Sarah Rotheram, the charming, enthusiastic CEO of sister companies L’Artisan Parfumeur and Penhaligon’s, was in San Francisco recently to promote the fall and holiday launches for both companies. I was invited to come and have a chat and a bite of lunch. Ms. Rotheram, who worked for Molton Brown and Penhaligon’s before being promoted to her current position in 2009, has been instrumental in driving both companies into new territories, both artistically and business-wise. Listening to her talk about her approach to the creativity and direction of the brands was interesting and enlightening.

I was introduced to the new collection for L’Artisan, Explosions D’Émotions, which is the start of a new direction for L’Artisan after years of creating scents based on place. Ms. Rotheram explains, “One of our first jobs was sending Bertrand to an uninhabited South Pacific island and dropping him off with a tent, asking him to go find ingredients for us… however, the world is doing travel stories, and it’s our responsibility as a niche fragrance house to think: ‘where do we go next?’, which was really where the Explosions range comes from.” Beautifully packaged in velvety boxes, and new bottles, with artistic photography to accompany each scent, the collection is a departure from the L’Artisan norm on several counts. She explains, “I’ve had quite a few questions of why has L’Artisan gone from here to doing this very different [thing] …we felt like we had to find the next direction for the brand, and we have an absolute commitment in terms of the quality of our juice and our product; in order to keep pushing those boundaries in terms of ingredients, we felt like we wanted to have…” She paused.  “The reason we work with master perfumers is they have no price per kilo restrictions, they can use any ingredients, we wanted to make sure they had as much creative freedom as possible.” The scents are based on physical and emotional sensations, and Ms. Rotheram said that once perfumer Bertrand Duchaufour got into the swing of the project, she had about 24 examples to choose from. They chose three to launch with, and will continue with this collection as time goes on.

The Penhaligon’s brand has seen an upswing in popularity since Ms. Rotheram took the helm. Working as the creative director for the brand as well as CEO, she has taken what had become a rather stodgy, gentlemanly line and re-focused it toward perfumery. Wanting to make a statement, she started with Amaranthine, which was a polarizing fragrance that caused a lot of buzz in the perfume community.  She explained that she went to the team and posed a question.  “What should Penhaligon’s be about? It has to be inspired by the same legacy as our founder, because we’re so uniquely positioned to have so much heritage, being around since the 1860’s. Some of our best-selling fragrances have been selling for 130 years; how do we take that, modernize it, but not lose the heritage and values? What we identified was, if you go through our archives, what William [Penhaligon] did, the founder, was he was inspired by people and places, so he either made perfumes for the courts, or he went to a place and created a fragrance… We are eccentrically British, and we will make sure everything we do has a heart to it, a London beat, just kind of real story-telling…. We don’t do trend reports, it’s purely gut instinct, which would frighten the hell out of some people. I believe, in a niche brand, you can’t follow trends.”

It was fascinating to hear about the creative process for several of the Penhaligon’s fragrances. For Sartorial, it was the scents of the sewing machine oil, the beeswax-dipped pattern papers, the fabrics, and the steam found in the workroom of an old, established London tailor that were the inspiration. Rather than presenting Bertrand Duchaufour with a written brief, Ms. Rotheram sent him to the shop for a week to absorb these aromas for himself, and create the perfume from that experience. The new releases, Vaara and the upcoming Iris Prima, have similarly fascinating backstories*. Ms Rotheram believes her customers want to know the story of a fragrance without being marketed to or sold, so each fragrance has a story behind its creation as well as a story to tell.

I was curious as how a French company and English company wound up under the same helm. Ms. Rotheram responded, “There are similarities between the two in terms of commitment to the quality of the fragrance; this idea of not creating in a lab. Well, we work in a lab, but we have to go into the world to be inspired… It’s amazing – we could never have interpreted some of our fragrances by giving an olfactory brief… we have to think, stimulation comes from the strangest places, from drinking a martini to sitting watching a ballet…“ She summed it up: “My job is, I go out into the world, I speak to the best perfumers I can find, and say, how can you interpret our ideas?”

When asked about a typical day in her life, Ms. Rotheram said, “Untypical. I’ll tell you about some of the things I do. What’s so beautiful about my job is it’s so varied. I’m not a typical CEO in the sense that I’m very hands-on, and I like to be hands-on. I wear many hats, from being the creative director – [Penhaligon’s doesn’t] have a creative director, so that’s very much driven by me. You might find me in the fields one day, to being in the lab another day, to traveling around the world, or I might be on the production line trying to figure out how we increase production in a more productive way, to selling on the shop floor. I sell, I still like to sell, I think it gives you that connection with the consumer you can’t get another way. …. By doing so many different things and still being very involved, from the design of the stores, to the look of the packaging, to what is the next fragrance we’ll choose, I live and breathe the brand. There are those sad days when I have to have my head down in numbers and finance and those important things that make the business move forward. It’s not my favorite thing to do, except for the fact it ticks the boxes and tells us that we’re doing the right things in the right direction.  So my role would be very varied, from very much around the product – I am a product and brand person – to being an ambassador of the brand. … That’s what’s so fabulous, that there is not a typical day. If I had to go to the office every day and sit behind a desk ….” Ms. Rotheram shook her head sadly at the very idea.

I got the sense that although Ms Rotheram is wholly involved with L’Artisan, it is Penhaligon’s that has her heart. For both companies, her excitement at being involved deeply with a perfume’s creation really shines through as she tells the stories about their inspiration and fruition.  I will be anxiously awaiting what happens next.

–Tama Blough, Senior Editor

*Note: Mark Behnke reviewed Vaara and the Explosions D’Emotion scents recently.  I will be reviewing Iris Prima soon and will tell that story then. The draw for a reader's choice 15mL press sample continues until August 14, 2013 on the Explosions D'Emotions review link.