Nose for business

A vast field of bluebells, 4,000 individual stems all told (fake, since the wild bluebell is a protected species), winds its way up the stone staircase, around the fireplace and up the walls. White rabbits (also fake – stuffed, sadly) lurk in corners and a fairy-tale heroine dressed in blue corsetry and swathes of netting wanders quietly from room to room, a slightly vacant look in her pale eyes.

A perma-tanned waiter resplendent in a tux wants to take my order. Would I care for a rhubarb, apple and mint drink? Dandelion and burdock? Or perhaps a china cup of lapsang souchong or Earl Grey and gunpowder tea would be more to my tastes?

This is not London’s newest pop-up cafe. Nor have I just stumbled into one of Guy Ritchie’s house parties (he lives just round the corner, I’m told). This is the launch of Jo Malone’s freshest new fragrance, Wild Bluebell, the culmination of 18 months’ hard slog involving an army of people which began with “nose” Christine Nagel and ended with fashion photographer Tim Walker capturing this vision of English eccentricity. It marks a major departure for the brand. So why the new image? And why now?

The UK women’s fragrance market is worth an estimated £739m, according to Mintel, and has proved largely recession proof. But with 323 launches last year, it’s a crowded market, particularly when you consider that classic scents such as Chanel No 5 Miss Dior are enjoying a revival.

The weather has been rather more stormy across in the men’s arena. Worth £388m and with 89 launches, last year was a tough one as men adopted a considerably more frugal attitude to using their scent. While around seven in ten use an aftershave – and those numbers are going up fast – those who splash it all over once a day or more has fallen by three per cent. More are saving it for special occasions, once a week or less. So, tough times.

“There are more than 300 launches every year and not even five per cent succeed,” concedes Dominic De Vetta, global brand manager for Jo Malone. “Five or ten of those annual launches will become a success, and even fewer will be a long-term success.”

And all this – coming up with the fragrance, creating an image, producing the marketing, redecorating a Georgian house with thousands of fake bluebells and bunny rabbits – none of it comes cheap. “For any brand, you can’t really create all this and a fragrance for anything less than ¤50,000. And with the very, very big brands and companies, it may cost up to ¤20m. We identify with that.”

With Jo Malone’s new creative director, the urbane James Gager, at the helm, the task was to come up with a scent that tied in with his vision of romance and English eccentricity. Gager joined the fragrance house from Mac cosmetics at the end of last year and is considered a “game-changer” by Estée Lauder group president John Demsey. “He is one of the most innovative, original, masterful, creative leaders in the fashion and beauty world. James’s vision and widely admired creative collaborations have impacted the entire cosmetic industry.”

His brief was passed on to celebrated “nose” Christine Nagel, whose first challenge was a significant one. Born in Geneva and based in Paris, the woman who created Versace Woman, Miss Dior Cherie and Eau de Cartier, among many other perfumes, had never even heard of a bluebell, let alone smelled one.

“So I go to England and I smell it, and I write. But I have a problem – the natural essence doesn’t exist. So I smell and I smell and I smell ...” At this point she mimes that she is on her hands and knees, nose-deep in a field of bluebells. “I had to use all my imagination – a real sense of poetry – along with my technical knowledge to bring it into being. I wanted to do it justice, not just to its heady aroma but to its visual drama as well. Those breathtaking carpets of blue.”

It was Gager who then translated this fragrance into a flesh-and-bone character, the “naughty but nice” heroine who appears on all the marketing. “It’s given a modern company a new twist, says fragrance and lifestyle director Debbie Wild, “It’s an evolution. James loves England; he loves the eccentricity. It’s magical, whimsical, almost a fairytale.”

But will Wild Bluebell have a happy ever after? This year has already seen a dizzying number of new fragrances launched on our senses, from Avon to Yves Saint Laurent. And that’s before you consider the growing trend for celebrity-endorsed perfumes. Beyoncé is at it, So is Britney, Rihanna and the Beckhams. Elizabeth Taylor’s White Diamonds is still the best-selling celebrity fragrance, 20 years after its launch, although Halle Berry is hot on her tails, winning Fragrance of the Year at the recent FiFi awards in New York.

The men’s fragrance Driven, from baseball player Derek Jeter, was the US’s second best-selling scent last year, shifting a whopping $27m worth. But, really, you can smell like any celebrity you like, from Paris Hilton, who has a total of ten scents to her name (who knew?), to Avril Lavigne; Celine Dion to Jay-Z; Bruce Willis to Katie Price.

As part of BBC4’s Luxury season, a three-part series called Perfume explores the global industry, following the stories of perfumers, scientists and marketing gurus, as well as some of the celebrities who lend their names to a few ounces of liquid. Pointing out that there are more astronauts in the world than perfumers, the makers discover a perfumer in New York who will bottle any scent, from that of a magic marker or a packet of crayons, to an old leather notebook or a musky, unwashed body. And in the final episode, they discover that the scent of the future will not be dictated by New York, London or Paris, but by a very different customer in Brazil, India and the Far East.

“We don’t need to be a top ten fragrance worldwide,” insists De Vetta. “We just need it to be successful enough for us, within our own parameters. When we look at new fragrances, we don’t think so much about the big trends and the big money, how much we can make and what’s happening in the marketplace, we look at our arc of fragrances and see what might be missing. So last year we said, ‘We don’t have a fruity scent’” English Pear and Freesia was duly born. “This year we said, ‘We don’t have a dewy, fresh, floral fragrance,’ and that’s where it all begins.”

However, while Jo Malone might not follow trends, its nod and a wink to old-fashioned fairy tales is bang on the money, with reworkings of Red Riding Hood, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty in the cinema and floaty, floral fashions on the summer catwalk. “We don’t follow trends so much in fragrances but we do in visual imagery,” admits De Vetta. “It’s something that’s very rooted in English whimsy and eccentricity: JM Barrie, Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland – that whole kind of thing. But it’s also a trend and a fashion.”

And, presumably, if it takes 18 months of planning to produce a new fragrance, they must already be working on the next one? A hint, perhaps, to what it might be? “We’d have to kill you,” laughs De Vetta. “What we can say is, we’ll definitely continue down the path of whimsy and fantasy. I suppose what we’re trying to add more of is Englishness and creativity and romance.”

Though it is not enough these days to simply rely on a brand’s loyal customers; those die-hard fans who will buy a new product no matter what it smells like. The internet is therefore seen as a tool that will entice a new fanbase and shape the future of fragrance. Thirteen per cent of women and 18 per cent of men buy perfume online and social marketing is being embraced as a way of reaching those people, while phone apps and an active community of bloggers help spread the word further.

Viral campaigns have proved one of the most innovative ways to sell a fragrance, particularly to men, with the recent Old Spice campaign being dubbed one of the most popular in recent years.

One thing’s for sure: the old ideas of male and female perfumes no longer exist. “More and more consumers are getting more adventurous about what they’ll wear and the rules have gone out of the window,” says De Vetta. “It used to be that women wear florals and men wear woody fragrances and spices – it’s all been mixed up now. Women are wearing colognes, which traditionally were citrussy, woody, masculine scents. Many women wear Guerlain Vetiver, while men are combining Jo Malone’s Red Roses with White Jasmine and Mint, and that’s part of the fun of fragrance today.” n

The Wild Bluebell range will be available in Jo Malone stores from September, prices starting from £36. For stockists or to order online see jomalone.com

Perfume, part of the Luxury season, is on Tuesday and 12 July, BBC4, 9pm