Jo's Scent Notes: Floris London Purple Mémoire

I have a huge affection for Floris London fragrances. Not least because their Ledger Series Rose Geranium fragrance got this column nominated for a Jasmine Award, the results of which will be announced at The Fragrance Foundation Awards dinner tonight, in the City. (You can read that nominated article here.)

My love of Floris goes back to teenagehood, as I explained in the piece – but it’s also because I have a deep fondness for authentic brands, and they don’t get much more authentic than Floris London. In a world of marketing hype and massive budgets for paid-for posts and billionaire singers launching fragrances (never mind that some of them are quite good) when they’re already making fortunes from music, and what generally feels like a gazillion fragrances launched every week, there’s something about a ninth-generation perfume house, still run by family members, and which launches new scents only when they’re ready, which pushes all my buttons.

If you ever have the time, I can honestly recommend a perfumed pilgrimage to Floris’s original store, on St. James’s Street, from which they’ve operated for centuries (and where bespoke fragrance appointments are hosted in a back office where ledgers featuring names from King Edward VIII to Winston Churchill via Marilyn Monroe are carefully stowed). Their staff are patient and knowledgeable and you needn’t worry that you’re not a millionaire because nobody’s going to press you into purchasing anything. (Although I defy you not to leave without a bar of their glorious soap.)

I’ve been wearing Floris London Purple Mémoire since I discovered it at the launch a couple of weeks ago, hosted at a florabundant tea at The Greenhouses in Marylebone (a venue very much worth checking out for special occasions, NB), which felt like a mini festival of lavender and purple, accessorised by vintage teacups. And it is… just SO wearable. Instantly classic, like adding a new dress to your wardrobe that you know you’re going to reach for time after time after time after time. As I have been.

Purple Mémoire is NOT the first fragrance to combine lavender and vanilla. Guerlain Jicky can lay claim to first combining those notes in a bottle, and Chanel Jersey did the same, with quite a splash, more recently. But this scent is just the most perfect balance of cool (from the aromatic lavender), warmed by the snuggliness of vanilla. It’s fresh, yet cosy. Pretty, yet sophisticated. Completely genderless, too: I sat next to a #perfumetok star, Brandon Winfield, at the tea, and it smelled completely different, his skin teasing out much woodier notes.

There is sandalwood in there, along with coriander and tonka, all tangled through with a delicate jasmine. (There’s even a touch of cacao, adding a subtle gourmand twist.) But on me, it’s the vanilla and the lavender – soft, and not at all medicinal, as some lavenders can be – that push to the fore.

Ivy Lodge, the Floris family’s former home

Passed around at the tea, meanwhile, were extraordinary sepia photo albums belonging to the former generations of Floris London family members, the Bodenhams, who lived in Ivy Lodge (above), a grand home that has since tragically been pulled down, but where lavender was grown in the gardens – hence one of the inspirations for the fragrance. And while it isn’t in the least old-fashioned, I’ve realised: there’s definitely a sepia softness to Purple Mémoire. Not a room-rocker, but a gentle and beguiling presence on skin.

I’ll be wearing it for luck, tonight. And, as someone who’s never greatly at ease in noisy and crowded rooms, for comfort.

£180 for 100ml eau de parfum – buy here