” you’ve got to kiss a few toads before you find your prince”
It’s a brave new tindering world out there (yes I’m pretty sure Tinder has been verbed) and this means meeting complete strangers and praying to the appropriate deity that they look remotely like their profile pic. I’m a busy girl and I try to kill to birds with one stone, so on my last trip to London I planned to meet a guy for coffee, and go scope out some exciting new cruelty free beauty products!
Coffee date going well enough that we had something in common and didn’t despise each other on sight, I took a rather charming Portuguese man on a wild goose chase round Bond Street before finally finding Penhaligon’s.
Penhaligon’s is one of the last independent Perfumers in England dating back to 1870 and they hold 2 royal warrants and all their products are made in England. Their signature perfume bottle is the original Victorian design, and their shop interiors would not look out of place on the set of Harry Potter!
They also do a fragrance profile, to match you to your perfect perfume. The Sales lady, gave me and my new Portuguese friend a glass of prosecco (just because) and also a glass of water, because apparently when you smell a lot of fragrance you can go nose-blind, and drinking water cleanses your palette so you can smell clearly!
What I particularly love about Penhaligon’s, apart from them being cruelty free, is that all of their perfumes smell rare and opulent. In an age of mass-produced scent by countless celebrities, it’s a rare treat to find unique and truly luxury feeling perfumes.
The very lovely and knowledgeable sales lady gave me lots of difference samples to sniff on card testers, giving me two at a time, and asking me to keep the one I prefered each time. Once she had it narrowed down to a couple she then tested them on my skin. She gave me lots of information on the perfumes that we tried on my skin, their history and what they were inspired by, and we also had a chat about Perfume by Susskind, which is one of my all time favourite novels.
In the end I fell in love with Lothair (£128 for 100ml), which is part of Penhaligon’s Trade Routes collection – full description can be found here –
I really adored the way this smells on my skin, despite this being a unisex fragrance it smells extremely feminine on me but in a quite unusual way. Mr Portugal (yes he was still clinging on in there!!) declared it very sexy!
My close favourites that will no doubt be going on my Christmas and birthday wish lists of the future are:-
Artemisia (£112 for 100ml)
Vaara (£128 for 100ml)
Malabah (£112 for 100ml)
Since wearing my new perfume I get a lot of compliments on how nice I smell, and whenever I spray it on it instantly lifts my mood! It’s strange how perfume can be so evocative.
Lx
kindnessbeautyandtruth 