text: Katia Apalategui was inspired after seeing her mother cope with the loss of her husband by clinging to his pillow. Pictured posed by model . A grieving daughter has come up with an unusual way to keep the memory of loved ones alive - by bottling their scent. Seven years ago, Katia Apalategui's mother coped with losing her husband by holding on to his pillowcase which his smell clung to. This inspired the 52-year-old French insurance saleswoman to think of a more permanent way to capture a person's individual scent in a bid to help others in mourning. The strong link between smell and memory is the reason her product will provide 'olfactory comfort' to customers, she says. '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,' she said. But the 'made-to-measure' perfumes will be rather costly and be priced at around 560 euros (£400). To help develop her idea, she teamed up with the Havre university in France, where researchers have developed a technique to reproduce the human smell. The university's Geraldine Savary explained the process involved taking a person's clothes and extracting the odour - a few hundred characteristic molecules - which is then made into a bottle of perfume in four days. She said: 'There was a perfect synergy between what she wanted to do and what our researchers are doing so we decided to get involved. 'There is a very strong link between memory and smell which is similar to that between the memories we have from looking at old photos, videos and other things. '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.' She came up with a more permanent way to capture a person's individual scent in a bid to help others in mourning. File photo . Popular Science reports the classic process of perfume distillation is the most likely method, which involves passing steam through an object at high temperatures and capturing the result. And Ms Apalategui, although first inspired by death, is hoping her product could be also be ideal Valentine's Day gifts or even for children away from their parents. Her son, who is in business school, is planning to launch by September this year.
target: Seven years ago, insurance saleswoman Katia Apalategui lost her father .
  Her grieving mother coped with loss by sniffing late husband's pillowcase .
  Inspired her to come up with permanent way to capture person's scent .
  But bottles of loved ones perfume will set customers back £400 a bottle .