Once Upon a Fragrance | Celine Roux
If ever someone had a nose for fragrance, Celine Roux is top of the pyramid. As Global Head of Fragrance within the powerhouse that is Jo Malone, Celine is behind every fragrance -from cult favourites English Pear & Freesia and Peony & Blush Suede, to my personal favourite collection, the limited edition Highlands Collection launched in 2023. While fragrance is the cornerstone of Celine’s work, it’s the intricate descriptions of those beloved scents that truly bring this work to life. How much, though, does the story behind the scent actually contribute to sales?
^ Celine Roux, Global Head of Fragrance at Jo Malone | Image originally posted in The Cut
Having grappled with the nuance of describing fragrance online for years – Cavendish Ave., after all, is a brand that lives largely in the e-commerce space – the storytelling behind Jo Malone’s limited edition collections is truly exceptional. For the Highlands Collection, this is reflected in writing that is as deeply ethereal as the scents themselves, enveloping the reader in a world of rugged landscapes and castle ruins abed a sea of purple heather.
Steeped in Scottish lore, the story stops to take note of moist ground lending itself to moss and wildflowers growing through the cracks of centuries old castles, painting an evocative picture of the dramatism created when nobility is overwhelmed by the force of nature:
Originally inspired by Scottish castles left to wrack and ruin, Céline began to expand her focus; investigating wildflowers native to Scotland provided a purple and yellow colour palette to explore and guide the ingredient selection of the collection. ‘We always had certain images of the Highlands in our minds that we wanted to explore: purple heather covering misty moors, wildflowers entwining castle walls, and the noble thistle, ruggedly beautiful flower of Scotland,’ says Céline.
Carving out space online for a product typically needing to be smelt to be believed, it’s details like these that transform those notes and accords into an intricate world consumers believe in and feel compelled to buy into.
Fragrance houses have tapped into the fact that for a product category like fragrance to survive in an increasingly digital age, evocative language is perhaps the strongest tool in our arsenal. Armed with this writing, as well as the divine imagery we’ve come to know and love for fragrance, scent becomes even further embedded in emotions, memory, and story than ever before.
There is a fine line, though, where the story becomes so thick and well-formed that one of the pivotal experiences of fragrance becomes muddled for the consumer; when once a woman could spritz her eau de parfum to her heart’s content and once again feel the thrill of the glitzy birthday dinner she wore it to first, now her own memory is tinted ever so slightly with the brand’s own intention for the fragrance.
How impactful brand story really is on a consumer’s experience is correlative at best, but as online shopping continues to trump in store, arguably the story is a decent part of what fuels the purchase … alongside the obvious pull of fragrance preferences. This is likely even more so the case for those purchasing for an extra special event or life moment – the intention behind the purchase (often an expensive one) creates a hyper focus, lending itself to the consumer being enticed to read more, know more, to fully revel in the experience the fragrance affords.
Perhaps this is why those intricate and wonderful fragrance stories Jo Malone do best are kept for limited fragrance collections while their best sellers continue to thrive online with a simple (and divine) paragraph. For Honeysuckle & Davana, its notes shine through on its own laurels rather than with a fanciful story holding a shine to them. Storytelling is held back only for those limited edition scents and collections consumers perhaps won’t have the time to chase bottles in store to smell for themselves, when the world of the fragrance needs to do the heavy lifting in conjuring dreams and manifesting sales. Celine Roux has cracked the code on when building the story is needed or not, and I for one can’t wait for the next limited edition collection to sink into.