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More on KentOnline
A couple are enjoying the sweet smell of success after starting their own perfume company during lockdown.
Chris Rowe and Alanna Naps have been inspired by the county's landscapes, history and famous characters to produce their unusual range of fragrances for men and women.
Their first aftershave – Hamilton – was influenced by the "breeze over the boatyards and meadows of Upnor, a village just outside Rochester".
They used to live in the area, renowned for its Tudor castle, and enjoyed walks along the riverside beach.
Chartwell evokes the memory of the dark leather-clad drawing rooms of Sir Winston Churchill's Westerham home.
Papyrus is "reminiscent of the paper mills and cafe society that saw Maidstone town rise to prominence".
Great Expectations was influenced by the great literary romances of 19th century Rochester where Charles Dickens based many of his famous novels.
Cavalier captures the exotic trading routes and adventurous spirit of the Historic Dockyard Chatham.
The warship HMS Cavalier is based at the former naval base and is a popular tourist attraction.
And Unconquered is described as a "daring and original" fragrance that gets its name from Kent's Latin motto, Invicta.
The couple now live in Faversham where they have converted one of their rooms to a mini-laboratory to concoct the scents that mean something personally to them.
They share a love of travel and one of their popular products is Corsica – a "Mediterranean fragrance linked to Napoleon's rise to power and his Corsican heritage".
Former Rochester Math School pupil Chris, who grew up in Higham, and Canadian-born Alanna, 28, both worked in digital marketing and were furloughed within a few months of each other.
The 31-year-old said: "We had always wanted to work on a project together.
"So after the boredom of furlough started to set in, we started brainstorming ideas and realised we both had large fragrance collections.
"But they were all from faceless multi-national brands. We had no emotional connection to the brands or original scents – we just bought them because we liked the way they smelled.
"That's where the idea came from. We hoped to bring something personal to the arena to remind people of their county's history or to be inspired by their fragrance's namesake when they wore it.
"Whether it's a fragrance inspired by Churchill or Napoleon, we wanted to allow people to channel the better parts of those historic figures and find a real connection with what they were wearing."
"We were blown away my how enthusiastic everyone was about our fragrances and the amount of repeat business we received, especially during lockdown. Given how powerful the sense smell is at capturing the imagination and in memory recall, we weren’t surprised to hear from customers who were reaching for fragrances to transport themselves away and change their mood instead of travel."
They wanted a Kentish name for the business and settled on Edenbridge Fragrances after a stroll around the village and a visit to Hever Castle a few years ago.
Chris said neither of them had any experience of concocting scents.
He added: "We're both self-taught and a lot of it is trial and error.
"Some would say we are possibly a bit romantic. When we posted about Cavalier, you wouldn't believe the number of comments we got online.
"They said it smelled more like dog's poo and wee and Chatham was just a load of alleyways."
"We have set out to create a perfume which mean something personally to somebody.
"Some scents are faceless and celebrity marketed by faces like Britney Spears and Paris Hilton."
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