Clive Christian

Clive Christian is a British luxury perfume house headquartered in Mayfair, London. It was founded in 1999, when the interior designer Clive Christian acquired the dormant Crown Perfumery Company and relaunched it under his own name. The house traces its lineage further back: the Crown Perfumery was established in 1872, and Clive Christian markets that date as the origin of "150+ years of heritage" [4]. The two dates describe different entities — 1999 is the founding of Clive Christian Perfume Limited, while 1872 is the founding of the historic firm it revived [1][4].

Since July 2019 the company has been owned by Nichebox, a perfume holding company, so it is no longer independent [6]. It continues to trade through its own e-commerce sites and luxury retailers, and remains best known for positioning a single fragrance, No. 1 Imperial Majesty, as the world's most expensive perfume.

The brand's modern chapter began when Clive Christian, an interior designer, encountered the Crown Perfumery while walking through London's Burlington Arcade. According to the company, he saw an opportunity to revive the house, and in 1999 he acquired it and established Clive Christian Perfume Limited, launching an Original Collection drawn from the company's archives [3].

The earlier history belongs to the Crown Perfumery Company. It was established in 1872 by William Sparks Thomson, a corsetier whose son, a chemist, had developed lavender-based smelling salts for customers who fainted in tightly laced corsets. That same year Queen Victoria granted the firm permission to use an image of her crown on its bottles — an endorsement the house still references, as a crown-shaped cap tops every Clive Christian bottle [4].

Under the Crown Perfumery name the firm grew quickly. By 1879 it was, according to the brand, exporting half a million bottles of 49 different scents to 47 countries. Crown Perfumery products were carried in the first-class cabins of the Titanic in 1912, and in 1932 Amelia Earhart chose the company's Lavender Salts for her solo Atlantic flight [4].

After the 1999 relaunch, Clive Christian introduced its No. 1 fragrance in 2001, later marketed under the tagline "The World's Most Expensive Perfume" [7]. In 2005 the house released No. 1 Imperial Majesty, a limited edition of ten bottles priced at £115,000 (about $205,000) each for 500 ml, presented in a crystal flacon with an 18-carat gold collar and a five-carat white diamond [7]. In 2012 Clive Christian received an OBE in the New Year Honours, and a special bottle was presented to Queen Elizabeth II for her Diamond Jubilee [6]. The house marked 150 years of the Crown Perfumery heritage in 2022 with a limited Anniversary Collection.

The company has changed hands twice since its 1999 founding. In 2015 a consortium that included the founders of Stagecoach and the venture capitalist Jon Moulton bought a majority stake; Clive Christian retained a minority holding and stayed on as creative director, and former Molton Brown executive Amy Nelson-Bennett was appointed chief executive. In July 2019 the brand was acquired outright by Nichebox, a perfume holding company [6]. It has no sister brands recorded in available sources.

Clive Christian describes itself as creating "the world's finest perfume," which it calls "matchless, and elegantly confident" [1]. Its stated approach is "timeless classics made without compromise," blending what the company frames as royal British heritage with modern flair. The house's tagline is "Where Warmth Meets Grace."

The house sells exclusively fragrance, positioned at the luxury tier. Its bestsellers include No. 1, the 1872 and X scents, and C Woody Leather. According to the company, every bottle contains 20% or more perfume oil and each fragrance blends between 120 and 300 ingredients, among them aged Indian sandalwood, damask rose and saffron.

The defining product remains No. 1 Imperial Majesty, of which only ten were made; the brand says seven were bought by private collectors and three tour the world [5]. Guinness World Records recognised it as the most expensive commercially available perfume [8]. The fragrance is built on creamy sandalwood with notes of musk, clove, vanilla, vetiver, bergamot, Sicilian mandarin, ylang-ylang and neroli, and the house describes it as 500 ml of "certified 100% perfume absolute".

Beyond the Guinness World Records listing for No. 1 Imperial Majesty, Clive Christian No. 1 was described as the most expensive perfume in the world as of 2006, at $2,150 an ounce [7].

The brand is actively trading: it operates European and US e-commerce sites and distributes through luxury retailers including Harrods, Selfridges and Fortnum & Mason, with reach across the Americas, Europe, Russia and the Middle East. It is, however, no longer an independent company — it has been a subsidiary of the holding company Nichebox since July 2019 [6]. The most recent distinct milestone recorded in available sources is the 2022 Anniversary Collection.