Best of British

Perfumer Roja Dove has spent a lifetime sniffing out the perfect fragrance

Bespoke perfumer Roja Dove

‘CHOOSING A SCENT is a little bit like finding the perfect lover,’ muses Roja Dove. ‘You always need to spend a little time together before you commit yourselves to a lifelong relationship.’

Dove, wearing a dandy-ish teal velvet jacket and diamond brooch as he tinkers with ingredients at home in Mayfair, is a maverick of the fragrance world. After 20 years with Guerlain, he became a bespoke perfumer in 2001 then launched Roja Parfums in 2011 as an antidote to mass-produced scents. It is now one of Harrods’ bestselling fragrance brands.

Dove’s first olfactory memories include the scent of his mother’s face powder as she came in to kiss him goodnight before leaving for a party (‘she was like an angel’), as well as the aroma of a sweet and spicy bread wafting from the oven of his childhood home in Chichester, and the mossy, woodiness of the bluebell copse in his grandparents’ garden.

Perfume is often associated with France, but Dove, now 61, is adamant that Brits make it brilliantly, too. ‘What most don’t realise is that we have a longstanding history of perfumery in Britain, but that tradition basically finished after the Second World War, when it became all about old-fashioned toiletries.’

He mixes his own scents at home, then sends them to Grasse to be compounded (made into a complete perfume formulation) before they are sent back to the UK for Dove’s team to dilute and package. With between five and 10 new products a year, Dove likens the process to cooking – ‘you could be the best cook in the world, but if you buy bad ingredients, you can never make a great dish’. Consequently, he works only with top oil suppliers to source the very best, be it expertly harvested jasmine flowers or labdanum resin from cistus flowers.

One of the creations of his own that he cherishes most is Great Britain, a warm, dry scent into which he has infused notes of wood and leather to evoke the Palace of Westminster, rose for the Royal family and ‘a tiny note of violet because I love that our country is so accepting and diverse that even something as delicate as a tiny woodland flower can survive here’.

His favourite ingredient is ambergris – he would like to be buried with some of it, ‘just in case there isn’t anywhere to buy it wherever I might be going!’ rojaparfums.com

Above, from left Roja Dove tests a scent; Dove mixes up a fragrance; at home, with his favourite perfume bottles. Interview by Bethan Holt. Photographs by Andy Donohoe