Harrods Salon de Parfums: Boutiques, Buyers and Fragrance

Within Salon De Parfums fragrance is king.
Mia Collins, Harrods’ Head of Beauty at the time

At Harrods in London, a passageway devoted to perfume exists separately from the ground-floor fragrance department. This is Salon de Parfums on the sixth floor. Along its long corridor, small boutiques follow one another, each fitted out to suit its brand. The decision to create another place to choose perfume within the same department store grew out of the rise of niche fragrance and the work of buyers who brought customers’ conversations back into the retail space.

At a glance
How Salon de Parfums took shape
The work behind the selection and in-person sampling
1. Exclusive perfumes, from the idea to the packaging
2. Advice on creating a perfume and advice on choosing one
Salon de Parfums: a timeline
References

At a glance

Opened: October 2014
Operator: Harrods
Key figure at opening: Mia Collins, Head of Beauty
Format: Multi-brand perfume department within a department store
Location: Knightsbridge, London, United Kingdom. Sixth Floor, Harrods, 87–135 Brompton Road, London SW1X 7XL
Official website: Salon de Parfums

The destination is the sixth-floor department at Harrods’ London flagship. The official store guide distinguishes it from The Perfumery Hall on the ground floor and directs visitors to the escalators on the Basil Street side to reach the sixth floor. The overall fragrance range sold through Harrods’ online shop is not the same as the selection of brands in this department.

How Salon de Parfums took shape

From the growth of niche perfume to a dedicated department

Collins, who led the opening, originally worked in fashion buying. She joined Harrods in 2007 and moved into fragrance and cosmetics buying in 2011, entering the beauty business after around nine years in fashion. In 2025, as Buying Director for Beauty, she described an approach to buying that recognised the differences between the department store, H beauty and the online business.

The idea for the Salon arose after several years of growth in luxury niche fragrances. Collins felt that this development called for a dedicated space. The location chosen was the sixth floor, previously used as offices by the selling-support teams. The concept was shared with brands in March 2014, with planning and construction completed in around seven months.

The department opened in October 2014. Its announced format combined dedicated boutiques for 11 brands with a fragrance gallery bringing together exclusives and other products. Alongside Chanel, Dior, Guerlain and Tom Ford were names such as Xerjoff, Ex Nihilo and Henry Jacques. Customers could explore special collections from major houses and fragrances with limited distribution on the same floor.

A circuit of boutiques that keeps scents apart

When perfumes are sprayed all at once across a department-store floor, individual scents can become difficult to distinguish. A Bloomberg report published before the opening discussed this problem at fragrance counters and the plan to create separate areas on the sixth floor. Giving each brand some space was also intended to reduce interference between scents.

The space is organised around a corridor with an arched ceiling, with entrances to the individual boutiques on either side. Cylindrical glass display cases flank the entrances, allowing each brand to express its own world. The design establishes a shared architectural order while leaving individual boutiques room for expression.

Perfume critic Persolaise, who visited in 2014, described how what appeared to be wooden panelling at Henry Jacques opened into shelves and drawers once he began talking with a sales assistant. Perfumes invisible from the corridor were revealed by a person’s hand. The service itself became part of the display.

The same account places Roja Dove Haute Parfumerie near the entrance, carrying its own selection of several brands. From the outset, the Salon brought together not only single-brand boutiques but also a department with a different person choosing its range.

Bringing sales and customer feedback into the next selection

Our clients educate us every day
Mia Collins

Collins valued both sales analysis and the comments that sales assistants heard from customers in the store. That response also informed her encouragement of brands to develop creations specifically for the Salon. Buying did not end with selecting finished products; it also involved passing requests from the shop floor on to the people making the next fragrances.

The career of Vesa Kalho, Harrods’ Perfumery and Cosmetics Buyer in 2015, also shows this closeness to the shop floor.

I started on the shop floor
Vesa Kalho, Harrods’ Perfumery and Cosmetics Buyer at the time

Kalho moved from selling into the buying office, becoming an assistant buyer and then a buyer for Beauty Apothecary before taking responsibility for perfumery and cosmetics in February 2014. The Perfume Society later described his work finding new brands and securing exclusives. Kalho left Harrods for Fenwick in 2021. His career here is part of the work that supported the Salon around the time of its opening.

The 2017 expansion and today’s brand selection

In 2017, Bond No. 9 announced that its first UK boutique would join the expanded Salon. Already sold on the ground floor, the brand was extending its presence to the sixth. Its plans included fragrance tastings and in-depth consultations alongside ready-made eaux de parfum. This suggests a department developing towards more time spent face to face, as well as displays of exclusive products.

The current official guide advertises ‘25 hand-selected brands’. Alongside niche names such as Amouage, Xerjoff, Ex Nihilo, Roja, Bond No. 9, Floraïku, Kilian and Strangelove NYC, it lists Chanel, Dior, Guerlain and Tom Ford. This is a department for choosing among several brands, not a place intended only for bespoke commissions.

The work behind the selection and in-person sampling

Exclusive perfumes, from the idea to the packaging

Fragrance buyer Valerie Waite describes the development of Harrods’ current exclusive perfumes as a collaborative process with brands.

We often start by working with our brands, usually with an olfactive territory we want to explore together.
Valerie Waite, Harrods fragrance buyer

From there, they develop the fragrance with the perfumer, working through the story, concept, design and packaging. This description concerns Harrods’ fragrance business as a whole, but it is also important to understanding the Salon’s exclusives. Behind the word ‘exclusive’ is a relationship in which the place of sale becomes a partner in the creative discussion.

A concrete example of the connection between the Salon and a fragrance is Xerjoff’s Sixth Floor. It was the company’s first perfume created exclusively for Harrods, named for the floor on which its boutique stands. It remains listed as a boutique-exclusive creation in Xerjoff’s official guide to its London location.

The official composition moves from ginger, blood orange and eucalyptus to flowers including tuberose, then into a base that includes chocolate and tobacco. Rather than simply put the department’s name on a bottle, the brand made a distinct fragrance for the place. The creation shows how the Salon can be both an outlet for perfume and a reason for making it.

Advice on creating a perfume and advice on choosing one

At the opening, Collins distinguished between helping customers find a signature scent, a fragrance that represents them, and the bespoke perfume services offered by some brands. Finding one’s fragrance among already completed creations was part of the Salon’s purpose from the beginning.

The current guide also offers personalised fragrance consultations. Chanel introduces its collections, including Les Exclusifs, through a masterclass; Floraïku offers a tea ceremony in which customers explore fragrances over seasonal Japanese tea. Each brand provides its own way into the experience of sampling scent.

Xerjoff also lists fragrance experiences, gift consultations and appointments among its London boutique’s services. Within the department store’s shared framework, each brand has its own way of guiding visitors. As customers move around the department, they encounter both the perfumes and the ways in which they are explained.

The work of the Salon is expressed in more than its luxurious interior. It means deciding which brands receive a space, listening to customers’ responses, connecting those responses to plans for future fragrances and introducing a bottle to the person standing in front of a sales assistant. This sequence of work gives shape to the perfume department on Harrods’ sixth floor.

Salon de Parfums: a timeline

Year	Key events
March 2014	The concept is shared with partner brands. Planning and construction proceed.
October 2014	The department opens on the sixth floor of the London flagship, combining dedicated boutiques with a fragrance gallery.
2017	Bond No. 9 announces its first UK boutique in the expanded Salon.
As checked in October 2026	The official guide lists 25 brands and describes multi-brand fragrance retail and in-person consultations.