Penhaligon’s: The Story of a Man Who Stirred a Thousand Noses

“the manufacture of perfumes and hair washes”
— William Penhaligon’s 1902 obituary, excerpt reproduced by the house

Contents

Key Facts
The Founder and the Origins of the House
The House’s Commitments
1. A Philosophy of Fragrance
2. Bottle and Packaging Design
The Perfume Lineup
By the Way…

Key Facts

Founded: 1870, on Jermyn Street, London

Founder: William Henry Penhaligon

Official website: https://www.penhaligons.com

A note on pronunciation: The customary Japanese rendering is “Penharigan,” but the English pronunciation is closer to “pen-hali-gunz.”

The Founder and the Origins of the House

From a Barber’s Apprenticeship to London

The house’s biography traces William’s beginnings to Madron in 1837 and an apprenticeship with barber Humphrey Roberts around 1852.

A transcription of Penzance’s 1864 directory lists him as a hairdresser at 9 Chapel Street.

He moved to London around 1869 and joined the Hammam in 1870. Hammam Bouquet followed in 1872.

From Partnership to Walter’s Succession

In 1880 he partnered with foreman Jeavons. After both died in 1902, his son Walter took over.

Queen Alexandra granted its first Royal Warrant in 1903.

In 1902, a commission from Charles Spencer-Churchill, the ninth Duke of Marlborough, led to Blenheim Bouquet.

Composed of citrus notes of lemon and lime, lavender, pine, and black pepper, the fragrance was named after the Duke of Marlborough’s residence, Blenheim Palace. Winston Churchill later became known as a wearer of Blenheim Bouquet. Penhaligon’s longest-lived bespoke fragrance remains on sale today.

Decline and a Dramatic Revival: Enter Sheila Pickles

In the twentieth century, the effects of the Wall Street Crash of 1929 eventually reached Europe, and Penhaligon’s business also stagnated. During the Second World War, in 1941, the original Jermyn Street premises were destroyed by fire in the Blitz.

A turning point came in 1975, the year identified in the house’s official store retrospective as the opening of the Covent Garden shop. Sheila Pickles, formerly personal secretary to film director Franco Zeffirelli, bought the struggling family-owned Penhaligon’s and opened a new shop in Covent Garden with Zeffirelli’s support. Pickles restored William’s old formulas and introduced new floral fragrances for women. Bluebell, created in 1978, became a leading example. According to the recollections of someone who worked in Pickles’s shop, its interior was “the height of old-fashioned luxury, with beautiful bottles and boxes decorated with little ribbon bows arranged on glass shelves.”

In this way, Penhaligon’s rekindled a flame that had almost gone out and regained the brilliance that continues today. On January 23, 2015, Puig, the Barcelona-based Spanish luxury fashion and fragrance company, acquired Penhaligon’s from Fox Paine & Company. Puig also owns brands such as Carolina Herrera and Nina Ricci and remains a company whose founding family is involved in its management. A 2024 brand profile described accelerating international expansion under global general manager Julia Koeppen.

The House’s Commitments

A Philosophy of Fragrance

Penhaligon’s approach is rooted in William’s founding spirit of “combining ingredients of the highest quality with the latest fragrance technology.” The house generously uses rare, high-quality natural materials such as hand-squeezed bergamot and jasmine said to cost twice as much as gold. It also embraces innovation, incorporating advanced methods such as carbon dioxide (CO2) extraction and “Nature Print Technology.” Each bottle is said to contain “a fusion of the very old and the very new.”

“Penhaligon’s continues to create innovative fragrances inspired by the unexpected while remaining true to its British heritage. We still uphold the principles of our founder, William Penhaligon: making products of the highest quality and embodying the elegance of our heritage.”

— Julia Koeppen, global general manager at the time of the interview

Penhaligon’s consistent philosophy is that a fragrance should be not merely an olfactory creation but a story and a character. Victorian perfumers of the nineteenth century and celebrated “noses” from around the world have applied their talents to bringing this philosophy to life.

Bottle and Packaging Design

Penhaligon’s bottles have a distinctive design that is simple yet instantly recognizable. A clear glass bottle with a rounded stopper wrapped in ribbon follows William Penhaligon’s original design almost faithfully.

