘I’ve had a lot of very kind support from a lot of people in the beauty industry in realising this,’ she says.
Kathleen Baird-Murray on her first trip to Myanmar in 1994, where the story of La Pyae Apothecary begins
On the front of Catch Me If I Fall, Times New Roman-esque typography in the oxblood red of betel – a flowering plant native to Myanmar – names the scent. ‘It has the look of slightly faded paper that has been sitting in the window of a shop with the sun hitting it,’ Baird-Murray says. ‘I wanted [it to] remind me of something classic, as if it had been around for a long time.’
The creation of Catch Me If I Fall may have also taken a long time. But for Baird-Murray, it was more than worth it. ‘I used to get so frustrated that I couldn’t bring La Pyae to life,’ she says. ‘But, in the end, it’s better than I could have imagined – precisely because I’ve had to wait.’
La Pyae Apothecary and Kathleen Baird-Murray frequently work with key Myanmar charities, Medical Action Myanmar, Burma Skincare Initiative, and Prospect Burma, plus The Disaster Emergency Committee and Community Partners Initiative, which are also currently responding to the March 2025 Earthquake disaster.
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