Asian interest in luxury fragrances growing, niche perfumer says
Roja Dove is founder of Roja Parfums – the most popular perfume shop at Harrods in London. He explains why Asian customers have been slow to embrace scents and talks about the continuing rise of niche fragrances
At a time when the UK has been in the news for all the wrong reasons (messy Brexit talks, poisoned Russian spies on its soil, a crumbling NHS) and needs all the good publicity it can get, the country’s PR machine went into overdrive last month in Hong Kong.
The British Fashion Council and the Great Festival of Innovation brought key figures from Britain’s luxury and design industries to town to drum up support for all things British. One of the keynote speakers of the event was perfumer Roja Dove, founder of Roja Parfums and an international ambassador for Britain’s Great campaign.
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The perfumer has been an inside player in the rarefied realm of luxury fragrances for decades, but he founded his brand only in 2011. After working for French perfumer Guerlain he moved on to create bespoke perfumes – completely tailor-made concoctions that can cost tens of thousands of US dollars.
While the made-to-measure service still plays an important role in the company, Roja Parfums is now a fully fledged fragrance and lifestyle brand, with the most popular perfume shop at Harrods (it outsells all other fragrance shops there) and a boutique in London’s Burlington Arcade.
Dove’s knowledge of the history of perfume and the fragrance industry is encyclopaedic, and ranges from the complicated steps involved in distilling oud from the trunks of trees to the connections between glove manufacturers and perfume making in 17th century France.
