Leather
Penhaligon's
Penhaligon’s is a British perfume house founded in London in 1870 by a barber from Cornwall. Born in opposition to the Turkish baths of Jermyn Street, it holds together a century and a half of English perfumery, its ribbon-tied bottles and a taste for aristocratic storytelling that the Portraits collection made popular. The Spanish group Puig has owned it since 2015.
Penhaligon's perfumes
Leather
Woody
Oriental
Aromatic
Floral
Oriental
Woody
Floral
Aromatic
Fougère
AromaticA barber against the Turkish baths
William Henry Penhaligon opened his salon in 1870 at 66 Jermyn Street, a few doors from the London Hammam whose vapors scented the neighborhood. The baths gave him his first fragrance in 1872, Hammam Bouquet, a warm, resinous composition at a time when Victorian England kept to floral waters.
The house's bottle was born with him, flattened flask, round glass stopper and ribbon tied at the neck, and its silhouette has not changed since. The neighborhood clientele earned it a reputation that soon spread beyond the salon.
Blenheim Bouquet and the Court
His son Walter took over the house at the beginning of the 20th century and composed Blenheim Bouquet in 1902, commissioned by the ninth Duke of Marlborough, who gave it the name of the family palace. The accord broke with the florals of its time through its citrus, spices and woods, and remains the best known in the catalog.
The house collects Royal Warrants, patents naming it supplier to the Court: the first in 1903 from Queen Alexandra, a second in 1956 from the Duke of Edinburgh, a third in the late 1980s from the Prince of Wales, a fourth from the latter having become Charles III.
The house under Puig
Fox Paine sold Penhaligon's and L'Artisan Parfumeur to the Spanish group Puig on January 23, 2015. The house kept its network of boutiques and its British style of writing, made of humor and characters.
The Portraits collection, launched in 2016, features a family of imaginary aristocrats under metal caps shaped like animal heads; one of them, The Inimitable William Penhaligon, returns to the founder. The house celebrated its 155th anniversary in 2025.