SIGNATURE SCENT: PERFUME PORTRAITS WITH ORMONDE JAYNE

Being romantically inclined, I had always been drawn to the idea that one's favourite perfume should be an invisible, unconscious signature - Chanel's unseen, unforgettable, ultimate accessory of fashion…. that heralds your arrival and prolongs your departure.

Finding a scent that perfectly describes you is no easy task: it seems to require an outrageously bold sense of self, or the kind of dog-like nature that constantly wants to mark its territory. For many years I opted out of the whole thing, and wore whatever I'd been given for Christmas: if you don't quite know who you are, how can you determine a signature scent, or a signature style? Even my signature at the bottom of letters and on cheques was a somewhat indeterminate scrawl.

Still, the idea persisted. It once took me all around Paris - to Caron, to the wonderful Guerlain boutique on the Champs-Elysee, to tiny perfumiers in dark streets off the Marais, in a Grenouille*-like hunt for the hit of recognition that would mean the scent was mine. But, although I discovered many delicious things on that trip - Jolie Madame, Shocking, Mitsouko, Narcisse Noir, Chanel No.22, Balenciaga's Le Dix - the perfect perfume eluded the imperfect me.

Many years later I've learned how to be happier with myself, and to accept my mutable nature. I'm no longer so obsesssed with there being one defining scent, and so I've ended up with a portfolio of perfumes which project different facets and moods. Mitsouko lends me a sophistication and glamour I don't always feel; I like to pretend I have it in me to be as mysterious and complex as Ormonde Woman; Diorella's bright, herby androgyny suggests a breezy efficiency that belies my default behaviour in the office. Most often, you'll find me in No.5: it reminds me of my Grandmother, whose influence on my life I didn't appreciate until long after she died. I like its rather old-fashioned elegance - bone structure over botox, if you like. Chanel No.5 may be the world's best selling perfume, but it's thankfully, it's not the world's most frequently worn, or there'd be the olfactory memory of a zillion Mrs Trefusis' wafting round the streets of London.

Ormonde Woman, Mitsouko, No.5 and Diorella became fixtures on my dressing table after a laborious process of trial and error. I can't imagine them ever losing their enchantment but they're surrounded by a dozen other bottles of scent I've tried a couple of times and given up on. I regret the waste as much as I admire the beautiful bottles, and looking at them makes me wish I'd discovered something like Linda Pilkington's Perfume Portraits at Ormonde Jayne rather sooner. The idea is incredibly well-conceived: at the Bond Street store - and at Harrods - Linda or one of her team will take you through a simple yet sybaritic fifteen minute process designed to take the guesswork and slog out of choosing a scent that's perfectly suited to you.

Perfume Portraits starts with a short questionnaire - likes, dislikes, whether you're looking for a signature scent or something for the new season and so on - before moving onto a blind test (blind sniff?) of twenty-one different ingredients from seven fragrance families. Linda notes your instinctive reactions as you work through, building up a portrait based on those you respond to, and the process ends in a choice between the two Ormonde fragrances that will suit you best. It confirmed me in my devotion to Ormonde Woman, and brought me to Frangipani, a fresh, beautiful floral that smells exactly like a Mediterranean garden at dusk.

Perfume Portraits at Ormonde Jayne

Ormonde Jayne - 12 The Royal Arcade 28 Old Bond Street London W1S 4SL To book your perfume portrait, telephone the Bond Street boutique on. +44 (0)20 7499 1100 or email. sales@ormondejayne.com

THE FEMME FATALE

I’ve always yearned to be a Femme Fatale: oozing mystique and an exotic allure, instantly enslaving every man who claps eyes on me. Perhaps not like Salome, who was a little, well, perverse, not to mention wicked, more Zuleika Dobson, a femme so truly fatale all the Oxford undergraduates hurled themselves to their doom in the Isis, for unrequited love of her.

In truth, I’m not sure I have it in me – I’m too blonde, too British, too married. I haven’t the sophistication to be heartless, which seems to be an essential femme fatale ingredient, and I suppose I’d probably rather be stouthearted and loyal, than full of wiles and enchantment. After all, with the exception of Zuleika, who is last heard of boarding a train for Cambridge, literary femme fatales tend to come to a Bad End.

It’s not without regret that I admit my lack of femme fatale-ness: don’t all women long to be beguiling and mysterious, and to entrance and ensnare, just a little?

But perhaps there is a way to embrace one’s inner siren without having to go the full Morgan le Fay: scent. The subliminal olfactory message of exactly the right scent is able to hint at something complicated and intriguing beneath a prim and rather proper surface, and perhaps even transform one from housewife to houri with a mere spritz from a magic bottle. Such is the alchemical power of perfume.

Mitsouko does this for me, which is possibly why I don’t wear it that often: it feels somehow too intimate, too revealing, as if I’ve said too much. So in the office I tend to wear another defining Chypre, Diorella, which doesn’t have a hint of femme fatale about it, in my opinion.

And so there I was, content to just dabble timidly in femme fatale territory on special occasions, by means of a dab of Mitsouko -which is, after all, one of the world's most divine scents - until I made an extraordinary discovery: Ormonde Woman, a smoky eye of a perfume, thrilling and novel, yet subtle and intriguing.

Lured in by the promise of Black Hemlock as a key ingredient – and anyone who knows Waffle or I will testify to our predilection for offering each other a Hemlocktini, when times are tough or tedious - I tried it only to be instantly and utterly seduced by its exquisite unconventionality.

I don’t think I’d ever smelled anything like Ormonde Woman before – India Knight - whose opinion on scent I’d trust even above the great Guru himself, Luca Turin – described it to me as ‘beautiful yet sinister’, and I can’t think of a more apposite description. Hemlock – an unusual and expensive ingredient when used in this kind of concentration – immediately roots one’s expectations firmly in femme fatale territory (do I need to mention Socrates? I thought not). Its siren song is the spice-market top notes of cardamom and coriander that create instant allure, before ceding to a more conventionally feminine heart of violet and jasmine absolute.

It’s subtle, yet hypnotic, and even now, more than five hours after I last sprayed it on, I keep raising my wrist to my nose to breathe in the beauty of its base notes. These are uncompromisingly masculine - vetiver, cedar wood, amber and sandalwood – and I think that’s what makes Ormonde Woman so astonishingly sexy: It’s such a seductively feminine scent, but then leaves you with these complex and beguiling, yet somehow male, traces of wood and incense.

You see – the more I write about it,I’m more under its spell: it’s not simply about bringing out any latent femme fatale in me, Ormonde Woman is itself the femme fatale: an original, beautiful, enigmatic temptress, and above all one that is wonderfully confident and wholly uncompromising. Wouldn't you love to be like that? I absolutely would, which is possibly why I'm mad about it.

I should stop evangelising before you gently suggest that my enthusiasm is bordering on zealotry: So tell me, what perfume makes you feel like a femme fatale?

Ormonde Woman. Eau de Parfum 50mls £68

Ormonde Jayne - 12 The Royal Arcade 28 Old Bond Street London W1S 4SL
T. +44 (0)20 7499 1100