Ormonde Jayne is celebrating the end of a very exciting year after having been selected by The Walpole as one of the six Brands of Tomorrow 2008, a trade body for the British luxury industry which has been a tremendous accolade!  

Last month Ormonde Jayne was also one of five companies shortlisted for The Walpole’s award of “Best Emerging British Luxury Brand”.

“In order to be eligible for the programme, selected companies need to exemplify the highest standards of quality, style and craftsmanship and aspire to develop into full Walpole members”.

Twenty owners of luxury brands were firstly shortlisted down from several hundred applicants and we were invited in for what was billed as “a chat” back in March last year.  It was therefore a shock to the system to be ushered into a large hall and suddenly sit all alone opposite a very official panel of a dozen judges firing quite severe questions at me from different angles.  Judges whom I had previously met at beauty industry events and had been polite and charming suddenly turned into ruthless interrogators grilling me about business plans for decades to come. I had turned up under-prepared, hungry and a week away from giving birth! Emerging after a strenuous hour, I felt dazed, defeated and in need of a large gin.  It came as even more of a shock to find out a few days later that we had been chosen as one of the “Brands of Tomorrow”

As a result of The Walpole award, Ormonde Jayne has been given mentoring from the Grand Mentor of all Mentors, James Henderson of Pelham PR and I have been inundated with exceptional support, ideas and fast tracked to the future and really cannot thank him enough for giving his time so generously.

Ormonde Jayne has been in suitably prestigious company this past year – the other six Brands of Tomorrow are the talented jeweller Shaun Leane, The Real Flower Company, Astley Clarke,  Timorous Beasties, The Fish Society and De Roemer.

I have since found out a bit more about my day of judgement in March – one of the clinchers was that the judges were each given Sample Programmes and, as luck would have it, several were apparently hooked! One of them was particularly taken with Champaca and has since become a bona fide Ormonde Jayne client visiting the boutique several times!  Champaca that we launched in 2002, is the scent I would choose for someone like Carla Bruni as over its seven years, I have observed that authors, artists and musicians are also often intrigued by the perfume we have made with this tiny pale Indian flower. 

Champaca was also Lord Krishna’s favourite flower and in Bali, large quantities of pale orange champaca buds are put in bowls as offerings to the Balinese gods! Champaca is used as one of the top notes in Christian Dior’s J’Adore  and the red champaca flower forms the heart of Jean Patou’s perfume Sira.   This year, two other perfumers have just discovered Champaca’s qualities and launched their versions; Tom Ford and Space NK.  If anyone wants to try the others and let me know your opinion I would love to hear your thoughts!