Monday, 16 April 2018

STEPHAN'S SIX - ROB BLANDFORD


Rob Blandford is a successful blogger, vlogger and fragrance writer who originally hails from Hereford. A relocation to Australia may have changed the temperature but did nothing to cool his love of scent. A regular contributor to online forums, as well as his own website, I thought it was about time to find out some of his own scented secrets during “Stephan’s Six”.

What is the first smell that you can remember?
When I was about two years old my Father managed a hop farm in Herefordshire, which is in the West of England. Hops are grown to flavour beer and they have a powerful, bitter/green scent. The enormous hop vines which towered high above my head on twelve foot poles, the giant kilns like spaceships, and the roar of the turbines creating an overwhelming stench of hops drying in superheated air still inspires me! The scent takes me right back to being a young child who was both terrified and amazed by what he saw around him.

What was the first perfume you remember your mum or dad wearing?
My Mother had a bottle of Lumière by Rochas and I was fascinated by it. The bottle had a pearlescent effect on the glass and the lid was like a giant crystal. Looking back it was very gaudy, but at the time we thought it was very sophisticated! It was somehow fresh, watery and transparent, but with fruity floral notes underneath, kind of like a fruit salad with ice cubes on top! When I think of that time I remember my Mother wearing a salmon-coloured velour tracksuit, with a short sporty eighties haircut, and my thinking she was so cool!

What was the perfume of your twenties?
The fragrance that made the biggest impact on me in my twenties was Sander for Men by Jil Sander. I’ve seen comments recently saying what a classic scent it is, but I think people have short memories. The marriage of spices and woods with green notes felt so new and contemporary, and I had just started my first job out of university. I was sent on a business trip to Cologne, it was the first time I had stayed in a nice hotel and seen a breakfast buffet, and I bought Sander for Men at duty free. I wore that fragrance a lot for work until one of my bosses also bought it and then I suddenly fell out of love with it through association.

What was your biggest perfume mistake?
The day in question is still legendary at my current place of work. I'd started collecting cheap Arabic roll-on perfumes and completely underestimated how potent a new rose one was. I slathered it all over my chest, my neck and on my hair and, to make matters worse, I then put on a few squirts of Amouage Lyric Man! By the time I got to work everything had marinated and warmed up in the car and my Canadian boss literally turned red and started coughing. She looked at me and gasped, “Robert. The rose. It's too much. The rose, Robert... THE ROSE!” I made a swift retreat to the bathrooms, took off my work shirt and literally had to sponge myself down with paper hand towels. Fortunately the cleansing worked but I was so embarrassed. Not the image of suave businessman that I wanted to project at all!

You can only choose one perfume?
That’s easy, Héritage EDT by Guerlain. It's such an astoundingly beautiful men’s fragrance. It was released in 1992 but is very much an eighties scent in terms of its complexity and note structure. It seems to work perfectly for me and every stage is beautiful. It opens like a dry eau de cologne and then gets progressively more substantial. With a spicy/floral heart and then ambery woody notes, it's the one scent that guarantees me to have a good day. I don't wear fragrance to get compliments, but people always seem to notice this and comment on how good it smells.

What perfume should I try?
Ultima by Charles Revson, which was part of the Revlon cosmetics company. It’s similar to Youth Dew by Estee Lauder, which was released two years later in 1963, but in my opinion Ultima is superior. Where they differ is in how the base has been given character. Youth Dew has moss and vetiver in the dry-down, which makes it dry and unyielding, whereas Ultima has civet and opoponax which gives it an incredibly musky, animalic richness. It smells very glamorous and rather naughty! I've worn this fragrance out in public quite a lot and can highly recommend it. It's just a big ole' dirty ride!

For more information about Rob Blandford and to read his thoughts on the new releases you can visit his website by clicking on RobLovesPerfume

2 comments:

  1. Excellent story on Rob. I learnt something new about you today. Love you xxx Kim

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    1. Hello Kim, he's a great guy and a fantastic writer. Best, Stephan

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