Space.NK is a British beauty retailer — the “NK” comes from its founder, Nicky Kinnaird — that carries expensive, often niche cult products that range from skin care and body care to cosmetics. It opened its doors in 1993 in London’s Covent Garden, and in June 2007, it opened a flagship store in New York at 99, Greene Street in SoHo.

Kinnaird has also introduced a new line of Space.NK-branded scents. The line’s aesthetics are very English, an approach that carries, as it does for the equally English Jo Malone collection, both a downside and an upside.

The downside is that English perfumery has always reflected English reticence. A century ago, the French were dumping civet, a pungent feline gland cream, into their ornate works. The Italians were creating classic barbershop citrus waters circa 1955. The Americans were either producing 1970s copies of big neo-French florals or 1990s hygienic scents that made you smell like someone had just picked you up from the local Korean wash-and-fold after a hot cycle in strong detergent. As for the English, they were creating standard thin, lovely florals for English women — lavender and violet are English obsessions — and standard clear-cut, old-fashioned citrus waters for men that all but murmured “No please, after you: I insist”.

Space.NK’s bestseller, Laughter, is the scent that Kinnaird considers to be the brand’s “iconic fragrance”. It is one of the most by-the-book English citrus waters I’ve ever smelled. It’s not bad — it was created, after all, by the über-talented English perfumer Christopher Sheldrake before Chanel hired him — but it is intentionally made with the relentless traditionalism of black and white at Ascot.

The rest of the collection is English innovative. Depending on your taste, this is where the upside comes in — if you like light scents that never raise their voices but instead speak in calm, cool BBC tones, you will love Space.NK’s fragrances. Kinnaird has had the good sense to have had them made by competent perfumers: Champaca is made by Azzi Glasser; Jasamber, by Trevor Nicholl; and Tuberoli and Santalrosa are, like Laughter, made by Sheldrake.

Champaca consists of lily-of-the-valley, cedar and vetiver lightly brushed by the dawn, a flower like a ghost. Kinnaird says that Jasamber was inspired by Northern Scandinavia, and accordingly, one registers cedar wood sauna plus cold winter. Santalrosa is contemporary London, cool and hip under a light rain, out of the shower and heading for the Tube.

Tuberoli is the most interesting of the group. If you enjoy the tuberose with beautifully manicured claws of Germaine Cellier’s Fracas, you will have to strain a bit to hear Tuberoli. If you are a slave to the filthy, utterly gorgeous tuberose hand grenade Carnal Flower by Dominique Ropion, you will register nothing at all. If, however, you want a tuberose that has been given a Percocet and lulled into polite docility, greeting you with the brush of a kiss, Tuberoli is on your list. So Norman Foster. So Strand. So Hyde Park. So London.