It should feel like a modern salon, intimate, engaging and constantly revealing another layer of the story.
Julia Koeppen
At Penhaligon’s King’s Road shop in London, Global General Manager Julia Koeppen envisaged a salon where perfume and craft would bring people together. Tracing the brand’s approach to its shops leads back to a barber’s premises in a bathhouse on Jermyn Street. Its new Dubai Mall flagship likewise brings together references to the hammam and British craftsmanship.
How the shops began
Penhaligon’s is a British perfume house established in 1870. Its founder, William Penhaligon, was a barber from Cornwall. After moving to London in 1869, he worked in the barber’s shop attached to the hammam on Jermyn Street, eventually developing a business of his own.
A hammam is a Turkish bathhouse. Inspired by the scents he encountered there, William created his first perfume, Hammam Bouquet, in 1872. The shop began where the grooming of hair and beards met the making of fragrance.
Sheila Pickles opened a new chapter in 1975. With the support of film director Franco Zeffirelli, she took over the business and opened a shop on Wellington Street in Covent Garden. Perfumes were bottled behind a glass partition, allowing customers to watch the work.
The Wellington Street shop continues today as a location associated with the house’s revival, distinct from its original Jermyn Street setting.
The thinking behind the interiors
To tell its fragrance stories, Penhaligon’s incorporates the work of craftspeople and artists into the shops themselves. King’s Road was conceived as a place for encounters in both directions: people drawn by craft and art could discover perfume, while those arriving for perfume could discover an artist. Exhibitions, demonstrations and conversations with makers give visitors reasons to return.
In 2025, architecture and interior design practice Michaelis Boyd, responsible for renewing the flagships, commissioned sculptor Hamish Mackie to create a lion table for displaying perfumes. With a background in furniture and product design, Mackie had long been interested in sculpture that could also be used. The original lion table led to a wider collection, including a circular lioness table and smaller display stands.
Together, these works sit at the intersection of sculpture, furniture, and design.
Hamish Mackie
Shops to explore
Dubai Mall
For the Dubai Mall flagship, Michaelis Boyd brought British architecture together with Middle Eastern design. A mosaic-covered entrance and washbasins recalling a hammam connect the brand’s origins with the local culture. Private tours explore the stories woven into the shop’s design and decoration.
Mackie’s bronze lion table is central to the experience of choosing a fragrance. While developing the work for the flagships, he travelled to Tanzania’s Serengeti and Ngorongoro in March 2025 to observe lions. In the bush, he sculpted lions from the back of a Land Rover.
As always, field research played a vital role in getting this commission right.
Hamish Mackie
Fragrance Profiling, offered at the table, helps visitors discover scents in consultation with the staff.
The Experience Room offers a contemporary interpretation of an apothecary. A mural by Claire Basler, inspired by regional plants and landscapes, adorns the domed ceiling above seating upholstered in Persian-style fabrics and cocoa-coloured plaster walls. Bespoke shelves display not only perfumes but also archival objects that introduce the brand’s history.
Alongside individual consultations, the shop offers bottle engraving and personalisation using leather. Consultations also provide an opportunity for an early introduction to Halfeti Amber.
Regent Street
The Regent Street shop in London has also been renewed by Michaelis Boyd. Its walls and ceiling use bespoke tadelakt plaster in William’s Green, a shade named after the founder. Cornwall-based Clayworks drew on the founder’s Cornish origins and the memory of the hammam that inspired his perfume for the wall finish. Mackie’s lion and Basler’s mural also feature here.
