PICTURED: KEVIN, EDWARD BODENHAM AND SEBASTIANO CARUSO.
Jermyn Street’s Open Door Series will be honouring the brands and businesses that make our street the home of gentleman’s style, and the pinnacle of British craftsmanship, by spotlighting your favourite brands, and the people behind them, as we get ready to invite you through our doors once more!
Floris, Britain’s oldest perfumer and retailer of fragrances, was founded in 1730, and is still family owned to this day. Floris uses the finest essential oils and essences to create some of the most famous scents in the world, and their original shop at 89 Jermyn Street has now been the company’s headquarters for nearly three hundred years.
When Juan Famenias Floris moved to England from Menorca with his wife Elizabeth in 1730, he secured the premises on Jermyn Street to start his business. His aim was to make his fortune in London and he originally set up business as a barber-shop and comb maker. Before long, Juan began to miss the exotic scents and aromas of his homeland and, with his wife, began making perfume and selling it from the shop. Their reputation for combs, shaving products and perfume grew, and they began to source fine ingredients from abroad to expand their range.
In 1820, Floris received its first Royal Warrant as “Smooth Pointed Comb Maker to HM The King George IV”. Combs, along with toothbrushes and mouthwashes, were their specialties at the time and were greatly favoured by the company’s elite clientele. Today, this Royal Warrant is on display in their Jermyn Street shop along with the nineteen others they have received over the years. Floris currently holds the warrants “Perfumers to HM The Queen Elizabeth II”, granted in 1971, and “Manufacturers of Toilet Preparations to HRH The Prince of Wales”, granted in 1984.
During the brand’s illustrious career, demand for perfume rose above that of their other products and they gained many famous customers. Beau Brummell, the original Jermyn Street gentleman, whose statue stands tall on our street, was known to spend hours in the shop discussing his current fragrance. When Florence Nightingale returned from the Crimean War, she wrote a letter to the then Mr. Floris thanking him for “the beautiful sweet-smelling nosegays”. Winston Churchill purchased fragrances at Floris and the writer Ian Fleming was also a regular customer, resulting in James Bond himself wearing the perfume ‘No. 89’. Floris also receives a mention in several of Fleming’s James Bond novels. In the 1950s, due to an increasing demand, Floris began exporting scents abroad, and a receipt from 1959 for a Marilyn Monroe Miller’s purchase of Rose Geranium scent still exists today.
The sheer number of Floris’s discerning clientele speaks for the stunning quality of its products. Tucked away at the back of the 89 Jermyn Street shop sits the Floris perfumery, where all the Floris fragrances produced since 1730 have been created. Perfumery, for Floris, is the perfect balance between art and science, and they credit experience for their success, rather than artifice. All of their scents are made in Britain from the finest essential oils and essences gathered from around the world. They have always sustainably sourced the finest raw materials from their tight-knit network of suppliers, who monitor the grade of each crop to ensure the upmost quality.
Nearly 300 years of innovative techniques, carefully recorded and passed down through 9 generations, make Floris the pinnacle of perfumery as it is today. At their iconic Jermyn Street store, you can now create your own bespoke fragrance, visit the Floris museum, or shop the iconic perfumes which have scented history since the 1700s.