Creativity and Courage: How Ormonde Jayne Is Influencing the Perfume Industry

Written by Kristina Kybartaite-Damule

It’s been almost 25 years since the name Ormonde Jayne was introduced. Unique materials, passion, and bold decisions have built this brand into what is now an icon in the fragrance industry. In an interview for PlezuroMag, its founder, Linda Pilkington, shares her story.

Linda in the new boutique / Photo from brand’s album

Ormonde Jayne is a name well-known to anyone interested in perfume. Its influence on the industry over the past 25 years is undeniable: the new and unexpected materials they use often become popular with other perfume houses too. Additionally, the brand’s perfumes became gender-free around 2006, at a time when this was not as common as it is now, and for which Linda Pilkington even faced criticism. However, she proves time and again that following her intuition is never a mistake.

The story of the brand’s founder is also not one you hear every day – how many of us, for example, have made and sell unique ice cream in South America? In this interview with PlezuroMag, she openly shares how she grew and how her experiences led her to create a brand initially known for scented candles. In a warm and relaxed conversation, she also explains how the industry has changed over the years and which perfume from her collection holds a special meaning to her.

Your career in fragrances started with scented candles, right? Can you tell us more about that and how it led to perfumes?

When I was quite young, where my parents live, it was a very quiet village, and in those days, there was no real transport to get into a big city. So we had to entertain ourselves, because if it was a rainy weekend, there was no cinema, nothing—nothing for miles and miles around. So my parents always used to encourage us to make things. For our birthdays and Christmas, we always used to get a big box of craft work, like how to make candles, how to make a room spray, how to make chocolates, how to make a hair conditioner. My sisters and I used to do this on a rainy weekend. I quite enjoyed it. I enjoyed making things look very beautiful. By the time Saturday night came, I would have 16 to 20 things I had made. And I just thought, well, what am I going to do with this now? And then, I suppose there's a bit of me that is entrepreneurial, and I wanted to sell it, so I could get more pocket money, and then I could buy more beautiful things for my bedroom.

And I also then, obviously, started taking an interest in perfume, which cost money as well. My mother had given me a nice bottle of Madame Rochas as a present because somebody gave it to her and she didn't want it, so she gave it to me. It was a big step up. You know, I’d gone from The Body Shop White Musk to Madame Rochas, and I thought it looked very smart in my bedroom, on the dressing table. In those days, it was a big bottle, and it was the color of cognac. So it was like a piece of treasure. And I kind of wanted to have more bottles to decorate my bedroom with, so I asked her if I could have all her empty bottles to make my bedroom look a bit more sophisticated. I asked her friends too. So everybody started giving me their almost empty bottles, maybe with two millimeters left at the bottom, so I could decorate.

And from then on, somebody would say to me, which perfume is your favorite? And I hadn't really thought about it much before that, so I then started smelling the perfumes and realizing how beautiful and different they were.

Then I wanted to go on a gap year to see the world, because I really hadn't seen much of life, and my parents said, okay, you can take one year off before you go to university. And I actually took 14 years. Once I was out of the country, that was it. I was very keen to go to the Middle East and Far East. I found Eastern traditions very romantic.

Linda Pilkington / Photo from brand’s album

And then I met up with a boyfriend, and he said, let's go to South America. I said, that's a good idea. And then we went over there, we started off in Brazil, and we ended up on the border of Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay, in a place called Iguazu. We decided to rent something there. I wanted to do something, I couldn't just not do anything. So that's when I opened my ice cream parlor. It was very hot, and I just thought, everybody—everybody—wants to eat ice cream. So I started to learn how to make ice cream. And then I decided to try and use all these things I had seen on my travels—all the spices, all the different colors—into the ice cream. So outside, I had a kiosk where you could buy chocolate, vanilla, pistachio ice cream, but inside you could have more unusual flavors like cardamom or rice, served in beautiful glass bowls for two.

When I eventually came back to the UK, I started working for an agrochemical company, and I was doing something very different. While I was going to get my lunch one day, on the street, I saw somebody who remembered me from when I was a child. And they said, you know, I'm going to open the Chanel fine jewelry store. I'm allowed to burn candles, and it would mean something to me if you made them. So I thought, this is a great challenge. You know, this is a really good opportunity to do what I really want to do. So I just refreshed my whole mind about candle making. It was a good project, I enjoyed it. I was still working full-time, so I was doing it in the evenings. But eventually, they said, we will take 50, and it took me a long time to make them. Then I had to make the company to write an invoice. So I founded Ormonde Jayne so I could write the invoices.

