perfume

Serge Lutens in Paris

by Aubrey Allison

Serge Lutens is one of the first brands I fell in love with when I went down the niche perfume rabbit hole. Their perfumes made me fall in love with perfume. I love their olfactory style, and some of my absolute favorite perfumes in my collection are Serge Lutens: Borneo 1834, Jeux de Peau, Gris Clair…, Five o’clock au gingembre. I’ve also treasured several decants of Serge Lutens scents that different perfume friends have sent me over the years: Baptême du Feu, Fourreau Noir, Encens at Lavande, Fille en Aiguilles, and others. Serge Lutens perfumes have slowly disappeared from US perfume retailers, and rumors abound about how so many of their perfumes have been reformulated to the point of losing their magic.

So, one of my favorite parts of visiting Paris was visiting Serge Lutens shop locations and chatting with the shopkeepers. We talked about our favorite perfumes, and both the realities and the exaggerations of reformulations. (On the whole, they felt that reformulations were minor and did not change the vast majority of Lutens perfumes—but there are a handful that are still on the market but noticeably different. One of my perfume collecting regrets is that I once got a “vintage” bottle of Fleurs d’Oranger with the Palais Royal logo and then decided I was not likely to wear it and re-sold it. One of the shopkeepers in Paris confirmed that is one of the Lutens perfumes that has been significantly reformulated and is not really the same anymore. However, he disagreed that Borneo 1834 smells noticeably different now from when it first launched—and Borneo 1834 is his favorite scent, his everyday signature perfume. He also told me Fille en Aiguilles is being discontinued, and a shopkeeper at a different location told me Baptême du Feu is being discontinued.)

It was such a pleasure to smell old favorite scents and sniff new ones (I really like one of their new releases, Écrin de Fumée, and got a sample of that to keep wearing). And, I took home bell jars of two of my favorite lavender perfumes that I previously only had gifted decants of: Encens et Lavande and Fourreau Noir.

L’Osmotheque

by Aubrey Allison

Visiting Osmotheque, the world’s only perfume archive, was a dream come true. Their focus is not perfume bottles (though they have a gorgeous showroom with a ton of antique and vintage bottles), but the juice itself: the actual scents. They formed in 1990 when a group of perfumers decided it was not enough for perfumes to live on only through memory, written descriptions, and nostalgia; we need to be able to smell them firsthand.

This picture showing “la cave” or “the cellar” — 12°C fridges filled with dark glass bottles containing perfume topped with argon, an inert gas, to keep the perfumes as stable as possible within their bottles — that is the heart of Osmotheque. Their archive houses 5,000 perfumes, 850 of which are no longer available except here.

What I did not realize until I visited is that Osmotheque does not simply take the vintage/antique perfume out of the bottle and preserve it. They have perfume formulas entrusted to them, and they re-blend the formulas with fresh materials: that is what gets preserved in the cellar. (When a raw material is no longer available, that perfume does not get reconstituted.) It is simply reality that perfumes under any conditions will degrade and change over time, to the point that after enough years have passed, the way the juice smells is no longer the same scent that the perfumer created and shared with the world. I asked if they ever get vintage perfume so well-preserved that they don’t need to reconstitute it; the answer is no.

After visiting the cellar, we were treated to a fantastic (and scented) lesson on the history of perfumery. We smelled perfumes from centuries ago when distilled alcohol was first used, all the way through the 20th century. It was striking how that musty “vintagey” smell that overpowers so much of vintage perfume for me was basically absent. There were perfumes where I could smell a sensibility that I associate with vintage style (Shocking by Schiaparelli, 1937, was the primary example of this for me), but on the whole, I felt like I was encountering the perfumes clearly, the way they were originally encountered, and not through the scrim and cobwebs of age and time.

Seattle Perfumers Discovery Set

by Aubrey Allison

I finally got my hands on the Seattle Perfumers set — the coolest collection of independent perfumers here in Seattle. I’m struck by how unique and individual each scent is, how clear each voice is.

Filigree & Shadow Notget is oceanic and briny, but with this unusual sea-animalic character to it—where aquatic scents are often idealized mists, this perfume has a kind of viscous authenticity to its depiction of the sea.

