Who: Solomon Ogdegbune, co-founder of Signature Fragrances London. SF London, launched 2014, is an exciting fragrance brand from South London which creates perfume oils that are gently complex, intriguing and many-layered. The four designs of hand made bottles, created by Solomon’s co founder partner Yinka, are exceptional and will take pride of place on your bathroom shelf.
Today I’m wearing Demure, which comes from our Fresh collection, it’s a citrus scent and very lively. It makes me feel very energetic, even though it’s quite a conservative scent, it still has that very robust feeling to it. Our perfumes are all about identity, uniqueness and confidence, I don’t come from a normal perfume background, I come from South London, not the South of France! Perfume can speak to you in an abstract way and give you confidence, we’re trying to create that link between confidence and your personal perfume.
I put on fragrance before I go to bed, it makes me feel really good and calms me, specially if I’ve got something to do the next day that I’m nervous about. In the morning I have a shower, cream my body and then apply scent on my pulse areas and on my clothing. The good thing about our scent oils is that they don’t stain, if you rub them onto clothes, it grabs the thread and holds the smell. So it’s an intense ritual.
When you apply perfume directly as an oil, it’s emotive; you take the perfume stopper off, you dab it on, you rub it in and it sits very closely on your skin. If you spray perfume, it somewhat deceives you in the beginning because you have this surge of intensity when you spray it, with lots of ‘noise’ at the beginning, but then it calms down.
Whereas with oils, it gets right to the job, you smell its character straight away. We don’t use alcohol, we use oil to hold the formula, which makes the affect of the fragrance more subtle so it warms on your skin and gently release its layers. Also, our oils have great longevity, it’s our forte.
