Saskia Havekes has spent her life with flowers. Her Sydney shop, Grandiflora, is the florist the city's most serious people go to, and the fragrance house she founded from it carries the same sensibility: a fascination with the real scent of a real flower, before any perfumer has tidied it up.
Each fragrance is a single bloom, composed by a perfumer chosen for it. Madagascan Jasmine is jasmine as it smells at night, heady and slightly indolic. Boronia is the Tasmanian flower that almost never appears in perfume because the material is so scarce. Queen of the Night is the cactus flower that opens once a year. Michel and Sandrine are named for the perfumers who composed them, Michel Roudnitska and Sandrine Videault, two names that mean a great deal to people who follow the craft.
The character of the house
Honest florals, in the sense that they smell of the flower rather than of the idea of a flower. There is a directness to them that comes from a founder who has handled the real thing every day for decades.
Why Stacey admires it
Because it is a Sydney house of international standard, with a founder whose eye for a flower is the equal of any perfumer's nose.