Behind the Scenes with Cochine Founder, Kate Crofton-Atkins

What are 3 words you'd use to describe the brand?

Evocative, chic, timeless

How do you come up with the ideas for your fragrances?

My travels around south east Asia are what inspire each scentI love finding new and different flowers and oils and using them in fragrance to transport people to a particular place, feeling or time of day. The jasmine we use in our White Jasmine & Gardenia scent for example is called Champa Jasmine and is from southern Vietnam and I used to smell it every morning when cycled to the bakery at the end of our street in Saigon.

Each of the key notes in our fragrances is inspired by life in the tropics, and designed to transport you to faraway places. It usually takes up to two years for us to develop a new fragrance from initial inspiration to the final scent. There are many stages involved to ensure that each note compliments each other and that each scent has a real sense of uniqueness.

What are your top tips on using fragrances at home?

I actually love to mix different scented products in the same room, so might have a rich, woody diffuser in our living room like our Agarwood & Amber, which is a beautiful scent for these colder months, and then light a lovely white floral candle like White Jasmine & Gardenia to give a burst of floral notes. I tend to light a candle for an instant burst of fragrance whereas our diffusers are perfect for long-lasting scents. I also switch round fragrances according to the time of year so I’ll have more warming woody fragrances at this time of year and then switch to lighter, floral scents as it gets warmer

What are your best-sellers?

White Jasmine & Gardenia is a consistent best seller for us as it is our signature scent. Water Hyacinth & Lime Blossom is another popular scent as it is truly unique to Cochine and is very reminiscent of the scents of the tropics.

We have a limited edition Holiday candle, Orange Amère & Star Anise, which we bring out each year between October and December and this is always a best seller for us as it’s so distinctively ‘Holiday’ and yet not like any other Holiday candle

What was the inspiration behind the design of your iconic packaging?

Why did you start Cochine?

When created our first Cochine fragrances, my aim was to bring the inescapable romance of the tropics and the unique scents and oils I had discovered in Asia to customers around the world. We use flowers from places undiscovered by most fragrance houses to create scents that are really distinctive decided how wanted the packaging to look very early onwanted to find something to recreate the beautiful shagreen accessories and furniture that I’d discovered and fallen in love with in Vietnam- and I found this faux shagreen paper which captured this perfectly. also knew I wanted to incorporate a beautiful celadon green to reflect the pale green shutters of our house in Saigon. I loved the idea of using a tassel with the special knot design as I thought this was very uniquely Asian and very different to anything I’d seen before. I love that people re-use our Cochine boxes for years to come- as storage boxes, pencil pots, make up pots- and even re-use our candle glasses and diffuser bottles as make up brush pots and bud vases