Meet the British perfumers squeezing landscapes into scents

In 1822, Charles Lillie published The British Perfumer, a 400-page book he hoped would save the country’s fragrance industry ‘from total annihilation’. He claimed those who ‘style themselves Perfumers, as well as most buyers, are entirely ignorant, the former of what they sell, and the latter of what they purchase’.

Chapters were categorised by scent family, sectioned to address each ingredient — from ambergris, found in the digestive system of whales, to aromatic seeds. He explained preparation, advising that most should be found in Britain and where to source them if not (orris, for instance, ‘comes in the greatest perfection from Florence’). Two centuries later, Lillie would be pleased to find British perfumery is thriving and Nature is a driving force.

‘Our starting point was unique,’ explains Emily Cameron, who co-founded Somerset perfumery Ffern with her brother, Owen Mears, in 2017. ‘We wanted to revive the forgotten art of natural perfumery and create artisanal, seasonal scents.’ Inspired by the flora, fruits and folklore of Exmoor, each fragrance illustrates the landscape’s shift between seasons, using only raw and natural ingredients hand foraged or sourced from family farms around the world, blended, barrel-aged and bottled in Somerset.

The latest, Autumn 25, invites us to an orchard, via apple and pear, blue chamomile, white flowers and oakmoss, evoking warm sunlight spilling across the branches. They are produced for the titular season only — each new scent is named correspondingly — and released on the equinox or solstice. ‘Our work is centred around nature’s rhythms, something people are looking for in their lives, a deep connection to Nature and the cycles of the year,’ Emily explains.

Squeezing a landscape into a drop is characteristic of British perfumers. For Norfolk Natural Living’s Bella Middleton, the subject is her eponymous county: ‘The wild coastline, ocean air, the way the sky goes on forever. I wanted to distil that landscape.’ As are Ffern’s offerings, many of hers are defined by season, using dewy florals for springtime rains or herbs for autumn’s rustling leaves. En Plein Air is the fragrant counterpart to Turner’s luminescent paintings of Norfolk skies and Coastal Walks is an appreciation of the landscape in the pouring rain — fresh pine, bergamot and salty minerals.

This olfactory attraction to rain is intrinsic to our nature. It is estimated that humans can detect geosmin, a scent compound released when raindrops hit the ground, at almost infinitesimal concentrations. It is a chord of earth and plant matter. For Lyn Harris, founder of Perfumer H, it represents stillness, the pause after the downpour when moisture lingers. She captures it in Rain Wood — a mossy, lightly resinous scent recalled from childhood days in the Scottish Highlands, translated, like alchemy, into an escape we can wear.

Caledonia’s natural beauty informs the fragrances of Kingdom Scotland. Its first fine fragrance house was born from a ‘deep-rooted desire to bottle Scotland’; something founder Imogen Russon-Taylor was accustomed to, having worked in the aromatic world of whisky for two decades. ‘There is this beautiful parallel,’ she says. ‘Both are layered, emotive and deeply tied to a sense of place.’ Her fragrances pay homage to Scotland’s natural history — its ancient forests (Portal), exotic botanicals (Kingdom Botanica) and geology (Metamorphic).

Edinburgh’s Jorum Studio, meanwhile, uses native botanicals, such as gorseflower, catchfly, bell heather and flag iris, and notes such as peat or whisky. Pony Boy, a rhubarb-forward fragrance with lively spices and aromatics, recalls Loch an Duin in the Outer Hebrides and the neon-bright, herbaceous Gorseland (think pineapple weed, lemon oil and gooseberry) evokes the sun-drenched dolerite of Edinburgh’s Salisbury Crags. ‘We want to give a representation of Scottish culture through the craft of fragrance,’ say founders Chloe Mullen and Euan McCall, ‘capturing the beauty of its Nature with an unconventional, irreverent spirit.’

