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A very close friend of mine is getting married in a couple of months, and I bought her a consultation with Marcel at the Roja Dove boutique at Harrods and the resulting bottle of perfume (which she plans to wear on the big day) for her birthday. We went together on Friday, and I thought you might like to hear about the process.
L is quite new to perfume. She'd believed for years that something about her skin made fragrances vanish on her (actually, she'd just been using very light fragrances with not much middle or bottom - Crabtree and Evelyn soliflores and so forth), but I showed her my collection a last year, and she became completely obsessed with Mitsouko and l'Heure Bleue, both of which stick around well on her skin. She's since bought both of them. She's a fascinating lady - she's got a doctorate in literature, specialising in the Victorian periodical, and has a flat full of wonderful artwork, books and more books. She loves quirky, antique and peculiar things, is delightfully physical , has wonderful taste, and is a very dear friend. I wanted to find something really perfect for her.
For the wedding she wanted something really unusual and personal.
Marcel started her off by talking for a long time about the sort of thing she wanted for the day; about what her dress would be like, where they were marrying, and what her personality was like. She surprised me by saying she wanted something which smelled 'a bit dirty, a bit rude' (remember, this is a lady who's been wearing Evelyn Rose for years). Marcel took her for a walk around their selection of Diptyque candles, using them to help her to find which fragrance families and notes she enjoyed. She seemed very drawn to floral chypres and orientals, and surprised me again by being overwhelmingly delighted by tuberose, which she'd not smelled before. (I do recall her commenting on my Mahora, now I think about it.)
Marcel next asked her to fill in a questionnaire on the computer. She was shown places (woodland; dry, sandy desert; tropical islands; modern cities; spice markets), textures (skin, metal, silk, wood and so on), words (sensual, soft, sophisticated, comfortable), colours and other choices, a lot like the process you can go through on the Guerlain website, but in much more detail. The questionnaire also asked which houses/perfumes she was already familiar with, which she liked, and which she owned already.
The computer then spat out a series of numbers. Marcel vanished for a moment and then came back with a box full of numbered phials and scent strips. These weren't commercial perfumes, but just very simple accords which I *think* Roja had organised himself. She was asked to sniff each of them, again in pairs, and choose favourites. She ended up with heliotrope ('My God! This is wonderful! I could eat it!), a white floral and a very dark, civet-y amber.
He went back to the computer, which, given the new information, selected a list of things for her to try. I was very impressed - it picked out things which, having spoken to her at length, I would have suggested as well, alongside some things I wouldn't have considered. Caron Poivre, Schiaperelli Shocking, Jardins de Bagatelle, l'Heure Bleue (it seemed to miss the fact that she already owned it), Mimosa pour Moi (odd, this - Roja Dove doesn't stock l'Artisan), Diorissimo, TDC Rose Poivree...and Clive Christian No 1, which I'm afraid I told her she couldn't have before she'd even smelled it! (Thankfully, she didn't enjoy it very much, so I have not had to remortgage.) These all suit her wonderfully - I was very impressed that they'd narrowed down her personality in scent in such a short time, and they'd pulled out all the things she'd mentioned as well - there was the heliotrope, some civet for the 'dirty' thing she wanted, ambers, the spices she mentioned earlier in the consultation...and lots of white flowers and roses.
Marcel gave her scent strips of the perfumes (minus Mimosa pour Moi) one by one without telling her which was which. If she liked one she had in her hand more than the other, then she was to keep the one she liked, pick up a new one, try it and compare it to the one she liked before. She would then discard whichever of the new pair she liked the least. On one occasion she wasn't able to choose...then Marcel said 'If you were in a room filled with this fragrance or a room filled with that one, which would you *need* to leave first?' Thinking about it in that way, she was able to narrow it down very quickly.
She held onto a strip of Jardins de Bagatelle from the first pair she was given (told you she liked tuberose) and only put it aside when she reached the final strip - Schiaperelli Shocking. It was soft, velvety, warm and dark on her, and suited her better than I could have imagined. I wish you could have seen her face when she smelled it on her arm - it was as if she'd just met a long-lost lover.
I bought the Shocking for her, and she decided to get Jardins de Bagatelle for herself as well. We said thanks and goodbye to all the staff at Roja Dove (I am never sure whether to be delighted or horrified at the fact that they all seem to know my name, and that they *always* say 'I suppose we'll see you again very soon' when I leave) then went downstairs via the Rance counter so L could try Josephine and le Vainqueur (she was, like me, fascinated by the possibility that we might me smelling Napoleon). We finished the day off in the food hall, where we ate oysters and drank too much champagne. A brilliant day out, and she's going to smell fantastic on her wedding day.

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Fascinating story! Thanks for sharing and being a real friend.


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Wow! Sounds like a wonderful time. That's very generous of you to take your friend for that consultation.
I'm fascinated by the analysis! I wonder what they'd make of me...

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That was a really great story!
Having you as friend must be a wonderful experience. Roja Dove and a pub with scrumpy

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I have an appointment next week at Roja Dove. I have no one like Squeezeweasel to come with me, though. What a wonderful friend you are, Squeezy.

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That is a great story! Sounds like a wonderful experience for you both and makes me want to wear some great old perfume "lover" myself.
That is a pre-wedding experience she will tell her grandchildren someday. You did a wonderful thing.

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Wow! I love this story. Sounds like heaven. I'm so happy for all parties involved. Thank you for all the time you took to relate these events for our benefit.

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This sounds wonderful - I would love to be led through this labyrinth of options to find a personality suiting scent. Everybody at Roja Dove is so incredibly helpful and pleasant. It's lovely to be surrounded by so much luxury and not be made to feel like chewing gum that the last customer brought in on their shoe (inferiority complex, moi?) as can be the case in some of the more "exclusive" establishments.
I wish your friend all the very best for her big day, too, Squeezeweasel.

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Thank you so much for such a fun read!
Very informative and very detailed as well, i would have liked to be there and see all of your reactions and smelled a lot of those scented strips!...i have smelled many of the frags mentioned and i have also used the guerlain's website-based helper and it turns out i'm a fan of JardinsDB too, as well as champs elysées, a whole lot of the AA and so on...
You are such a great friend to your friends!

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Quote: Originally Posted by kissandmakeup It's lovely to be surrounded by so much luxury and not be made to feel like chewing gum that the last customer brought in on their shoe (inferiority complex, moi?) as can be the case in some of the more "exclusive" establishments. Gosh, I know what you mean! They're always so nice, and so helpful - this has not been my experience everywhere. Ludicrously, some of the very worst treatment I've had has been at perfectly ordinary fragrance/cosmetics counters at perfectly ordinary shops.
Usually Les Senteurs is pretty good, service-wise, too, but I've had one bad experience there where I was treated pretty sniffily after asking what the cheapest size available was for Carnal Flower. Must remember to ask for the smallest next time. Once given the reply (along the lines of it being a very special perfume and that I shouldn't expect such things to be cheap, followed by a thorough looking-up-and-down), I left without buying anything. Which was a shame for them and for me - I'd only been after a smaller bottle of Carnal Flower so I could justify (ha!) buying it *as well as* the Lipstick Rose and Une Rose I'd planned on buying. I wonder whether the fact I was carrying a charity shop plastic bag had anything to do with it?