London’s Jermyn Street has long been a mecca for British gentlemen’s fashion. Sitting just off of the well-trodden tourist hotspot of Piccadilly Circus, it’s an area with a heritage all of its own. Its outfitters have dressed generations of wealthy customers, while a short walk away James J Fox supplied cigars to Winston Churchill.
Czech & Speake joined that world in 1979, opening at number 88 and building a fragrance business around the heritage of the area. It fit right in. Its bottles resemble old medicine flasks and its scents carry names such as Oxford & Cambridge and No.88.
To put it lightly, it wasn’t exactly an obvious haunt for the self-styled Prince of Darkness, Black Sabbath singer Ozzy Osbourne.
However, Osbourne became one of the brand’s most loyal customers after his wife, Sharon Osbourne, discovered No.88 at the Jermyn Street shop in 1985 and took samples home.
“I’ll never forget that as soon as he smelled it, he said to me, ‘I’d like to smell like this for the rest of my life,’” she recalled recently. “And he did.”
Czech & Speake kept the relationship private for decades, naturally. Osbourne was a high-profile customer who, like many others, favoured discretion in his dealings. However, following the rockstar’s passing, an approach from Sharon turned that discreet connection into the biggest launch in the company’s history.
Out of much discussion and planning, No.88 Prince of Darkness Limited Edition came to life and suddenly introduced Czech & Speake to a customer it had rarely reached before.
“We’re selling the fragrance to people who aren’t necessarily fragrance fans,” Czech & Speake brand manager Christopher Dunn, who had a fundamental hand in bringing the collaboration to life, tells Retail Gazette. “They’re music fans or Ozzy fans.”
A tribute with a genuine connection
The partnership began when Sharon asked whether Czech & Speake would consider creating something around her husband’s fragrance. Dunn says the company’s first condition was that the family remained closely involved.
“When I met Sharon at the beginning, I said it was extremely important to me and the company that everything we did had her blessing,” he says. “What we’ve done is a tribute to Ozzy and, in a way, it’s one of her tributes to him.”
The product inside the bottle remained unchanged. Czech & Speake used the same No.88 fragrance Osbourne had worn since the mid-1980s and adapted its packaging with black, purple and pink details.
“People ask whether we changed the fragrance or whether it’s a limited-edition fragrance,” Dunn says. “No, absolutely not. It’s Ozzy’s fragrance, completely untouched. It would be counterintuitive to pay tribute with a different scent. That was his scent. The only difference is the packaging.”
In addition to the signature external packaging, a heartfelt message from Sharon was placed inside each box. The family also selected Cure Parkinson’s as the product’s charity partner, with £50 from every £250 bottle donated to the organisation – a poignant reminder of how the partnership came about in the first place. Dunn says throughout the project, he’s remained very conscious that it began with a personal loss.
“Away from their name and fame, this is a wife’s tribute to her husband,” he says. “I would hate it to be anything more than a fitting, tasteful tribute.”
Bringing the story into stores
The edition initially launched through Czech & Speake’s website before its reach carried it into physical retail.
Selfridges Birmingham became the first store to stock it on July 21. The bottle appeared beside official Osbourne merchandise and in the fragrance hall. It also joined Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery’s Ozzy Osbourne (1948–2025): Working Class Hero exhibition.
The placement allowed the product to reach collectors and luxury fragrance shoppers in the same building. Birmingham also put it in the city most closely associated with Osbourne, his beloved hometown.
Dunn says store employees had a personal stake in the launch when he visited to train them. “They were so pleased to have this product and so invested in it,” he notes. “Because they live in Birmingham, they were personally excited about the whole Ozzy connection.”
The Selfridges opportunity grew out of a launch event near Czech & Speake’s former Jermyn Street home. Sharon attended alongside press and current and former employees.
Among them was the woman who had sold her the original bottle in 1985, who Czech & Speake had consciously invited as a fundamental part of the product’s story. “When I introduced her, I could see a little change of gear in Sharon. She was warm and welcoming to everyone, but that moment was intimate,” Dunn says. “She was really touched.”
An entirely different customer
Before the No.88 Prince of Darkness Limited Edition, Czech & Speake generated roughly 60 per cent of its sales in the UK and 40 per cent in America. Dunn says the balance has since moved sharply, with the US accounting for between 65 and 70 per cent.
“It’s really swung our business around into a new direction,” he says. “The brand has been exposed to so many more people, not just in America but all over the world.”
For an independent company with just eight employees, the change was surreal. Osbourne’s following brought Czech & Speake customers from the US, Canada, Australia and Europe. Some travelled to its Hackney office from Mexico and Poland in the hope of buying a bottle.
The reason for purchasing had changed too.
“What I’ve seen for the first time is people buying a piece of memorabilia rather than buying a fragrance,” Dunn says. “They could be collectors. You’re dealing with people in a different way.”
The collaboration gave people who might never have searched for a traditional British fragrance house a route into Czech & Speake. Some came for Osbourne and discovered No.88 afterwards, delighted to find that the rockstar had impeccable taste in fragrances.
“If we had gone looking for an influencer, it probably wouldn’t have been a heavy metal rock star,” Dunn says. “I think that’s probably why it works so well. It’s so unusual that people are quite surprised, and more than anything, it’s come about because Ozzy was truly a lifelong dedicated customer. It’s extremely authentic and that’s what appeals to us so much.”
Keeping the collaboration ‘special’
The response could have encouraged Czech & Speake to build a wider range around Osbourne. Dunn said that would undermine the reason customers believed in the first product.
“We aren’t going to do an Ozzy Osbourne shower gel or something he never used,” he says. “That would be too commercial and it would ruin it.”
The company plan to keep selling the edition only while Czech & Speake, the family and Cure Parkinson’s feel that it ‘remains special’. It could return for a future event, but Dunn doesn’t want it to become a permanent licensing exercise.
Czech & Speake’s next launches will return the focus to its own range, including six fragrances developed partly for the Middle Eastern market, body washes and further home fragrance products.
None was expected to repeat what happened with No.88.
“It’s the biggest thing we’ve ever done,” Dunn says. “It’s just been a wonderful experience that we could never have guessed was coming.”
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