Return of scents that look as good as they smell
AS A little girl, I could imagine nothing more exciting than rummaging through my mother’s dressing table. The colourful make- up, the glittering jewellery, the vials of exotic perfumes were like a door- way into Narnia: a glimpse of what it was like to be a woman.
Most of all, I loved to dab her scent on my neck. It made me feel sophisticated, grown up. I adored the glass fragrance bottles: the crystal dove on top of Nina Ricci L’Air du Temps, designed after World War II to symbolise peace; square- shouldered Chanel No.5; Femme de Rochas’ womanly curves. Each was a token of love from my father, who travelled far and wide as a journalist, and never failed to bring back a guilt-assuaging bottle from Duty Free — for her, and later, for me, too.
I have no doubt those early encounters set the stage for my work as a scent expert — I founded the Perfume Society.
For me, a great perfume is a multifaceted assault on the senses, and the way a fragrance is presented is as important as its smell.
Each bottle on my own dressing table brings back memories.
There’s YSL Rive Gauche, groundbreaking at its 1971 launch for being the first scent in a metal can — its bold blue, black and silver stripes, echoing the feminist spirit of the day.
Then Guerlain’s delicate Shalimar, its slim, fluted body and crimped blue stopper barely changed since its unveiling in 1921.
MoSTprecious is Schiaparelli’s Shocking — its bottle based on Mae West’s curvaceous torso. My husband (then boyfriend) bought it for me in Paris.
I not only wore the perfume on my wedding day, it inspired me to have a wedding dress made in shocking pink, which was first used in couture by Elsa Schiaparelli.
New scent bottles lack these lovely details. Instead, there is a growing trend for chic minimalism that mimics current trends in interiors and fashion.
Top perfume houses, from Calvin Klein to Aesop and The Library of Fragrance, are producing chic apothecarystyle bottles more suited to a chemist’s shop than boudoir. Their simplicity came into fashion as an antidote to the blingtastic celebrity and designer perfumes.
Very plain bottles have become a mark of refinement. But if you’re a closet maximalist, like me, you’ll be happy to know designers have grown tired of all this restraint, and there is a renaissance of glamorous packaging.
Take the £75,000 bottle of Dior J’Adore L’or, a facsimile of which is on show at Harrods’ Salon de Parfums. Its Baccarat crystal is adorned with a gold and blackened silver ribbon encrusted with 40 diamonds.
There are diamond-encrusted bottles at British brand Clive Christian, bejewelled at Guerlain, and hefty decanter-shaped ones at niche perfumer Kilian. At Fortnum & Mason, husband and wife team Thomas and Dagmar Smit have launched Elegantes London, with perfumes by Julien Rasquinet. The swirling crystal bottles can even be used as candlesticks after you’ve dabbed the last drop. And at £ 2,350 a bottle, you’d definitely want it to have a second life.
But you don’t have to have deep pockets to have a beautiful display on your dressing table.
Beautiful, but affordable, bottles have a distinguished history, dating back to 1907. Before then, perfume was a luxury, sold in hugely expensive crystal bottles.
All that changed when perfumer François Coty teamed up with jeweller René Lalique.
Coty had a strikingly modern business philosophy: ‘ Give a woman the best product you can make, present it in a perfect flacon with beautiful simplicity and impeccable taste, ask her to pay a reasonable price, and that will be the birth of a business such as the world has never seen.’
Lalique made affordable, yet elegant, glass bottles for Coty, and together they brought fragrance to the masses. Lalique still sells exquisite bottles. They come at an ‘everyday’ price equivalent to most designer scents, and in luxury limited editions from £1,000.
As for this season’s most glamorous new launch, I’d be snapping up Annick Goutal Tenue de Soirée — with a pom-pom charm at the neck. Through the ages, scent bottles have captured the spirit of the times. Sometimes glitzy, at others clean-lined. But always, for me, and countless other women, a shimmering invitation to feel a little more glamorous and confident.
Here’s my round-up of the prettiest of the current crop (pictured above, from left).
Guerlain Bee Bottles
POA at Harrods THE design has barely changed since Pierre-François Pascal Guerlain presented a bottle to France’s Empress Eugénie for her 1853 wedding to Napoleon III. Can be filled with your choice of Guerlain scent.
Elegantes London
£2,350 CRYSTAL flacon ‘reminiscent of the swirling skirts of an haute couture ballgown’.
Gucci Bamboo Limited Edition
£68 for 50ml LoVERS of floriental Gucci Bamboo will be desperate for this special design.
Lyn Harris Perfumer H
From £265 MICHAEL Ruh’s smoky bottles for Miller Harris founder Lyn Harris’s new venture contain crisply simple colognes to rich, swirling orientals.
Marc Jacobs Daisy Kiss and Daisy Dream Kiss
£55 each for 50ml AS DAISY celebrates its tenth birthday, the latest coveted limited edition bottles.
Miu Miu L’Eau Bleue
£68 for 50ml A BLuE-FACETED bottle with a yellow stopper of Art Decostyle elegance.
L’Occitane Terre de Lumière
£58 for 50ml L’oCCITANE sets out to capture Provence’s golden hour, just before sunset.
Moschino Pink Fresh Couture
£35 for 30ml DESIGNER Jeremy Scott’s first bottle design for Moschino was a teddy bear, and there’s no end to the whimsy in sight.