How did Arizona Bloom ever end up growing in London? Michelle Feeney can tell you.
After working for the Estée Lauder Companies, and being at the helm of revolutionary tanning name St Tropez – she decided to build her own flower-powered fragrance inspired by “the vibrant streets of London”. Her “Floral Street” range was created by French nose Jérôme Épinette featuring “bunches, not bouquets. Ingredients, not notes.”
Unisex and vegan “Arizona Bloom” bottles “a sense of freedom and happiness,” Michelle believes. It is for the sunny, euphoric nomadic, and free-spirited. Taking its inspiration from the flora and fauna of desert landscapes, the British perfume uses Balinese coconut blends with the Madagascan black pepper spices and has the second skin feeling of salted musks, jasmine petals, fig leaves ad cashmere woods to feature too.
‘My mission is to bring fine fragrance to the modern female – so that she might build an entire fragrance wardrobe, which can express the many facets of who she is,” says Michelle. “ Since the age of three, when I first smelled the gardenias in my great-grandmother’s cottage in Ireland, I’ve been captivated by scent and how it links to your personality. When my career took me to New York, I experienced how fragrances are developed, working on brands such as Tommy Hilfiger and MAC.”
Floral Street contains a number of fashion stores, including Paul Smith. The Upper School of the Royal Ballet School is located at 46 Floral Street, across the street from the back of the Royal Opera House. the original Covent Garden started selling fruit and vegetables in 1845 and flowers in 1670.
At the heart of each fragrance is a specific flower sourced by the fragrance house Robertet. London Poppy is ‘a love letter’ to the capital city with neroli, jasmine sambac, and apricot blossom at its heart, before the base of hinoki woods, black amber, and cedarwood ventures forth. Chypre Sublime blends incense with Damask rose absolute, midnight violet, pink pepper, and geranium, on a base of benzoin, labdanum, and olibanum.
Each bottle showcases the artwork of fashion photographer Matthew Donaldson.
At Estee Lauder, Michelle worked on Prescriptives and Crème de la Mern spearheading the ground-breaking MAC AIDS Fund and Viva Glam initiatives. She then became CEO of PZ Cussons Beauty Division. She is married to Mountain Warehouse founder Mark Neale.
Floral Street, name after a real street in the Covent Garden area, is a modern British fragrance brand with sustainability and eco-responsibility as core values.
“I find urban, British women so inspiring. They are strong, confident, and inquisitive, so I decided that Floral Street would be a collection of incredible fragrances built with them in mind and created by one of the best noses in the world. I think of Floral Street as an ‘up-start brand. I’m against the use of using sexuality to sell scents – it’s degrading and old-fashioned. We want to change the conversation around that.”
“I have lived through incredible decades of rock and roll, New Romantic, punk involving fashion, style, and rebellion. I am still that person and I never want to stop experimenting and having fun with dressing up or down. I feel passionate about the way a fragrance or lipstick can make someone feel good. Now that I have my own brand, I want to extend that passion to perfume and the happiness that receiving and giving scent can bring.
Floral Street wants to help its consumers become connoisseurs of fragrance in a fun, accessible, and conscious way. Having a flagship store in Covent Garden played a huge part in shaping the brand. Trained “florists” help customers choose between Electric Rhubarb and Neon Rose. The shop also offers a scent school.
“It is an amazing mash-up of cultures all coexisting in a vibrant city. Our approach to scent is also quintessentially British. The fragrance has always been very French, very serious. In Britain, we don’t do that. We pick wildflowers from our overgrown garden, wrap them in brown paper and tie it with string.”
The perfumes’ cardboard outer packaging is sustainably sourced and eco-hero made from breaking wood pulp. Floral Street was the first to use compostable cartons fully certified by the FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) who promotes responsible management of the world’s forests. Additionally, the energy used to make the carton is significantly less than that of other packaging materials, going from wet pulp to finished box in less than a minute. “We use vegetable and soy-based inks, and our printing plates are laser-etched—no chemicals are used, and they are later recycled.
“Our bath and body collections are housed in sleek tubes made from sugar cane bioplastic which is recyclable and sustainably sourced. Our Electric Rhubarb scent includes Australian sandalwood because the most commonly used Indian sandalwood has been over-harvested.
Take a trip down Floral Street and find yourself in the Arizonan desert.