Later, we got contacted by Bvlgari, and they wanted a very beautiful summer-scented candle and a winter-scented candle. I was surrounding myself with very high-end companies, so it demanded the absolute best of what you could make. You couldn't compromise on anything. And I stayed with that pattern.

And then eventually, I saw a little boutique, and I thought, I would love to have my own little boutique. So I had to take the plunge and take the risk of stepping out of my paying job and into a bit of a gamble. But I just thought, I'll make it work, even if I have to do it all myself—which is what I did.

So slowly but surely, we found our style again, which was going back to the ice cream—again, looking for ingredients that were unusual to everybody else. We introduced the first perfume in the world with Hemlock, we introduced Champaka, Taif. Nobody else was using these ingredients as a main ingredient before. This was perfect for me, and I didn't mind that they were more expensive.

Photo from brand’s album

As time went on, I found my own style. Now we have a very big studio, and we have over 50 people working for us. We have a lovely team in the UK, in Europe, in America, we have a bigger boutique. So we're moving slowly but surely. I have been working for almost 25 years now.

Can you share a little bit of the story behind the name of Ormonde Jayne?

So it was to write the invoice to Chanel. And I didn't want to put my name, Linda Pilkington, because I would die if I saw my name on an invoice or on a box or anywhere. So I wanted it to be like an anonymous name, not connected to me. I'm Linda Jayne, and my first studio was our home, which was in Ormonde Terrace, and my husband said, you could be Jayne, Ormonde Jayne. So I didn't spend much more than two minutes thinking about it.

Can you compare working with candles and working with perfumes? And what satisfies you more, personally, perfumes or candles?

They are two very different disciplines. Candles take a long time to make from start to finish. You have to be quite particular with candles; you've got to make sure the wick is the right size. The bigger the wick, the bigger the flame—it generates more heat. So you have to make sure you get the right wick for each oil. So I quite enjoyed exploring all of that. I quite enjoyed doing all the experimenting to make sure the candle burns evenly, it burns to the bottom, that the fragrance sings and you can smell it. It's very different from making perfume.

Both industries have changed a lot. In the old days, I could make my candles and take them to the store. Now, you have to do a lot of paperwork and you have to have a lot of testing. Like the perfume industry—now you can't just be in your studio or at home, mix something, filter it, pour it, and take it to work. Nowadays, you have a lot of testing, all the IFRA compliancy. So today, if I have an idea for a formulation, maybe IFF will tell me what has to be changed. They'll say, you can't have this and this, you can't have that.

But I like them both for different reasons, but both of them have become more complicated than before, when you could just drink a glass of wine and work in your kitchen. It's not a bad thing. It's a good thing, but it makes the job a lot harder than it used to be.

Talking about raw materials, your brand is known for using unusual materials, like you said. How do you source ingredients?

Two ways. When I first started out, I used to go on the road, travel to Morocco and to Laos, and spend time with growers and see what oils they had. And I stay in touch with these people; I still know them today. And then, as a bit more people got to know me, the houses send me samples every year. They send me unusual ones because they know my style and what we're looking for. So now, each year I get four or five oils sent to me, I smell them, and I pick maybe two or three that I really like. And then we start building the profile around those oils.

Photo from brand’s album

How has your brand evolved during the 25 years, and where do you see yourself in the future?

It has evolved slowly but surely. We're still privately owned, we're still 100% independent. I think that's great. We don't have investors breathing down and saying, do this, do that, that's too expensive, or that's too expensive.

Today, we have about 500 points of sale around the world. We're in the top, top, top boutiques, top department stores. We don't go one layer below. I'm still healthy and happy. So while I'm healthy and happy, we can keep going. We just keep going until I feel one day maybe that it's too much, or I can't cope, or I'm not as happy as I used to be, or I need a rest, or maybe I just want to work three days a week, or something like that. Right now, I'm happy to keep going and keep growing, doing what we're good at, doing what we're known for, keeping the quality very high, making the products ourselves – it's important to me.