There is a revealing story behind this. When the Covent Garden shop was revived, its products initially used square stoppers. William’s great-granddaughter then brought in an original Hammam Bouquet bottle and pointed out that the stopper should be round, reportedly prompting a return to the rounded form used today. The episode illustrates how highly the house values its founder’s spirit.

The commitment to materials extends beyond fragrance to sustainability. Highgrove Bouquet, released in 2022, uses 100% recycled and recyclable packaging materials, sugar-cane-derived eco-foam, and printing with organic inks free from mineral oils.

The Perfume Lineup

Penhaligon’s perfumes draw on British life and legends, journeys to distant places, and the lives of imaginary characters. Its main collections include British Tales, Trade Routes, Portraits, and Potions & Remedies.

British Tales

British Tales brings together the British stories Penhaligon’s has accumulated, from its earliest fragrances to contemporary creations. Historic houses, a tailor’s workshop, spring woodland, and figures from mythology provide its subjects. The collection spans different periods and scent families.

The starting point is Hammam Bouquet (1872), the house’s first perfume, inspired by the aromas of the Turkish baths where William Penhaligon worked. Lavender, rose, and sandalwood evoke the richly scented air of the baths, with orris and amber also among its principal notes.

Blenheim Bouquet (1902) began with a commission from the ninth Duke of Marlborough to Walter Penhaligon. It is a dry citrus fragrance in which bright lemon meets lavender, black pepper, and pine. Where Hammam Bouquet evokes the floral and woody aromas of the baths, Blenheim Bouquet takes its shape from citrus, spice, and coniferous wood.

With Bluebell (1978), the setting moves to British woodland in spring. Citrus, hyacinth, and clove evoke a carpet of blue flowers, dew-covered leaves, and childhood walks through the woods. It is one of the defining creations of the house’s revival under Sheila Pickles in the 1970s.

Endymion (2003) and Luna (2016) turn to mythology. Endymion, an eau de cologne named for a beautiful young man, brings together bergamot, coffee, geranium, and a suede impression. Luna, an eau de toilette dedicated to the moon goddess, evokes moonlight through orange, jasmine, soft rose, and fir balsam.

Sartorial (2010) translates British craftsmanship into scent. Its starting point was the workshop of Norton & Sons, the tailor at 16 Savile Row. Perfumer Bertrand Duchaufour visited the premises, exploring the smells of steam irons, sewing machines and their oil, needles, scissors, and tailor’s chalk. He combined a fougère structure of lavender, tonka bean, and oakmoss with impressions of steam, beeswax, and leather.

In a 2013 interview, Duchaufour recalled spending hours absorbing “the traditional atmosphere and the smells of the iron steamer.”

Trade Routes

Launched in 2014, Trade Routes takes maritime commerce and the goods brought to Britain from distant places as its subjects. One of its imagined scenes is the arrival of ships carrying tea and spices at the London Docks in 1804. Saffron, cedar, and myrrh suggest the lands and cultures beyond those cargoes. The aromatic materials, woods, and spices that travelled along the Silk Road, and the exchange of art and ideas around them, also inform the collection.

Halfeti (2015) was inspired by the Turkish village and the black roses said to grow there. Perfumer Christian Provenzano’s aim was to “evoke the opulent goods traded in Turkey.”

Provenzano layered Turkish rose absolute with spices, rich woods, amber, and balsamic notes to create depth. The fragrance brings together grapefruit, rose, and an oud accord. The black rose is an inspiration for its darkness and mystery, rather than a claim that the perfume contains an extract from that flower.

His Halfeti Leather retains elements of the original while emphasizing leather and adding plum, smoke, and resinous impressions. Provenzano described the challenge as keeping a connection with Halfeti while making a fragrance that smelled different.

Empressa, by contrast, gives prominence to blood orange, peach, and vanilla. Its bright fruit and flowers offer another side of Trade Routes alongside Halfeti’s rose, woods, and spices.

Portraits

Introduced in 2016, Portraits follows an imaginary family in a late-nineteenth-century British country house and the people around them. Each character has a name, temperament, secrets, and relationships with the others. The manners and dignity of upper-class society are interwoven with romantic intrigue and irony.

