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Caption: FLORIS, LONDON #floris #mystjames #london #stelleruk #perfume #5ftinf
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Caption: THE VISIT... As part of the #mystjames project I’m working on, I had an appointment at Floris in Jermyn St in St James’s...I was expecting a perfume shop with old fashioned interiors & old fashioned perfumes...I wasn’t expecting how incredibly affected I was by their scents and how I felt like I was almost time travelling via my olfactory system...
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Caption: The scent... I have realised what a meditation it is to focus on what a smell is, but when I’m painting I focus on what it all looks like, not how it makes me feel.
And so for the first time in ages, I was smelling and feeling, rather than just concentrating on what it was, and I really hadn’t anticipated what an emotional experience that would be...
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Caption: The history... At the back of the shop where there's a collection of Floris's history. Floris was established in 1730 by Juan Famenias Floris & his wife Elizabeth There’s a wonderful display of old perfume bottles, hair combs ( for which they received their first Royal Warrant in 1820 ) photographs and letters from customers including one from Florence Nightingale in 1863.
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Caption: The bespoke perfumer... After my tour of the shop I was taken to the back room where I met bespoke perfumer Penny Ellis.
I was so surprised at the delicacy of musk and the sweetness of amber. I hadn’t quite realised that blending is a work of art and in my opinion Penny is basically a scent artist creating individual fragrances...
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Caption: ...and these are the Floris ledgers, full of fragrance orders from John Profumo to Lady Olivier.
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Caption: My photo illustrations... I collected flowers from my garden & used one of their earliest fragrances ‘Limes’, first blended in the 1700’s & used by Florence Nightingale who also wore ‘White Rose’ along with Admiral Nelson. ‘Lily of the Valley’ was also first blended in the 1700’s and ‘Rose Geranium’ in 1890 ( famously worn by Marylin Monroe and Isabella Blow ).
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Caption: ‘Edwardian Bouquet’ is a Floris classic and was blended in 1901 and ‘Fleur’ is one of their more modern fragrances and they have a little wooden table at the back of the shop which I used to create the images
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Caption: Rose Geranium as worn by Marylin Monroe and Isabella Blow...
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Caption: The lasting scent... I feel so artistically inspired by this visit which genuinely caught me by surprise...Floris doesn’t just feel like a shop, it feels more like an immersive experience and the staff are also brilliant and so committed to what a gem of a place they work in…and I certainly have a new art project in mind and many hours smelling ahead!
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Caption: More at:
www.5ftinf.com
www.florislondon.com www.instagram.com/5ftinf
snapchat: five5ftinf