Christopher Chong, in-house Creative Director at Thameen London and I have something in common: we’ve both taken an extended break from the world of perfume but now we’re back! I’m certainly very happy to be back and to be smelling his work again. You’ll be familiar with Christopher’s fantastic work at Amouage, a brand that he really turned around and brought to the forefront of niche perfumery. The perfumes he creates are bold, innovative and often times challenging. He is not one to shy away from brashness, working with world-class perfumers to push the boundaries forward. You may have not loved everything he did at Amouage but you can never accuse anything he has worked on of being boring and for that, he deserves a huge amount of respect.

Having taken up residence at Thameen London, Chong presents The Britologne Collection. Consisting of six fragrances (as of now), this capsule collection within Thameen London’s wider oeuvre is an homage to Britain and the traditional Eau de Cologne, fusing both words together to create Britologne. The result is a collection that subverts that classic Eau de Cologne structure, pushing it firmly into the 21st century with fragrances that are dramatically unique and fantastic examples of olfactory storytelling. The Britologne Collection may be inspired by familiar themes, but if I’ve learned one thing from my years of sniffing perfumes created under the direction of Christopher Chong, it’s to expect the unexpected.

Let’s Sniff!

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The Cora by Thameen

I’ll be perfectly honest and say that I’ve found the fragrances from the house of Thameen to be a bit hit or miss. I fell head over heels for the dry dusty rose of Noorolain Taif, but others in the collection left me cold.  I think that the concept of fragrances inspired by famous jewels is really evocative and the presentation has this cool clash where royal blue bottles in a classic shape clash against the modernism of their black, spiked caps. What’s more, the bottles really glow when they hit the light. I just felt that some of the fragrances weren’t as dynamic as perhaps the presentation suggested they might be.

Fast forward to Thameen’s latest launch and a pleasant surprise. This launch takes its inspiration (and its name) from the Cora sun-drop diamond – the largest, yellow, pear-shaped diamond in the world (racking up an impressive 110.3 carats and forming between 1 and 3 billion years ago – no biggie), so it’s no surprise that the fragrance itself is a rather large and showy scent. Described by Thameen as a fragrance “suffused with phosphorescence”, The Cora takes the traditional white floral and injects it with an entire sun’s worth of light.