What is it?
The Berkeley Square Cosmetics Co is a small, London-based firm that manufactures luxury toiletries and fragrances, drawing inspiration from the elegance of bygone eras. The company was founded in 2004 by former fashion photographer Richard Cann and his partner.
What's the concept?
The company combines fragrance with art and fashion. For example, the packaging of its award-winning Natural Couture collection features iconic black and white images from the archive of John French (1906-66), one of London's top fashion photographers in his day, in collaboration with the Victoria & Albert Museum.
'We want to be original and distinctive. Everyone is doing beautiful products in England and they all look the same. I don't want to do that,' says Cann, who was in town recently to promote the new collection, sold only at Harvey Nichols.
It was their second line following their debut collection inspired by the fashions of the 1920s.
'We're always looking back because we want to create classic and luxurious fragrances. That's our vision. We wanted to capture the elegance and glamour of that period with the [new] collection. That's when people started mixing different scents together - there were only single-note fragrances before the war. We spent more than two years working on the fragrances,' says Cann.
