One late summer evening at Waterford Wine Estate near Stellenbosch in the Western Cape, the Vintage with Love team shared spritzes of a fresh, tropical fragrance called For My Girls.
The occasion marked not just a charity lunch for our education initiative, Vintage with Love, but also the launch of the fragrance Leigh Ord created with Cape Town master perfumer Tammy Frazer. Leigh dedicated it to the women in her life — and ensured its proceeds would support others too.
From a Charity Bid to a Global Flower Quest
Fifteen years earlier, Leigh had bid on an auction item to design a fragrance with Tammy. As they embarked on the creative process, both women realised they shared a desire to create something more than a single bottle of scent.
Tammy is passionate about the powers of essential oils, and for Leigh, the passion extends to making a difference wherever she can. Soon Tammy and her student were pursuing that holy grail of creating rose oil – one of the most precious ingredients in any fragrance.
They travelled to Bulgaria to study Rosa x Damascena and later planted 4 000 bushes on the Ord family farm. Rose oil, prized for its depth and complexity, is notoriously difficult to extract.
The Rose That Gives Back
After years of cultivating and distilling, the bushes have yet to yield perfume-grade oil — but they have produced a richly fragrant rose water, a beautiful sister to For My Girls.
While their roses are still a work in progress, Leigh continued the process of creating a fragrance with Tammy that would be an expression of her own style, as well as an opportunity to support the Vintage with Love initiatives.
A Fragrance with a Feminine Heart
To Tammy, Leigh was the creative director of the fragrance that became an ode to all the women and girls in her life.
“She would not compromise on anything as this was to be her gift to all the women she knows. I love that about Leigh: She is a woman in her true self, who stands up for all the women in her family; for all the women she knows.”
Scent with a Purpose
Leigh was adamant that For My Girls would form part of the Vintage with Love story, where once-loved fashion is collected and sold to raise funds for literacy charities.
The resulting scent is as enchanting as the tale of how it came about: It features light dancing notes of blackcurrant buds with addictive coconut, leaving one wanting to smell your skin again and again. Then there is the pairing of the right flowers with a few drops of rose oil needed for it to become an accord and composition worthy of French perfumes.
Where to Find It
For My Girls Eau de Parfum and Rose Water are available exclusively at:
All the proceeds from sales will go to the education initiatives supported by Vintage with Love.