Anjali Perfumes Under the Mango Tree is an addictively delicious tart green rose with fruity mango skin and a green woody base.

Immortal Perfumes Dead Writers is an oil-based perfume that smelled wonderful on my skin. Its opening beautifully evoked the sentimental vision of a musty library filled with leather-bound volumes, a cup of black tea in your hand. It dried down into a soft clove scent.

Namesake Fragrance Alpine Wildflower is a gust of fresh mountain air. A perfect example of a camphorous scent: a kind of coolness that balances between smoke and mint. Cedar, soil, lily of the valley, lavender, and frankincense all add detail to the picture this perfume paints.

Samar Pit Crew The Tea House is another oil-based perfume and its opening is a gorgeous osmanthus-peach and oolong tea scent that I love.

Age de Querelle Severine is a soft, green rose balanced with woods and resins and a subtle hint of funky oud.

Atelier Madrona Venetian Mask is an aromatic leather that opens with an accord of clementine, lavender, and spices. It has that slight powderiness I associate with traditionally masculine scents, but with its own twist.

L’Aventura Perfumes Lions in the Library showcases the addictive, woody-musky (and to my nose, vaguely salty) scent material called cashmeran. The perfume’s opening is big and juicy with bitter orange.

The Phoenix and the Fool The Omega Fool is an oil-based perfume, a gentle blend of resins, cedar wood, cinnamon, and clove.

Perfume Pairings for Pantone’s 2024 Color of the Year: Peach Fuzz

by Aubrey Allison

These perfumes feature prominent peach notes and fit Pantone’s characterization of the color, which includes words such as gentle, tenderness, sanctuary, warm and cozy, wellbeing, sweet and airy, quietly sophisticated, clean, and nurturing.

The soothing peach priestess, Frassai Tian Di is a peach pit carved from ivory wood, tendrils of incense smoke rising. self-assured and calming.


L’Artisan Parfumeur À Fleur de Pêche is the gentle scent of peach skin with airy jasmine and a soft, subtly earthy wood base.


Keiko Mecheri Peau de Pêche clean and soft, this perfume is like rubbing your nose on the fuzzy skin of an underripe peach. orris gives it an earthy-clean powdery texture.


In Les Bains Guerbois 2013 Residence d’Artistes, peach, mandarin, jasmine, and violet combine for a heart that is both a juicy fruity-floral but also restrained and sophisticated. cardamom and cumin bring a smooth spiced aspect, while a subtle patchouli-leather accord adds depth and richness. the scent is rounded out with clean musks, soft sandalwood, and a papyrus note that blends the texture into something more smooth and dry than the sum of its notes. lovely.


Shay & Blue White Peaches is the most straightforwardly sweet of this set. clean, cool, peachy sweetness, like ice granita. birch wood tempers the sweetness with gentle structure.

Abundance: After the Flood

by Aubrey Allison

#nosevember prompt: Abundance
Perfume: Apoteker Tepe, After the Flood

I came late to the party with this scent, after Apoteker Tepe closed in 2018 and ATF was thus discontinued. However, the perfume somewhat notoriously still circulated among groups of perfume enthusiasts online, who, even though there was only a finite amount left in the world and many of them only had small decants themselves, generously decanted vials of the stuff and shared it with others. Because it was too good not to share. That’s how I first encountered the perfume—I don’t remember who sent it to me anymore, but someone wonderful decanted a few milliliters from their own decant and mailed it to me in a small glass vial.

The scent is magical: mushrooms and dank moss on the forest floor, as morning light filters through the trees. Carter Weeks Maddox of Chronotope Perfume wrote about this perfume and its abundance-from-scarcity in a wonderful article published in Mushroom People, titled “Precious Milliliters: In search of a lost scent.” He writes: “When we share this perfume, whose life was so tragically short-lived, we’re documenting its wondrous time lapse—these violets, this glorious mushroom—and constructing the narrative we’ll use to recall it once it evaporates from the real world to live only in our collective memory.”

Last year, Pineward Perfume revived AT’s perfumes, partnering with AT founder Holladay Saltz to acquire her formulas and bring her perfumes back to life—that’s how I finally got a full bottle. But more special to me is the little glass vial, mailed to me from a fellow perfume enthusiast, its contents dwindling down with every wear and every share.

