Fragrance: Profiling session at Penhaligon’s

Choosing a scent these days is a tiresome affair, especially if you are a man. Go into any department store or high street shop and you’re bombarded with different smells as soon as you enter the front door. This gets progressively worse as you get to the actual perfume counter, where all and sundry are spraying scents around with gay abandon, without realising that this actually makes it harder to assess whether you like a perfume or not (or at least like it enough to buy it). The staff (in my experience) only add to this confusion, by badgering you into buy something or by recommending hopelessly inadequate, often celebrity branded scent.

Hence when Penhaligon’s invited me to attend a fragrance profiling at their Burlington Arcade (just off Piccadilly, London) store, I was only too delighted to accept. For those unaware, Penhaligon’s have been one of the cornerstones of British perfume since 1870, when William Penhaligon opened his first barbers shop on Jermyn Street. Along with their current Royal Warrants (they supply perfume to Princes Phillip and Charles) they’ve been a supplier to Queen Victoria, Winston Churchill, Princess Diana and other illustrious folk.

The setting for a profiling session is a private room above their shop (where all their 34 fragrances are on display) with complimentary tea and refreshments on hand (you don’t get that at The Perfume Shop). The profiling starts before you get to smell anything, with questions about your musical tastes (classical/opera in my case), hobbies and the like. Perhaps the most important question is where you intend to wear your perfume – it is not often you will find a scent that can be worn safely to the office and is yet suitable for an evening at the ballet, for example. Only after answering these questions do you get to smell anything, although it is well worth the wait as Penhaligon’s have a large selection to choose from – some 34 scents, to be exact.

The focus during the session is never on trying to sell you a perfume, which is rather refreshing. The only aim is to find a fragrance which suits you and you like. Being indecisive isn’t likely to get you anywhere however, as narrowing down your tastes to just two perfumes is tricky if several happen to take your fancy. You do learn a great deal about perfume and best practice for testing it – all of the samples are spritzed onto cards outside the room and you are encouraged to take a sip of water to cleanse the olfactory palate after each group of 3 scents (sipping water is much better than sniffing ground coffee, as the coffee smell will linger in your nose and affect your perception of perfume).

So what did I choose? Alas, I just couldn’t narrow it down to one but was granted a reprieve and allowed to choose two – the illustrious Blenheim Bouquet and Sartorial (more on those shortly).

If you’re going to buy a scent at Penhaligon’s then their fragrance profiling session is a must – after all, if you’re going to splash the cash on a premium perfume (they aren’t cheap) then it is imperative you choose the right one. The staff are very knowledgeable, can identify all their perfumes with just a quick sniff and are most certainly not pushy. If you’re looking to indulge yourself (or a relative), then this is an excellent and stylish way to do it.