Are there any artists, designers, or musicians that inspire you in your work?

I can be inspired by absolutely anything and everything. I can even be inspired by the Silk Road collection; that came from a book that I was reading about the Silk Road, a history of the world, I found that inspiring. And I then bought a book to look for the ingredients on that same Silk Road. It could even be a TV program – there was one called The Silk Road. So I was watching that, and then they might mention a new place, and I would then automatically write it down and start Googling it to see what you grow there, what it's famous for.

So, it's coming in from all directions. It could be from travel, it could be from a book, it could be from a TV program. It could be just somebody telling me where they went, and then I'm looking it up.

Can you tell us, is there a fragrance in your collection that holds a special meaning to you?

Probably in the Signature collection, the Ormonde Woman is considered something dear to my heart, because it kind of put us on the map. It was the first perfume made from hemlock. It's a very beautiful, well-made perfume. It's green and it's woody, it's very different. And I think it's very creative. It makes me feel very special, and I'm very proud when I wear it. It gives me a good sense of confidence and just makes me think about how far we've come over the years, through thick and thin, good times, bad times.

Studio of Ormonde Jayne / Photo from brand’s album

My next question was exactly about Ormonde Woman. It was such a highly significant fragrance, and Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez also rated it five stars in their book. How do you feel knowing that you created such an iconic fragrance?

This is what keeps me going, this is what makes me tick. This is how I know I'm on the right track. And I don't want to look at what anybody else is doing. People are always saying to me, oh, smell this perfume from this company, it's selling so well in Harrods, and I just don't want to smell it. I just want to stay with what I want to do. I don't want my mind to be taken off what we do. I think the important thing for me is, when I'm getting good five-star ratings from really great people, it tells me I'm doing something right. A lot of people have copied me, actually, and I find that okay. We had our perfume called Taif. I think six months later, there were three more perfumes called Taif in the world. It tells me that whatever my instinct tells me I'd like to do, it's fine. This is what we do.

Can you tell our readers about your decision to make your perfume genderless and how you were criticized for it at first?

It came from one client in Harrods. My lady had introduced him to Taif rose. He thought, this is a really nice perfume. When he got home that evening, he Googled Ormonde Jayne, and when he saw that the Taif was underneath “feminine,” he was very upset. He contacted customer services to say how disappointed he was, and all she wanted to do was make a sale, and she sold him a feminine perfume. I was absolutely horrified, so I wrote to him straight away.

Actually, the first thing I thought was, who are we to say to people which perfume they should be wearing? Because I'd also had an experience in the boutique – if the boutique was very busy and I didn't have the time to serve somebody, or my staff didn't, and they were helping themselves, quite often they would choose something very different from what we would think they might want to wear.

We had a perfume called San Paquita – very feminine, very floral, very fruity, peachy, light. A guy picked that perfume for himself. So when he came to pay, I was about to say to him, you know, this perfume is quite feminine. It was about 2006. But then I just thought, why should I? He likes it, he picked it, he put it on his skin, he likes the way it smells on his skin.

Off the back of that experience, off the back of the man that complained about the Taif, I just then phoned up the website people, and I said, change it from male and female straight away to just families of perfumes, like floral, woody, etc., and make it genderless, we are gender free.

It turned out to be a good idea, because people had more choice. But I got criticized and some said this was a mistake. I just said, look, I like to react to clients' feedback, because ultimately, these are the people that are buying our perfumes. I became gender free in 2006, and it wasn't a mistake. It was a very good idea.

Photo from brand’s album

If you weren't creating perfumes or candles or anything scented, what would you do?

I would probably become a chocolatier. I love cooking, I like gardening. I like cooking with fragrances. I do like chocolates, and I can make chocolates. I love eating chocolate, and when I was young, I used to make all the fillings and put them into the shells of the chocolate.

My mother bought me a chocolate-making kit. Okay, it was quite primitive, but I could make chocolates. And so I would definitely become a chocolatier. But the competition now is fierce. I mean, some of the chocolate makers in the world are so amazing. I would really have stiff competition to break into that market and to kind of come up with something entirely different. But I could see myself as a chocolatier.

Thank you for your time.