Our Wedding Day

by Aubrey Allison

Last February, I got married.

On our wedding day, I wore Blondine by Frassaï, and my husband wore Bois d’Ascèse by Naomi Goodsir.

At our reception, we sent our guests home with perfume sample packs accompanied by a little zine of scent descriptions. The four perfumes were our wedding day scents, along with two of our other favorites:

Blondine, Frassaï
A’s wedding day perfume. Seemingly effortless, yet reveals itself to be deceptively complex. To describe it in three words: buttery lily musk. Abstracted gourmand notes of caramel and cocoa envelope a white floral heart. Castoreum, traditionally from beavers, suffuses the blend with an enigmatic, animal edge.

Bois d’Ascèse, Naomi Goodsir
K’s wedding day perfume. A meditative swirl of smoke among autumn trees, moss encroaching upon crumbled stone. With cade wood and tobacco, the smokiness of this scent brings to mind both incense and Islay Scotch whiskey.

Remember Me, Jovoy
A favorite of A’s. Cool and soft, a chai cloud of cardamom and ginger form a delicate pillow for frangipani flowers. Milky vanilla lends a subdued sweetness, while lemon and bergamot add lift.

The Duke of Burgundy, Folie À Plusieurs (possibly reformulated but available at Fumerie)
A favorite of K’s. Smooth osmanthus, peach, freesia, heliotrope, and artemisia create a texture like soft skin. This delicate facet meets an unusual pairing of leather shoes polish, creating an intriguing effect, at once clean and a little bit unctuous.

Find more wedding pictures at aubreyandkyrill.com. Photography by Kristen Marie Parker. Floral by Leah Erickson. More of our incredible wedding vendors are listed here.

Perfume Note: Ginger

by Aubrey Allison

The smell of ginger is bold and complex. It has a bright, lemony facet; a warm, zesty spice facet; and a deep woody/earthy facet.

Filigree and Shadow Incurable is a superlative ginger perfume, warm, zesty, deep yet powdery, accented with saffron, coriander, clove, green pepper, earthy patchouli, and a woody, oakmossy base.

Perris Monte Carlo Cedro di Diamante is a bright, lemon-lime ginger scent.

Monsillage Pays Dogon is fresh-cut flower stems, fruity-tart hibiscus, with ginger and pepper for spice and a light, vetiver and guaiacwood base.

Etat Libre d’Orange Fils de Dieu du Riz et des Agrumes is green shiso leaf and citrusy ginger, with a soft sweetness that emerges with its rice-and-coconut-milk dry down.

Pierre Guillaume Intrigant Patchouli is a honeyed patchouli with sweet ginger and smooth sandalwood.

Stora Skuggan Silphium is black pepper-forward, with dry ginger and clove, smoky incense, geranium, leather, and wood.

Masque Milano Hemingway sets ginger and rhubarb atop a leathery vetiver.

And of course, ginger lends itself beautifully to warm, spicy gourmands. L’Artisan Parfumeur Tea for Two is candied ginger and cinnamon-sweet honey. Serge Lutens Five O’Clock Au Gingembre is soft and warm, ginger-spiced tea with honey and a hint of pepper. Serge Lutens Baptême du Feu is sharp and powdered, gingerbread and tanned leather, a dense fruitcake carved out of wood. Etat Libre d’Orange Noel au Balcon smells like gingerbread at a holiday party with your closest friends.

Olfactive Studio Woody Mood is a delicious ginger and cocoa wood, with saffron, patchouli, and sage. On my skin, a sweet campfire smoke note emerges and crackles underneath the ginger.

Empty: Lavande 44

by Aubrey Allison

My first empty perfume bottle: Rania J Lavande 44.

I’ve been reaching for this scent almost exclusively for the past few months, and each time I think about the different reasons I put on a perfume—some make me feel cozy, or confident, or beautiful, or powerful, or any number of things. Sometimes, wearing perfume is less about making me feel a certain way and more about creating an environment or a space to inhabit that day, or experiencing a narrative unfold around me.

Lavande 44 has become so familiar to me, in some ways it does all of these things: it soothes and fortifies me, makes the world around me feel more structured while simultaneously softening the hard edges. Strong and soft together.