Atkinsons London 1799
Regency London perfumer, relaunched from Milan.
James Atkinson opened his Gerrard Street shop in 1799, having walked to London from Cumberland with a bear cub and a satchel of toiletry recipes. The English Eau de Cologne he launched in 1800 became a fixture in Regency dressing rooms; by 1826 he held a royal warrant as personal perfumer to the British court, and the house also supplied the Russian imperial family. The bear remained the brand's emblem and still anchors current packaging. The house went dormant through much of the late twentieth century before Italian group Perfume Holding acquired and relaunched it in 2013. The current catalogue is produced in Italy under British creative direction, with a gender-free positioning and a heritage-leaning aesthetic: bottles in heavy glass with bear seals, references to colonial-era India and Victorian London in names like The Other Side of Oud, 24 Old Bond Street, and Pirates' Grand Reserve. It is a heritage-license play executed with more taste than most.
DNA over time
Each column is an era. Each colored band shows that family’s share of accord weight across every perfume the house released in that window. Bigger band = the house leaned harder on that family.
