Linda Pilkington
The founder and creator of British perfumery Ormonde Jayne discusses de-gendering her brand, dealing with haughty French perfumiers and being a Bond Street mainstay for the past two decades…
Hemlock is a notoriously poisonous plant. It can be fatal if ingested and cause a painful red rash should you touch it. Hemlock was behind the deaths of both Greek philosopher Socrates (as part of his execution) and Hannibal of Carthage (who took his own life by swallowing it). Few people would ever think about putting hemlock into a perfume. Not Linda Pilkington.
Twenty years ago the founder of London perfumery Ormonde Jayne received a fax she credits with changing her life. It was from a French business dealing with speciality oils, including one made from hemlock. “I just thought nobody else in the world is making perfume from this poisonous plant,” she remembers. “Using unusual flowers then became my point of difference.”
The hemlock-infused fragrance subsequently became Ormonde Jayne’s signature scent, changing the fortunes of the nascent boutique. Today, her brand has nearly 300 points-of-sale (everywhere from Saks Fifth Avenue in New York to Asian concessions), employs 50 people, and is loved by celebrities such as Goldie Hawn and Emma Thompson. Her fragrances – which are manufactured in its London laboratory – are celebrated for their unusual ingredients: tuberose, green tea, basmati rice, carrot seed, India’s champaca flower and myrrh (she also introduced oudh to the British market in 2004).
Going against the grain has been the core motif of Pilkington’s career. Prior to founding Ormonde Jayne in 1999, she worked in Brazil, running a soya bean farm and an ice-cream business where she experimented with exotic flavours.
Following this South American sojourn, Linda found herself back in London where she bumped into a friend who was about to open a Chanel boutique on Bond Street. The emporium needed some scented candles and he asked Linda – who made beeswax candles and sold them to neighbours as a child growing up in Cheshire – if she could help.
His offer galvanised her into action. She invested £800 in her new venture and attended a course in France to learn more about the craft. Before long, Pilkington’s candles were being sold in London’s Portobello Market, as well as winning prizes at trade shows. When the likes of Burberry, Conran, Liberty, Harrods and Nieman Marcus came knocking, she decided to launch her own boutique.
But first she had to seek approval from a hard-to-please West End landlord. “They asked about my retail experience, which was limited to my ice-cream parlour and running a stall selling candles to vicars when I was 12,” she says. “They agreed but told me, ‘If you fall behind on your rent, you’ll be out’. That was 21 years ago.”
Ormonde Jayne – the name comes from Pilkington’s middle name and the address of a family home – opened its Bond Street boutique in 2001.
Key to their success has been their innovative approach. Ten years ago, Pilkington took the trailblazing decision to make the brand’s products gender-neutral. “Men in the boutique would be picking up floral perfumes and wanting to buy them. Who am I to tell them it’s a lady’s perfume? I didn’t want to sell unisex scents so came up with the term ‘gender-free’, training staff and changing the website almost overnight.”
There have been challenges, not least dealing with the closed-world of French perfume-houses. “Initially, I was naïve,” remembers Pilkington. “I thought every flower in my encyclopaedia would be available. They were sold by French perfume houses, which can be nepotistic and difficult to penetrate; whenever I tried to get ingredients, I couldn’t get past the receptionist. Instead, I Googled what I was looking for and found middlemen to sell me stock.”
More recently, Brexit has caused woes. “Selling our perfumes into the EU suddenly become problematic with tariffs, duties and taxes galore, with every country having a different set of rules,” she says. To combat this, Ormonde Jayne set up a limited company in Dublin and ships their products from there.
This year, the Covid lockdowns in China has “sent price of containers going through the roof. We’ve got thousands of components, and if you miss one component, you can’t make the whole product. We easily lost half a million sales.”
One thing that has helped the brand is having what Pilkington describes as a “war chest on standby”. As she explains: “It helped in the early days when I suddenly found myself with more invoices. And it helped during Covid, when I had to pay 50% rent on our closed Bond Street store.”
Her advice to aspiring entrepreneurs is don’t give up the day-job until you’re completely confident your business will be a success. “Not every entrepreneur can go to Dragon’s Den and get £500,000. If you’ve got an income, keep it coming in, but work harder: research your business at weekends and days off.”
It's a work ethic that Pilkington employs herself (she’s involved in everything from penning press releases to designing bottles) and has seen the perfumery go from strength-to-strength: they plan to open a studio in Kent later this year and launch in new territories such as South Korea.
“As the creator/founder, I’m always thinking, ‘How can I improve this brand? How can I make this product more sustainable, more organic? Can this glass bottle that’s curved around the bottom have sharp straight sides?’ It’s tiny details like this that make me tick. Why? I just want everything to look and smell as beautiful as can be.”