Lyn Harris La Fleur, La Rose & La Poudrée For Marks & Spencer - Part 1: "Remember Preston" - An Extraordinary Tale Of Customer Service

Lyn Harris

I admire the Miller Harris brand.  Its contemporary Englishness appeals.  As does the fact that Lyn Harris is a northerner and wears trainers round the lab.   Then I like the way that - as far as I can detect - her fragrance collection doesn't adhere to any tidy overarching categories or theme; I am also amused by the fact that she famously created a scent for dogs.  Lyn Harris's bespoke perfume prices are relatively affordable compared to Roja Dove's (if not by me), and I have a soft spot for the scrolly designs on the bottles.  Additionally I love the Miller Harris teas, and having finished my stocks of Thé Pétales, I have redeployed the elegant grey canister to store Earl Grey tea bags of more homely provenance.  What else?  I love the lacquered oriental gloom of their tea room in Bruton Street.  I love the bracing citrus kick of Citron Citron shower gel.  In fact I am drawn to many aspects of the house, yet so far the fragrance line itself has failed to exert a visceral pull.   I have yet to develop a Miller Harris perfume lemming as it were.  Hence why I don't own any bottles from the range - or rather, I used to own Fleurs des Bois, but sold it on.  Okay, maybe L'Air de Rien (review here) has come quite close to flexing my solar plexus, but I am managing quite well with my small decant.

The Bruton Street tea room

Then last year I read in the press that Lyn Harris had been approached by Marks & Spencer to collaborate with them on the development of six fragrances: three for men and three for women, to be sold in their new perfume halls in the bigger category of store.  In a fascinating article by Vicki Reid, published in The Daily Telegraph magazine, Lyn Harris explains her creative vision:

"I was thinking about the M & S customer and who they were, and how I could help them come into fine fragrances.  I didn't want them to be so refined nobody could get near them, so they had to be sophisticated and accessible."

For the benefit of readers outside the UK, your typical M & S shopper leans to the conservative - and older - side.  In the cafe attached to my local branch you would be hard pushed to spot a customer not sporting a perm.  Well, amongst the women, anyway.  Their food hall is a whole other ball game, as M & S is synonymous with the ne plus ultra of ready meals, amongst other things.  "This isn't just food porn, this is M & S food porn", as the adverts used to go (well, the subtext, anyway).  Then there are also a couple of individual brands under the M & S umbrella which appeal to a (somewhat) younger demographic, namely Autograph and Per Una.  Famously, one in three British women still buys her underwear in Marks, where they cater to every taste from boudoir chic balconette bras to big - and magic - knickers.

As far as perfume is concerned, I'll be honest and say that I have studiously tuned out to the M & S offering.  The few scents I have tried in the past smelt cheap, old-fashioned, or both.  I was reminded of that trio of later releases by Sarah Jessica Parker: Dawn, Endless and Twilight, in terms of the quality level where  I felt they were pitched.  Though this is all kneejerk stuff, I might add.  I have been so indifferent to the M & S ranges in fact that I haven't even clocked any of the names, though I think there may have been one under the Autograph label on the theme of New York.

But when I heard of this joint venture between Lyn Harris and M & S, I was very, very curious, and equally optimistic.  It has become quite common in the fashion world for a leading designer to create a budget range for a high street chain or supermarket: Amanda Wakeley for Principles, Barbara Hulanicki for Top Shop, Matthew Williamson for H & M, and Gok Wan for Sainsbury's, to name just four examples of the strategy.  However, I don't recall anything like this happening in the world of fragrance - or certainly not bringing niche fragrance to the mass market on such a large scale. The plan apparently is to roll out the range into 126 stores eventually, but as my local branch is small and a bit time warp-y there was no point looking for it there.

M & S HQ in Paddington - a sample-free zone

Ever the market researcher, towards the back end of last year I rang M & S's head office in London and spoke to someone in Customer Services.  I was informed that there was no store within easy striking distance of Stafford where I could test this range first hand.  I inquired about the possibility of samples, explaining my particular interest as a British-based perfume blogger.  No samples were available, but the lady in Customer Services was hopeful of having the lab make some up specially.  "That sounds great", I said, and offered to supply empty vials if it all got too tricky, like that memorable occasion with Ormonde Jayne and Tiare.  The samples never came.  I rang back, and was referred to the M & S PR company, where I spoke to the person handling the account.  She asked me to write in, explaining why I wanted the samples, mentioning the name of my blog etc etc, but thought that in principle it should be possible to rustle a few up somehow.  The samples never came.

