I hardly ever buy perfume these days. That’s because you get sent loads for free, you might say, to which the answer is, of course, yes I do. But even before I started this job I never bought the stuff. I just can’t bear the hype. The gravelly voice-overs, the pretentious slogans, the pouting models straddling tigers or abseiling down skyscrapers or performing whatever other pointless activity the ad agency has dreamt up. And anyway, now that I get bottles and bottles of scented alcohol sent to me on a regular basis, it’s sort of worse. Because I’ve come to realise a) just how horrid most of it is and b) the ludicrous amounts of money, not to say trees, that get wasted promoting it. One recent launch, of a scent so perniciously sweet and cloying that it put the entire office off their lunch, came accompanied not just by lavish packaging but by an entire hardback book. A book, I tell you, containing some of the worse poetry I have read since my own teenage attempts musing on the charms of David Bowie. So I’ve been on a bit of a quest. A quest to find some nice perfume that won’t make you smell like a WAG in season; a perfume that isn’t trying to exude “the beauty of the ocean coupled with the myth of the mermaid”, for example, or even “embrace the skin with the salty kiss of the Everlasting Flower”; a perfume that is happy to let you wear it, not the other way round.

And I think I’ve found it. Ormonde Jayne. There is just one shop in London (www.ormondejayne.com; 020-7499 1100), which was established almost by accident. The owner, Linda Pilkington, was producing scented candles for a number of fashion houses when, during a trip to the West End, she spotted a tiny place to rent in an arcade. She put in an offer, and to her surprise, got it. Which was a bit of a problem, since at that time she only had one perfume to sell, Ormonde Woman, and absolutely no clue how to do so.

When you think about the mighty marketing machinery that supports so many launches, it seems amazing that one woman selling an unknown perfume with no budget could survive. But survive she did, and it is testimony to the success of that scent that she now has nine blends, with another on the way. The newest, which launches at the end of the month, is the best so far. It’s called Orris Noir, or Black Iris, and it’s a spicy Oriental. It’s got pink pepper, cardamom, iris (obviously), coriander seed, bergamot, pimento berries, myrrh and patchouli in it, among other things. It’s one of those perfumes that is both com­forting and sensual; it’s exotic but not overpowering, and it smells like a classic even though it’s new.

What really makes me like Pilkington is that she isn’t a perfume bore. She just likes to smell nice, and has enough confidence to create perfumes (from £44) that do that, but with a twist of something you won’t find in Debenhams. And although her packaging is pretty, that is not what you are paying for: the money is going towards top-quality ingredients. Her formulas (by which I mean the base oils that create the scent itself) cost between £350-£400 a kilo. A commercial perfume would spend £70-£80 a kilo. Makes you think, no?

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