IT'S A FUNNY thing, but as the scent counters of the world fill up with showy new upstarts, so I get fussier about the ones that I dab about my person. Since my best-beloveds (Shalimar and Jicky by the wonderful old house of Guerlain) no longer seem to be what they used to be (and I’m not alone in thinking that they’ve changed, many of my friends do, too), I’m looking harder than ever for something wonderful to replace them.

I like my perfumes either quite simple (Diptyque’s Philosykos and Jo Malone’s Nutmeg and Ginger are two favourites for daytime) or very complex and sophisticated. For all those other picky people who may be looking for some seriously grown-up scents, there are two wonderful old/new ones that are well worth trying. First, the scents launched under the label Jean-Charles Brosseau. Jean-Charles is a milliner who is still making hats in Paris and who, 25 years ago, started to dream of an exclusive scent that he would sell from his milliner’s shop in the Galerie Vero-Dodat. He went to a perfume-making house, soon fell in love with a particular “base” and declared it to be “mine”. Classically, a perfumer creates a base and then builds a perfume around it — seldom, if ever, has anybody made a perfume out of a base alone.

Brosseau loved it, however; he called it Ombre Rose and it started a huge fad for oriental floral scents. For the bottle design, he found an original mould from the 1920s (very Art Deco) and the perfume was born. Bergdorf Goodman launched it in 1981 (the perfumery buyer, having smelled it, cried “this is mine”) and the entire stock was sold on the first day. To the American woman at the time, it seemed sophisticated and very French. But, as is the way with perfumes, licences were granted and the licensees began to mess around with and corrupt the formula.

When Brosseau saw it being sold on a street corner in New York along with fake Rolexes, he knew that it was time to act. He spent years buying back the licences and last year he relaunched Ombre Rose, calling it Ombre Rose Original, in its pristine formula. Today, it can be found at Roja Dove’s Haute Parfumerie on the 5th Floor at Harrods (020-7893 8797).

Roja Dove so loved the perfume that, for his launch, he bought six 30ml bottles (the most long-lasting and, at £161, expensive version of all). “It may not sound a lot,” he says now, “but remember, for me it was a new venture.” He sold all six in the first week. “Women would come in and, on seeing the bottle, would say, ‘Oh, Ombre Rose’ in a certain tone of voice and I knew they’d loved it once before. Now I buy three dozen at a time.”

Since then Brosseau has added two scents to his collection: Ombre Bleue and Violette Menthe. Ombre Bleue was based on Brosseau’s memories of his childhood holidays by the sea, to remind him of sunny, lazy days, the smell of Ambre Solaire and the blue of the sea and the sky.

Of Violette Menthe, Dove says: “Menthe is rarely used in making perfumes but it gives a very fresh top note while the violets add a dusky, powdery sensuality”.

And if none of those three is to madame’s taste, go along to Roja Dove’s Haut Parfumerie and have a sniff of some other wonderful perfumes. Try, for instance, those made by Clive Christian, an interior designer who bought an established perfumery, the Crown Perfumery, a few years ago in order to create some of the most beautiful, luxurious perfumes in the world.

He, too, has been busy resurrecting the original formulas: 1872, one of the recipes in the company’s archives, had been meddled with and spoilt through the years, so Clive Christian asked a perfumer to reintroduce the original fine ingredients and not to worry about the cost. Back came the original Rose de Mai. To give you some idea of its rarity, the flower from which it is sourced blooms for only three weeks in May and it takes 170 blossoms to give a single drop of the oil. Christian has now put this back into 1872 (50ml of eau de parfum cost £110, 30ml of the perfume cost £350).

Try, too, his No 1, a perfume for “the sophisticated, soignée woman, as she sets off for a wonderful evening out”. In the neck of the bottle is a diamond. For Elton John’s last party, Christian created special stoppers for the No 1 perfume (all the perfumes have male and female versions), a bow tie covered in natural pearls and an outrageous crystal, diamond and 18-carat-gold tiara top. Finally, there’s X: “It’s sexy as hell,” says Christian, “like a woman slipping into a Bentley, oozing power and success.”

Well! Why not give them a whirl?

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