FLORIS: A Family Perfumery with Shelves from the Great Exhibition

the soul of 89 Jermyn Street runs through everything we do
Edward Bodenham

The First Shop
The Thinking Behind the Store
A Store to Visit
1. Jermyn Street, London
2. The Perfumery and Bespoke Fragrances
References

The First Shop

At 89 Jermyn Street in London, Juan Famenias Floris and his wife Elizabeth began selling perfume, combs and shaving supplies in 1730. They lived above the shop. In this place where business and family life overlapped, Floris has passed down the work of making perfume and putting it into customers’ hands.

The mahogany shelves and central display case were purchased at the Great Exhibition held in London in 1851. Successive generations of the family have inherited these fittings, and they are still used to hold perfumes and to help customers explore fragrances.

Edward Bodenham, the ninth generation of the family, also came to the shop as a boy to visit his father and grandfather. Elite is a fragrance he holds dear because it reminds him of the shop in those days. Even after he joined the family business and began working with perfume professionally, the shop’s smells remained bound up with family memories.

Number 89 is still run by the founder’s descendants and remains the centre of the Floris business. At the back are a museum displaying the family’s archives and the perfumery where fragrances are created.

FLORIS（フローリス）— 89ジャーミン・ストリートに息づく英国香水史

「私たちは、父が、そして祖父がそうしたのと同じ部屋で、ロンドンで香りを調合しています」——エドワード・ボーデンハム（9代目パフューマリー・ディレクター）

The Thinking Behind the Store

More than the building and its fittings have been passed down here. The founder, Juan, wrote his perfume formulas in a leather-bound ledger, adding a new entry each time he blended a fragrance for a customer. The ledger was handed on to later generations and continues to inform the work of the perfumers today.

For Edward Bodenham, the ninth generation to continue creating fragrances in the same place, the connection between scent and individual memory matters deeply. For customers, too, memories of places and people that have mattered to them can help guide the choice of a fragrance.

Everyone has their own personal memory bank of scents that have meant something to them, throughout their lives.
Edward Bodenham

Edward also recommends trying an appealing fragrance on the skin and spending an hour or so with it. Rather than deciding what they like through knowledge or words alone, people can discover how it makes them feel. The same approach informs the bespoke service, in which perfumer and customer create a fragrance together.

A Store to Visit

Jermyn Street, London

The ground-floor shopfront seen today dates from the early nineteenth century. Heavy glazing bars divide the display window into eight panes, while the entrance on the right is slightly recessed. Above it are the royal arms granted by George IV in 1820.

Inside, perfumes line the dark wooden shelves inherited from the Great Exhibition, and the antique display case in the centre serves as a counter. Staff guide visitors through the collection and help them try the fragrances.

Illustration of Floris’s Jermyn Street shop, with reddish-brown wooden shelves and a glass counter. — The wooden shelves at the Jermyn Street shop (illustration)

Even a shop inherited from the family needed care and renewal. In the 2010s, it underwent its first major refurbishment in around a century. Sonder Design was responsible for the work at the Grade II-listed building at number 89.

Working with the planning authorities and English Heritage, the designers selected craftspeople and material suppliers. French polishing restored the sheen of the mahogany shelves, while concealed, soft lighting was incorporated to bring out the woodwork and glasswork.

A new floor was installed after structural problems beneath it had been addressed, with improvements to access as well. The ceiling was also completely renewed, incorporating details that echo those of the floor.

In 2017, a museum displaying the family’s archives opened at the back of the shop. Letters, photographs, correspondence with customers, old perfume bottles and tools for making fragrance are exhibited there. Documents relating to the royal warrant of 1820 are also preserved as part of the history of the business conducted here.

Alongside old bottles and formula books, the museum’s bespoke cabinets hold the Ledger Series, for which eight fragrances were re-created from historic formulas in 2017. Visitors can compare the fragrances they can pick up today with the records from which they originated. Moving to the back after looking at the old shop fittings makes it clear that the perfumes themselves, too, have been passed down through the family’s records.

The Perfumery and Bespoke Fragrances

Beyond the blue door at the back of the shop is the perfumery. Here, Edward and his team work on the Floris collection and on bespoke fragrances for individual customers.

We compose our fragrances in London in the same room my father did, and his father before him.
Edward Bodenham

They use inherited glassware for blending, measuring the liquids in imperial fluid drams and fluid ounces.

Perfumes released as part of the collection are brought into production in collaboration with British suppliers and manufacturers. The work that remains at number 89 is conceiving and composing the fragrances, and attending to each customer individually.

The bespoke service for private customers began in 2006. In Fragrance Customisation, offered by appointment, the customer chooses from prepared fragrance bases. The perfumer then develops the composition by adding accords: combinations of aromatic materials that form a coherent scent.

Anna, a perfumer at Floris, recalls a customer who repeatedly used the word “fresh” to mean something different from the scent she imagined. To understand what someone is looking for, she relies on smelling fragrances together.

The same word can bring different scents to mind for different people. Rather than settling things through words alone, smelling together and observing the response become the work of tailoring a fragrance.

The customer gives the finished customised fragrance its name. The bottle receives a handwritten label and the perfumer’s signature, and the formula is kept in the Floris ledger. It becomes a record that allows the customer, or the next generation, to order it again.

The First Shop

The Thinking Behind the Store

A Store to Visit

Jermyn Street, London

The Perfumery and Bespoke Fragrances

References