M & S Preston - a serendipitous beacon of customer service!

Months passed, when by chance I found myself the other weekend in the M & S store in Preston, buying one of those exotically fancy salads they do so well.  I spotted a sign to the beauty department, and decided to check out the perfume selection on the vague offchance that Preston might be a sufficiently large store to carry the Lyn Harris range.  My expectations were immediately raised by the sight of a dedicated Fragrance Hall.  And towards the end of the fixture, there was the complete Lyn Harris line, together with coffret sets of fragrance and body cream and various sizes of scented candle.  I had struck perfumed pay dirt!

I made myself known to one of the sales staff, Christine, and explained my interest in the range, and how I was dying to try the perfumes and review them on my blog.  In no time I had sprayed all six on my hands and arms, while Christine and I chatted amiably about the Lyn Harris venture, about her own favourite perfume (L'Heure Bleue), and her training from, and admiration for, Roja Dove.  Saturated in scents, I asked after the possibility of samples, though I wasn't terribly hopeful.  They had Scratch 'n' Sniff cards (or "Peel 'n' Sniff" to be precise) of La Rose, but that was the only one.  Christine promptly handed me a whole clutch of these.  But that still left the other five, notably the two remaining feminine scents, La Fleur and La Poudrée.

Almost the M & S logo fashioned from La Rose Peel 'n' Sniff cards

Nothing daunted, and keenly aware of my desire to test these perfumes at more leisure - and equally of my frustrating catalogue of failed attempts to acquire them so far - Christine conferred with her colleague Hannah.  Hannah proceeded to rummage in a drawer by the till and fetched out a handful of little clear perspex pots, of the type usually used to give customers a sample blob of a face cream, say.   Before I knew it they had a two-woman production line going, and were spraying, taping, labelling and bagging all the scents in the range, with the exception of Le Sauvage.  I think they may have run out of pots, or depleted their pot stocks to perilously low levels, so we called it a day after five of the six - I was more interested in the women's ones anyway.  After thanking the duo profusely, I hotfooted it back to my hotel, taking care to keep the bag upright in case the sticky tape wasn't hermetic, and the jostling pots leaked into one another.  But apart from a bit of evaporation, I managed to transport my precious cargo all the way back to Stafford without incident, and have been quietly trying them this week, once my sense of smell gradually returned following a pesky cold.

Mini-reviews to follow in Part 2!

Meanwhile, for readers who didn't live in Britain in the 80s, here is the advert to which the title: "Remember Preston" alludes...; - )



Photo of Lyn Harris from M & S website, photo of M & S HQ from artofthestate.co.uk, photo of M & S Preston from Google Maps, photo of M & S underwear from Ebay, other photos my own

Parfumerie Générale Brûlure De Rose: A Plethora Of Post-it Notes Prompts A Proxy Perfume Purchase

Okay, so I know I said that my very next post after my account of the Parfumerie Générale talk was going to be on bubble wrap. I realise that countless* readers (see footnote) who had been eagerly anticipating another feature on packaging materials may deem not one but TWO Pierre Guillaume posts in quick succession to be a completely unwarranted diversion from the promised theme. Yes, Pierre Guillaume is a creative genius with a large back catalogue of intriguing and unusual scents to his credit; yes, he is easy on the eye - or even stronger than that - hmm, what could be stronger than "easy"? Okay...yes, he is incredibly simple and straightforward on the eye - but at the end of the day, as a versatile protective packaging material Pierre Guillaume doesn't really cut it. Or wrap it, even. Let's face it, his iPhone doesn't even have a cover.

And to make matters worse, this post isn't even that one! No, it struck me that in the interests of chronology - a concept to which Bonkers is known to pay scant lip service at best - it might not go amiss to rewind to a couple of days before the talk: I invited my friend S round to have a play with my perfume collection, which resulted in her taking home samples of some 20 new perfumes which caught her fancy, including one that she had a sudden and burning desire to own...Brûlure de Rose.