Animal heads on the bottle caps symbolize these characters: a stag for Lord George and a leopard for Lady Blanche. The hand-finished metal caps give visual form to their personalities. The packaging illustrations by Icelandic-born Central Saint Martins graduate Kristjana S. Williams were also created to depict this eccentric social world.

Alberto Morillas composed The Tragedy of Lord George, a woody, ambery fougère that combines the well-groomed cleanliness of shaving soap with the warmth of brandy and tonka bean. Its subject is the patriarch’s respectable exterior and the secrets behind it. The Revenge of Lady Blanche, by Daphné Bugey, is a green floral built around orris, narcissus, and hyacinth. Floral refinement conceals the lady’s sharpness and passion.

Bugey describes the collection’s appeal as a miniature world of plots and schemes beneath the conventions of high society. Discussing her later work on the Baroness, she explained that she might first explore a bold direction to establish a character’s personality, then fine-tune the formula so that it would be less polarizing.

New characters have continued to join the cast. Terrible Teddy, built around incense, leather, and ambroxan, portrays a polished but dangerous figure. The Bewitching Yasmine pairs the story of a woman searching for a husband with jasmine, incense, and an oud accord. Heartless Helen presents a bold woman through tuberose, mandarin, and woody notes.

Potions & Remedies

Launched in 2023, Potions & Remedies draws on the Victorian apothecary and stories surrounding the founder’s concoctions. Its subjects are moods such as calm, love, and boldness. The collection playfully treats fragrance as a prescription, with contemporary perfumers giving their own form to the feelings associated with plants and aromatic materials.

For A Balm of Calm, Juliette Karagueuzoglou combined lavender and sandalwood with a palo santo accord to evoke tranquility. The clean impressions of geranium and lavender meet soft woods and the intimate warmth of musk.

“I want the wearer to feel hugged by the fragrance,” Karagueuzoglou said.

In Liquid Love, Nicolas Beaulieu’s personal memories become part of the subject. He drew on the scent of roses in his hometown of Provins, combining rose with ginger, other spices, and woods. Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility offered another point of reference. He connected the contrast between the rational Elinor and her more emotional sister Marianne with that between romantic rose and sensual spices and woods.

Eau the Audacity, composed by Dominique Ropion, brings a smoky incense impression together with black pepper, orange blossom, and vanilla. Ropion imagined a fragrance that was “both intense and soft, bold yet warm, like suede.”

The Highgrove Collaboration and Highgrove Bouquet

Highgrove Bouquet (2022) grew out of a collaboration with King Charles’s Highgrove Gardens. It belongs to British Tales and is also included in the collection devoted to the Highgrove collaboration.

Perfumer Julie Pluchet focused on the flowers of the weeping silver lime growing in the gardens. Encountering their scent for the first time during her visit, she used headspace technology to sample the air around the flowers in bloom. The resulting information provided a starting point for the perfume, alongside her own impressions and memories of the place.

Pluchet describes silver lime as having green, floral, powdery, and animalic facets. Lavender and geranium open the composition, mimosa adds green tones and a powdery texture to the floral accord, and cedarwood gives it woody depth. Starting with a single flower in the garden, she used several materials to evoke the wider atmosphere of the grounds in summer sunshine.

The collaboration also established a donation of 10% of the proceeds from sales of Highgrove Bouquet to The Prince’s Foundation, now The King’s Foundation. It supports educational work in fields including heritage crafts, horticulture, fashion, and textiles.

By the Way…

The Distinction of Four Royal Warrants: Penhaligon’s has received Royal Warrants on four occasions: from Queen Alexandra, the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip, in 1956, the Prince of Wales, now King Charles, in 1988, and again from King Charles in 2024. Few British fragrance houses have maintained such a continuous relationship with the royal family.

The Prince of Wales’s Secret Pomade: King Charles is said to use a specially formulated hair pomade whose ingredients are kept secret.

Blenheim Bouquet and Churchill: Winston Churchill, the renowned prime minister who led Britain through the Second World War, is said to have been a devoted admirer of Blenheim Bouquet. The ninth Duke of Marlborough, who commissioned the scent, was Churchill’s cousin. As the two shared ancestors in the Marlborough family, the fragrance might almost be called the Churchill family’s “house scent.”

References