Scandal hits the perfume industry

“There are very few days in my life that I remember clearly, but certainly if there was one I was born to live it was this one,” says Roja Dove, professeur de parfums and founder of the Roja Dove Haute Parfumerie.

No doubt the industry will also remember the day Roja Dove turned his hand to the creation of his eponymous fragrance line - as the day that fragrance returned to its luxurious routes.

“Many people believe that there is too much choice out there - that our market is over-crowded,” continues Dove. “I believe the reality is quite the contrary. There used to be a lot of choice, but now there is so little. Everywhere you go in the world the fragrance shelves are dominated by the same scents, made by the same companies. Five great vultures have killed the industry.”

Now in a bid to reclaim the lost art of fragrance, rather than the now ubiquitous art of marketing fragrance, Dove has unveiled his first fragrance line.

The three fragrances, one for each olfactive category, have been created with no marketing brief and no financial compromise. Dove has selected the finest natural ingredients to build scents that all carry one distinctive note: luxury.

Scandal is a floral, based on a heavy dose of white blossom that resonates with indole, an aromatic heterocyclic organic compound that occurs naturally in flowers and is redolent of a heady animal scent. The juice opens with notes of bergamot, lily of the valley and orange blossom, fading to a heart of freesia, rose, jasmine de Grasse and tuberose. Sandalwood, orris, balsams and musk are featured at the dry-down.

Unspoken sits in the chypré family thanks to its earthy base and fires up with notes of bergamot, neroli, rose and ylang-ylang, leading to jasmine de Grasse, ginger and oakmoss at its centre, with a base of sandalwood, vetiver, patchouli, vanilla, balsams and labdanum.

Enslaved, meanwhile, hails from the oriental camp and is kick started with bergamot, orange, lemon, geranium and orange blossom at the top, followed by rose, ylang ylang, jasmine de Grasse, carnation and clove in the middle of the triptych and drying down to oakmoss, cedarwood, vetiver patchouli, labdanum, ambergris and musk at the scent's close.

With such precious ingredients, some of which fetch up to three times the price of gold per unit weight, it is no wonder that the fragrances will be retailed at a premium. Stocked by selected House of Fraser stores, Roja Dove Parfumeries and Roja Dove Haute Parfumerie, the parfum atomiser (100ml) is priced at £350, an 100ml edp atomiser will retail at £95, while the accompanying body créme for each fragrance will be sold for £55 each.