In preparing for S's visit, I got out most of my full bottles (except for the albatrosses, which remained confined to their refrigerated quarters), together with some decants and samples in all the main scent styles I like, and plonked the whole lot on the dining room table. I then proceeded to arrange them (largely instinctively) in groups based on very loose fragrance categories, labelling them with Post-it notes for ease of reference.

I knew that S owned Serge Lutens Un Bois Vanille, but beyond that I had no pointers as to her taste. Shortly after we sat down, S explained that she had worn Chanel No 5 in the past and still liked it, so I decided to park the vanilla scent group for the moment and dive straight into the "Aldehydes". I was surprised to learn that my collection featured quite a number of "aldehyde-forward" scents, from Ines de la Fressange to Balenciaga Le Dix, and two of these - Esprit d'Oscar and Chanel No 5 Eau Première - were an instant hit with my friend.

Inevitably there was a good deal of crossover between some of the groupings: spicy vanillas (eg DSH Cimabue!), vanilla and incense combos, woody-patchouli-amber-vanillas and so on, but where possible I tried to use headings that captured the dominant aspect of any given scent. Seeing my collection physically organised in front of me - sadly, there are no "before" pictures - only ones of the chaotic scene afterwards by which time the categories had got thoroughly jumbled up! - brought home to me in particular how much I love "powdery roses". (S also liked three here: Brûlure de Rose itself of course - which isn't even powdery to be honest, but it wasn't worth starting a splinter category just for "gourmand roses" - plus Floris Snow Rose and Rose Kashmirie.) I am also a big fan of vanillas and woody orientals, flanked by one or two leather or spicy numbers. In the spring and summer I enjoy florals of all kinds from polite office scents to the occasional dirty diva, and am also well catered for on the citrus side of things.

Here is the complete list of (very forgiving!) categories:

CITRUS
ORANGE
FIG
GREEN
TEA
SPICY!
LEATHER
MUSK
ALDEHYDES
FRUITY FLORAL
BIG SKANKY FLORAL "DIVAS"
OTHER FLORAL ("FAIRLY BIG")
POWDERY ROSE
IRIS ("OFFICE SCENTS")
"OFFICE SCENTS" MISCELLANEOUS
AMBER
VANILLA
WOOD / INCENSE / PATCHOULI / "DARK" - I was clearly starting to give up at this point

Somewhere I jotted down the complete list of samples S took away from our session, but I can't put my hand on it for the moment. It was mostly spread across the vanilla (clean, not barnyard), aldehydes, woody/patch/incense, powdery rose and "fairly big" floral categories, with a general success rate of about 60-65% at a rough guess and only one or two out and out scrubbers amongst the scents I gave S to try. (For example, though I had high hopes of the tobacco note in Cartier L'Heure Fougueuse following the wild success that was Vanille Absolument, it proved to be unequivocably wrong on S's skin, and she likened it to the smell of "a tack room" crossed with "a specimen bottle". At that time we were both unaware that the Cartier actually contained a "horsetail" note!)

And then on Monday, following my return from London, S finally took custody of her new bottle of Brûlure de Rose, which she had asked me to buy for her.

The review of Brûlure de Rose that precipitated my own interest in this scent and subsequent purchase was this one by Marina on PST, and here is one by Olfactoria which I missed last summer when I was away on business. I don't really get any green "early morning" stage with this scent, though I know that it is supposed to evoke the evolution of the rose at different times of day. On me Brûlure de Rose is pretty dark, sweet and sultry from the off. The views on Basenotes are polarised on this one, and my dear friend lovethescents didn't care for it at all. It reminded her of a brand of lip salve, so it isn't everyone's cup of tea, though I love it as much as S.

So looking back, the Post-it note and bottle frenzy led to a satisfactory outcome all round: my friend found a new fragrance love, while I got a kiss from Pierre Guillaume when I showed him the bag as evidence of my purchase. Now that is what I call a good deal.

*For "countless" read zero... : - )

Photo of cake from Wikimedia Commons, photo of Brûlure de Rose from fragrantica.com, other photos my own