SCENT STORIES

JULIETTE WINTER DISCOVERS THE CAPTIVATING TALES BEHIND THIS SEASON’S MUST-HAVE FRAGRANCES.

Juliette Winter takes a look at the latest fragrances, just in time for Christmas wish lists.

WHEN JUAN FAMENIAS FLORIS first opened his fragrance store on Jermyn Street in St James, London, he could not have predicted how fortuitous his timing would be. It was 1730 and a tumultuous period in Britain. Queen Anne had died without an heir, and the closest Protestant descendant, Georg Ludwig from Hannover in Germany, had brought more than just the Protestant faith to the throne. “The Hanoverian Kings, who were used to the Eau de Colognes produced in Cologne, Germany, wore fragrances as part of their grooming protocol,” says Michael Marzano, National Education Manager at Agence de Parfum. “However, the country’s finances were in disarray at this time and Parliament would never have ratified monies toward something as frivolous as fragrance.” So Floris came up with an ingenious idea. “Floris, through its royal contacts, decided to build a tunnel that stretched from Jermyn Street to Buckingham Palace,” explains Michael. “This enabled the delivery of fragrances away from the prying eyes of Parliament and the general population.” As a result, Floris secured its first Royal Warrant and is still the only appointed perfumer to the Queen. It is entirely possible that a bottle of Floris’s recently launched oriental rose-inspired, A Rose For… fragrance is sitting on a dresser in Buckingham Palace. Aside from its royal connection, Floris has garnered a particularly loyal following from Florence Nightingale and Winston Churchill (whose purchases included Special No.127) to Marilyn Monroe (a fan of Floris’s Rose Geranium Bath Essence) and Laurence Olivier. However, Floris isn’t the only prestige fragrance house to have had the exclusiveness of its image benefit from celebrity association — this is a strategy Chanel has honed to perfection. So it came as rather a surprise that its most recent launch, Les Eaux de Chanel, has no celebrity muse, nor even a Chanel persona, attached. Instead, each fragrance in the trio is inspired by Gabrielle Chanel’s favourite places — Deauville, Biarritz and Venice — all of which had a significant impact on her life. The pretty seaside town of Deauville is where Gabrielle’s non-conformist fashion first made its radical mark. Fittingly, Chanel Paris-deauville is like a breath of fresh air with orange rind and basil leaf on a woody base; the distinctly aquatic Chanel Paris-biarritz is inspired by the Basque resort where Gabrielle rubbed shoulders with the rich and famous; while the sumptuously oriental Chanel Paris-venise is the most urban of the three and was inspired by the city that reignited Coco’s creative spark after the death of her lover, Captain Arthur ‘Boy’ Capel, in a motorcycle accident. Luxury fragrances that evoke the Orient are produced with even more fanfare by Amouage, a fragrance house conceived of by the Sultan of Oman in 1983 and renowned for its use of rare and precious ingredients like silver incense and aromatic resin. Their latest luxe offering, Amouage Love Tuberose, is an ode to the tuberose, one of the world’s most expensive flower extracts. “Tuberose has graced many a romantic tale,” says Michael. “It was a favourite of King Louis XIV, with the flower being intensely propagated in the gardens of Versailles.” >

To create the most potent tuberose fragrance possible, the garden had hundreds of tuberoses planted in clay pots so they could be rotated daily with more fragrant blooms. While King Louis may have found his signature scent, many people spend a lifetime searching for a fragrance that expresses their personality. To help them along, Floris is offering something entirely new — the chance for customers to create their own bespoke fragrance in-store. “The most common request we receive from customers is that they don’t want to smell like everyone else,” says Michael. Perhaps that explains the current boom in niche perfumes such as 100BON, a 100 per cent natural fragrance designed to appeal to the modern eco-conscious consumer. “We wanted to get away from heavy-duty marketing and celebrity faces and get back to ingredients, to return to the essence of perfumery, which is simply emotion,” says 100BON co-founder Nicolas Brassier. “What is precious is what is inside the bottle.” Made in Grasse, France, by Robertet, an established manufacturer of perfume ingredients and additives, 100BON has adopted the ‘seed to scent’ philosophy to ensure ingredient transparency and has introduced refillable bottles to minimise waste. “A traditional perfumer can play with roughly 3500 molecules, a natural perfumer with 350,” says Nicholas. “But using only natural fragrances offers the possibility to create all new perfumes that are entirely different from the rest of the market.” So, fragrance lovers, the choice is yours. Never before have there been so many options to find your signature scent, add a new aroma to your fragrance library or select a beautiful bottle for a special someone this Christmas. Luckily you won’t need to have it delivered via a secret tunnel like Georg of Hannover.

“We wanted to get away from heavy-duty marketing and celebrity faces and get back to ingredients, to return to the essence of perfumery, which is simply emotion.”