New Bond Street is not the kind of place you expect to come across a department store. It’s a neighbourhood packed with designer flagships, and the sort of jewelry shop with no prices in the window and a large chap with an earpiece standing near the entrance.
Fenwick is an upmarket UK department store chain, with a good track record on niche perfume lines…
Amouage will be opening a new flagship boutique in London, at 14 Lowndes St, Knightsbridge. The store opens on 25 June. Come by on Friday or Saturday, when Amouage will be launching the new Library Collection and offering a special gift with purchases over £50. (via amouage)
Etro is not a widely available brand in London. Liberty usually has a decent selection, and currently Fenwick, just up the road, is featuring the brand. The only other way to get hold of Etro scents is to visit the Etro shop, just off Piccadilly.
It’s quite an easy shop to miss; the name is visible only on the canopy, which cleverly hides the shop name stencilled on the window. You’re also likely to be dazed by the profusion of designer goodies on either side, including Bottega Veneta next door…
For Floris, we’re back on Jermyn Street, that bastion of male elegance tucked quietly behind Piccadilly.
Floris have been scenting the gentry since 1730. What’s more, they’ve been doing it from this very shop at 89 Jermyn Street, through wars and blitzes. “There are ghosts here,” says assistant Creative Manager Max Murgia.
It’s a dark but spacious shop. Many perfumeries in London are dinky, but Floris is big enough to accommodate a hundred or so shoppers in the scrum of the post-Christmas sale. The goods are displayed in cabinets made of Spanish mahogany, according to Max; they came from the Great Exhibition of 1861, held at the Crystal Palace.
Quintessentially English, Floris was in fact founded by a Spaniard, Juan Famenias Floris. It began as a barber’s shop, as so many men’s toiletries companies did, and by the 19th Century was catering to the chins of members of the Royal Family. The shop is peppered with Royal warrants, which are carved and painted wooden crests with the insignia of a particular Royal personage shown. It’s still family-owned, and continues its relationship with the Royals, as we’ll see below….
Will Andrews of the Fragrance Creation Team at Procter & Gamble will be giving a talk, The science of scent: Adventures in a creative mind, at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in London…