Many of the endemic plants Jorum references do not produce oils that can be extracted, so are re-created using raw and manufactured materials. They are not the first to do so. Synthetic molecules entered perfumery in the late 1800s, enabling perfumers to mimic notes that were expensive or time consuming to obtain in natural form. Vanillin, first synthesised in 1874, shaved lengthy waiting times from pollination to commercialisation and reduced plant waste. By 1900, James Floris, of Floris London, was testing the compounds, recording how it ‘enhances the flower’. They were soon incorporated into his recipes.

Nature had been guiding Floris, known as the ‘English floral house’, long before synthetics entered the business. Juan Famenias Floris opened his shop at 89, Jermyn Street, London SW1, in 1730, where it remains today. Initially producing hair combs, he began creating perfumes inspired by the scents of his Mediterranean childhood. In 1800, he launched White Rose. It became a favourite of Florence Nightingale, who had bottles shipped out when nursing in the Crimean War. ‘How am I to thank you for the repeated nosegays… with which you have cheered my sick bed?’ she wrote.

The Floris archive holds nine generations of recipes, receipts and personal letters from famous patrons. Bouquet de La Reine was crafted as a wedding gift for Queen Victoria in 1840, then reissued in 2002, with a fruitier touch, for Elizabeth II’s Golden Jubilee. ‘We go back through the recipe books and ask ourselves: “What can we do here, how can we interpret this?”’ notes perfumer Nicola Pozzani. New creations include Golden Amber, inspired by a photograph of Churchill painting at Lake Garda, Italy (Floris’s Special No.127 was his signature); and Purple Mémoir, a soft lavender tribute to Ivy Lodge, home of Mary Anne Floris and James R. D. Bodenham for more than 50 years.

Stories play an integral part in perfumery. Some are a perfumer’s personal memories, transformed from mind to matter, whereas others are there to guide your experience. At Sarah Baker, full-size bottles include fantastical scenarios: Riders, for instance, began as a vision of showjumper Charlotte Casiraghi, Grace Kelly’s granddaughter, hacking in the country. The perfume is warm and animalic, full of hay and leather, green leaves and English flowers, illustrated with a story of cantering through the landscape (complete with an illicit tryst in the stables). Penhaligon’s, which celebrated its 155th anniversary this year, has the Portraits Collection, a riot of aristocratic characters, including Changing Constance, a woman with ‘no regard for custom’, captured in cardamom, pimento and salted caramel, and The Omniscient Mr Thompson, the spying butler who leaves sesame and iris in his wake.

The fragrances of Miller Harris’s Stories collection began by giving perfumers a page from a book to interpret. An extract from Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, in which a character walks down a sunny Rue Soufflot among chestnut trees, flower markets and locals enjoying brioche and cigarettes, was the springboard for Soufflot, an indulgent scent of chestnut, hazelnut, jasmine, honey and leather. ‘The people at Miller Harris want to tell stories,’ says CCO Alex Oprey. ‘What do we want to say and how can we inspire the wearer?’ Its core collection strikes a similar chord, beginning with a note from the natural world and trusting the perfumers’ olfactory responses. Tales of English gardens come alive in Coeur de Jardin and Lumière Dorée tells of neroli, steam-distilled from the blossom of the bitter orange tree.

Like Lillie, Emmanuelle Moeglin scorned the disconnect between the craft of perfumery and the experience. In 2016, she established Experimental Perfume Club in London as a teaching studio, before extending into her own line. Every scent is striking yet dignified: there are roses paired with rhubarb, tonka swirled with sesame and absinthe alongside cedar-wood. Each is label-led ‘top, ‘mid’ or ‘base’, indicating its character when worn solo, but inviting you to craft your own blend. ‘Our approach is artistic and architectural, built to question tradition while still honouring it,’ observes Emmanuelle. Honour is found in the exceptional ingredients, the question is what you do with it. ‘The future of fragrance is participatory,’ she says.

On December 7, 1929, Kathleen M. Barrow advised Country Life readers that: ‘Once having made a choice, one should keep to it and be associated with it always.’ With British perfumery so good, we can all agree that is poor advice indeed.