Ormonde Jayne Perfume Portraits

British niche firm Ormonde Jayne is introducing a new service, aimed at providing clients with the tools and techniques to choose their perfect scent: a journey through the aromatic raw materials themselves, thus guiding them into choosing and setting aside ingredients! And the best latest shopping tip? Ormonde Jayne is being introduced to Harrods, for all you UK-based people. But how does the Perfume Portraits service work?

Seated at a beautiful bespoke testing table, trained staff take notes about the client’s likes and dislikes, favourite perfumes and other aromas. The customer is then invited to smell three raw ingredients from seven different families; hesperedic, light floral, intense floral, balsamic, oriental, woody and atmospheric. The scent of each raw ingredient is embedded in a unique black and gold ceramic stone especially created for Ormonde Jayne’s new Perfume Portraits.
At this stage the client is only asked to say if they like the aroma or not, and not to try to relate the scent to a perfume they might wear. Perfume Portraits is simply about letting personal taste be guided by your mind’s limitless scope to decipher the aromas around you.
Concluding the experience, two or three Ormonde Jayne perfumes that may suit by summarizing the favoured oils are recommended. Again, the favoured perfumes are presented on a second collection of black and gold ceramic stones. The client will then choose the perfume they like best. Sometimes this could be two or three perfumes and the chosen perfume is sprayed onto the wrists.
Discussion of their personal Perfume Portrait is possible too and yhis is something they can take home and keep for future reference while an archive is kept for those who want to drop by and need to rejog their memory on what they chose in the past.
Perfume Portraits is available at the flagship store in The Royal Arcade, 28 Old Bond Street and at the new Ormonde Jayne counter in The Perfume Hall on the ground hall of Harrods (click to also watch some videos with founder Linda Pilkington).

You can read an article by Lucia van der Post in the Financial Times supplement How to Spend It following this link.