CLIVE CHRISTIAN | From Designing Homes and Gardens to Creating Perfumes

I gave them free rein.

Clive Christian

From furnishing a home to creating something worn close to the body, CLIVE CHRISTIAN began with a designer who entered furniture-making to realise his own vision of an interior. Behind the crown-shaped cap are an encounter with an old British perfumery and a decision to entrust his ideas to perfumers.

Contents

At a glance
The founder and the beginnings of the maison
The brand’s approach
References

At a glance

Founded: 1999 (predecessor Crown Perfumery was established in 1872)
Founder: Clive Christian
Country: United Kingdom
Focus: Perfume
Website: Clive Christian

The founder and the beginnings of the maison

Making furniture to bring harmony to a home

Born to an artist mother and a biochemist father, Christian entered interior design without formal training, working for others before becoming independent. His eldest daughter Victoria recalls learning from him to enjoy a sunrise or sunset and to listen to her own heart.

A nineteenth-century manor he bought in Cheshire in the late 1970s became a turning point. Its interior disappointed him beside its beautiful exterior. He wanted harmony between the two. Opening up small, utilitarian kitchens created living spaces for which suitable furniture was hard to find; acquiring a manufacturing business allowed him to make what he needed.

A crystal chandelier above a substantial kitchen island became characteristic of his approach, bringing visual pleasure into a working room. He later described the connection between interiors and perfume through the intimacy of what they adorn:

They are intrinsically linked in their adorning of those most intimate elements of a person’s life: their home and their body.

Clive Christian

A bottle between the floorboards and the ambition for a lasting British brand

When Victoria was four, she and her father found an old perfume bottle between the floorboards of their home. About twenty years later, he learned that it came from Crown Perfumery. A family memory had become a connection to a historic British house.

Christian also wanted to build a British brand that would outlive him and extend beyond a single product category. He attempted to acquire Hardy Amies and considered jewellery and leather goods. The acquisition of Crown Perfumery followed in 1999.

Founded in 1872, the earlier company had been granted permission by Queen Victoria to use the image of her crown. The stopper still carries that history. Christian sought to carry forward values of quality and craftsmanship.

He approached the work as a designer with a vision, rather than as a perfumer. He assembled a team and allowed substantial creative freedom, with few financial constraints. The opening quotation expresses that decision.

Victoria’s path from the stage to the perfume counter

Victoria, who helped bring the perfumes to customers, also connects fragrance with memories of home:

I remember the scent of the English roses at our family home in Cheshire.

Victoria Christian

Although fascinated by her mother’s perfume bottles, she first chose the stage, studying ballet and theatre and performing in London’s West End. Around the time her father acquired the perfumery, she left theatre and travelled to study perfume.

Her first job was at the perfume counter in Fortnum & Mason, London, followed by Bergdorf Goodman in New York. Working with customers taught her how perfumes develop differently on individual skin, before she took on the role of introducing the house internationally.

Drop by drop, I helped build the perfume house.

Victoria Christian

The brand’s approach

The Original Collection’s three pairs and the layering of materials

The Original Collection presents 1872, X and No1 as feminine and masculine pairs: six perfumes that formed the house’s starting point in 1999. The name 1872 commemorates the founding year of its predecessor.

In 1872 Feminine, the official notes foreground bergamot, Rose de Mai and patchouli; its masculine counterpart lists petitgrain, cedarwood and clary sage. The shared name contains two different arrangements of plant materials.

The maison works with natural ingredients and contemporary fragrance technology. Its interest in layered complexity becomes easier to understand by looking at how brightness, warmth and texture are brought to a subject.

Rock Rose: an interest in restoring gardens becomes perfume

For Noble VII in 2016, Christian turned to the gardens of a Queen Anne residence he was restoring. Research into flowers associated with the period informed two fragrances, Rock Rose and Cosmos Flower.

The noble heritage of the gardens were the birth of these perfumes.

Clive Christian

Rock Rose sets a resinous character against the brightness of citrus and herbs. For the current Rock Rose, the house presents a composition that moves from Tarocco orange into lavender, violet and clary sage, with saffron adding a warm, spicy facet. Its stated perfume concentration is 25%.

The floral name opens onto a balance of fresh plants, resins and spice. The designer’s research into a house’s style and garden supplied a subject through which to explore materials.

The Noble Collection continues to work with architectural, horticultural and artistic history, taking in Rococo references with Noble VIII and extending to fragrances such as Blonde Amber.

Matsukita: giving the earlier house’s memory a contemporary expression

The Crown Collection turns directly to Crown Perfumery’s history. Alongside Crab Apple Blossom and Town & Country, Matsukita takes a perfume first launched in 1892 as its starting point, reimagined for a contemporary audience in 2021.

The new fragrance brings bergamot, pink pepper and nutmeg into a heart of jasmine and smoky mate tea. Amber, musks and woods supply warmth to this woody chypre, with a stated concentration of 25%. Its construction joins citrus brightness to the darker textures of tea smoke and wood.

Where Rock Rose begins with garden plants and an architectural period, Matsukita explores how the world around an inherited perfume name can be expressed through contemporary materials. Historical interest supplies different routes into creation.

Extending the subjects to personal memories and literature

The Private Collection explores personal experiences and qualities through perfumes bearing letters such as C, L and V. C Woody Leather foregrounds tobacco and saffron; L Red Tea Vetiver takes a different direction through rooibos and sandalwood.

Addictive Arts draws on the words of British literature to explore emotion and pleasure. In its blue bottles, Jump up and Kiss Me Hedonistic lists mate tea, labdanum and tobacco, while Strange Heavens Out of the Blue brings together coffee, cocoa and jasmine. Alongside houses and gardens, language and personal memory offer further subjects for perfume.