To mark True Grace’s twentieth anniversary, we caught up with Co-founder Philippa Biles to learn about the origins of the brand, what brought the family to South Wiltshire and some of her favourite fragrance memories.

What have been some of the most memorable TG highlights from the past 20 years?

One of the key moments was building our sustainable factory. It felt so grown up and serious. What’s more, it was huge and we wondered if we would ever grow enough to fill it! That was when our eldest daughter Hatty, now 23, was only a year old. She has actually been working with True Grace for the past six months since finishing her degree so things have come full circle.

That factory is at the heart of our mission to be a sustainable brand. It is ecologically sound and environmentally friendly, powered by a combination of solar power, and renewable biomass. We have continued to strive for sustainability throughout the brand but it all starts from the factory and feeds through to every decision we make. We are very proud of our eco credentials.

There are a number of other highlights I could mention that combine our personal and professional lives (an inevitability when you are married co-founders). For example, when we first moved to Wiltshire we were in the middle of a large order and we hadn’t had enough time to recruit staff in the area. We called upon our family and friends to help us pack the candles through the night, rewarded, of course, by a lovely meal once we had placed the final box on the pallet.

We were married in the local church to our home in Donhead St Mary. We didn’t have time for a honeymoon as we had to ship a huge order to Calvin Klein in the USA with an extremely tight deadline and a very labour-intensive product. In the end, we managed to merge our honeymoon week with making candles for CK and in the evenings staying at a beautiful local cottage that we swapped for bundles of our candles!

Do you have a favourite TG scent? What is the memory behind it?

I love all of our scents but I am particularly fond of the first fragrances we developed as they are attached to special memories, some of which are shared below.

Vine Tomato:

This scent transports me back to my childhood and our greenhouse filled with tomato plants. My dad and I would tend to them together and pluck the ripe tomatoes from the vines. 

Moroccan Rose:

As a child I loved making perfume from flowers in the garden. I was always getting into trouble for pulling the heads off the roses!

Rosemary and Eucalyptus:

The smell of rosemary and eucalyptus was inspired by our yearly family holiday to Mallorca. We stayed in a villa that was surrounded by an abundance of rosemary bushes and the scent was so uplifting. Now I love to pick rosemary from the garden and use it in my cooking. 

Fig:

This scent was based on a fig tree that stood in a good friend’s garden. We would pick the figs from a tree and spill them into a large bowl to share.

Is there one scent that defines True Grace for you?

Launching a new scent, it’s so interesting to see what sells and where. Countries and cultures have very different buying styles. The one scent that really stood out as a huge hit globally is Portobello Oud.

I know I am biassed but I think it’s a beautiful scent with a lovely story. It is inspired by the scents and smells of Portobello Market where Roger originally set up a stall and where it truly all began!