LONDON — With his silken shirt, violet diamanté loafers and fingers and wrists laden with heavy gold jewelry, the master perfumer Roja Dove had the air of a magician as he sat recently in the mirrored salon above his Burlington Arcade boutique.
To many of his clients, he is one. Alumina Mosaic Tiles
“I cater to customers that lead very extraordinary lives — little in their life is ordinary on any level,” said Mr. Dove, 59, a man widely regarded in the perfume industry as one of the most significant “noses” of this century and who says he can identify 800 scents from single sniffs.
“They want the finest things in the world, love the power of scent and don’t want to smell like anyone else,” he said. “I am able to give them that.”
First inspired as a child by his mother’s fragrance when she kissed him goodnight, Roja (pronounced phonetically like his given name, Roger), began training as a nose at the French luxury house Guerlain after six months studying medicine at the University of Cambridge and a brief period as a fashion model in London. He spent 20 years at Guerlain, working his way up to become the first company ambassador outside the Guerlain family as well as one of the industry’s leading master perfumers before leaving in 2001.
“It was bought by a very large corporation, and I am not a very large corporation type of person,” he said with a wry grin, referring to the company’s 1994 purchase by LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton. “So I decided to leave on Halloween, which I thought was the perfect date to leave as it appealed to my sense of humor.”
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