A life long love affair with the power of fragrance has caused Victoria Cator to create her sensual and personal collection of candles. She has lived all over the world and worked in Hong Kong and New York in jobs from fashion and retail to government work. In London in the 1990s she studied at Christies and developed her own successful interior decorating business, which she runs from Chelsea. A true home maker on every level, she has also written a cookery book, ‘Flavour of the Month’ published in 2008 and warmly received. Everything she loves is brought together in her work and her love of an evocative world of scents.
‘I have always had a passion for scent,’ she says. ‘My childhood was peripatetic as my father was a soldier, but the continuity of smell that was created where ever we lived gave me the security of being ‘home.”
She goes on to describe her mothers skills as a home maker, ‘She aways recreated my bedroom — the same bed, pictures, patchwork quilt, my prized ornaments and assorted pony rosettes.’
Most enduring of all for Victoria though was the mix of exotic aromas. ‘The scents that greeted me when I walked through the door that told me I was home. The mix included my mother’s sandalwood burning incense along with the smell of tobacco, the waft of her signature scent, ‘Caleche’ by Hermes, freshly ground coffee, sweet peas, (her favourite flowers that she grew where ever we lived) and the Trumper’s of Jermyn Street hair oil my father wore.’