Perfume Portraits

Updating last week's Ormonde Jayne givaway, I visited the London perfumery to try the house's Perfume Portraits scent-matching service.

The Sloane Square boutique is black and shiny as a laquer jewel-box. Ormonde Jayne founder, Linda Pilkington is tiny and shiny blonde with the tallest pin thin heels. And everything inside's aromatic, from the jasmine tea and tiny scented chocolates we were served to the air, heady with layered scents.

Linda spent years tracking down unusual ingredients before she discovered the 'speciality oils' produced in quantities too small to supply the bigger perfume houses. It's these oils that give her scents an edge of originality and exclusivity. You're unlikely to have smelt quite like them before.

Perfume Portraits takes the customer back to the unlayered individual oils. Just smell them, say which ones you like, and you'll have a better idea which perfume will suit you than if you bow to the influence of the name, packaging or even the gender, of a scent. This is not as easy as it sounds. By the time I'd sniffed eight of the over 20 base oil's Linda uses as the major notes in her creations, I was willing to say everything smelt good because everything sort of did.

Clearing my nose by sniffing coffee beans (who'da known it?) Linda suggested I try three of the scents. Based on my base oil preferences, she spritzed me (liberally) with Ormonde Woman and Orris Noir, but the third was a mystery and I was a little suprised when she revealed the label.

I'm as likely to wear men's perfume as women's but when I'd tried Zizan in the Discovery Box I was blown away by an enormous gust of bergamot and lime. Zizan? I was thinking Zidane - those 'millionaire footballer on the pull' top notes immediatly placed the scent way too far along the masc/fem scale even for me. But, as a fan of vetiver, Linda made me try it. "Don't smell it right away," she said, and I didn't. And five minutes later, the footballer had disappeared to be replaced by the rusty earthy complexity of three layered vetivers. I'd never smelt anything quite like it before, but I 'recognised' it right away: an old friend in a new form.

Zizan was designed, rather like some of Moholy-Nagy's paintings, via the slightly abstract medium of the telephone. In 2008 Linda called up all her male friends determined to identify their ideal perfume. Lots of them loved the citrusy breeziness of Dior's Eau Sauvage - a perfume Linda and her sister used to wear as teenagers, mixed with Diorella. Apparently the mix was "perfect for a 16 year old girl" which is probably why it landed them in such trouble at school.

And the name. Nothing to do with football of course. It's from the Latin name for vetiver: vetiveria zizanoïdes.

I chose my scent in the form of four elegant black 10ml travel sprays: perfect for travelling back and forth on the Eurostar.

Ormonde Jayne will organise anything from a free lunchtime consultation to a full-on champagne-and-canapes experience. Here are a few photos of the process and...

 

 

OK who won the discovery set?

I would have loved to have given it to Kathleen with her Playdoh obsession but she confessed to having a set already so I'm just going to leave her to enjoy rolling in vanilla-scented goop.

DBC's insight into what perfume does to a man was telling, but as he's already wedded to Shalimar, I'm not sure he'd enjoy infidelity.

So it's a difficult decision but I'm going to give it to Hannah who hasn't really dipped her toe into the (perfumed) water yet but is clearly itching to try. Hannah, I hope you find the one that's right for you...

 

 

 

Comments

[Hannah]

yay thank you so much!!

[badaude]

Hope you enjoy them! Let me know which is your favourite.

[Brandon]

I love this idea. It really does seem like the perfect way to find your ideal scent. Nice tip about the coffee beans, too. And, of course, loving that pea coat on the back of your chair :)

[badaude]

I'll send you a photo of the whole coat. I've been wearing it non-stop over the past two months. Never mind a photo, it probably deserves its own mini-series.