Eddie Roschi of Le Labo will be at Liberty of London on Tuesday, June 10th:
Come and visit Liberty's exclusive cult New York fragrance brand, Le Labo and meet its founder Eddie Roschi, one of the greatest olfactory experts of our time.
Eddie Roschi is conducting one to one olfactory sessions, and will hand-blend a scent suited to you…
The new Le Labo area at Liberty opened on October 11th, just outside the main perfume room. As yet, they are not offering Discovery sets or travel sizes, just the base collection of ten scents and the room fragrances and candles. They also stock the Olfactionary (a “dictionary” with 40 natural perfume essences “to refine and develop your sense of smell”), for £295.
The arrangement, just as in their New York boutique, is that the scents are made up for you while you wait. And, just as in New York, there are white tiles and lab coats, and a generally scientific feel about the whole enterprise. There was clearly a lot of interest and excitement from customers when I visited — both from men and women…
Liberty has to be the prettiest store in London. The first time you turn off Regent Street and see that mad Tudor frontage, it’s almost impossible not to laugh out loud. In the midst of all the stately Georgian architecture in this part of central London, Liberty looks like a joke played on the city by the Disney Corporation.
In some ways it is, except the joker wasn’t Walt but a chap called Arthur Lasenby Liberty, who had the store built in 1924. So, not Tudor at all! It was created using the timbers of two ships, the HMS Impregnable and the HMS Hindustan, and the length of the Great Marlborough Street frontage is apparently the same as that of the Hindustan.
Inside, the store is even more impressive. Arthur Liberty wanted to have his customers feel as if they were walking round their own homes (this tells you something about the kind of customers he had), so the store was arranged as small rooms round three galleried lightwells. The place gleams with carved panelling; it’s a bit like walking round a stately home where you’re actually allowed to pick up the exhibits…