From Jouissance to Maison Margiela, and everything in between.
I could talk for ages about my love for holiday traditions. However you choose to celebrate the season, there is undoubtedly a beauty to marking the cyclical passage of time with repeated ritual and comforting familiarity. Be it putting up a tree, stringing lights, or going to midnight mass, we all have our own ways of making this cold dark wintertime feel a little more warm. This is why, just like I did last year and hope to do again the next, I have come to dutifully deliver you gift-wrapped and tinsel-clad a list of my favorite perfume releases of the year — and to toss a bonus stocking of coal to the biggest disappointments. Indeed, this year marked the tentative mainstream debut of niche fragrance girl culture, with big box retailers like Sephora and designer perfume houses starting to take notice of their younger clientele’s tastes becoming weirder and weirder. I hope I am, in part, responsible for this change. As we will see, its effects on both the popular and niche fragrance markets have very much been a mixed bag.
The Year’s Biggest Triumphs
Jouissance Parfums, Les Cahiers Secrets
I want to start with a release I feel productively channels the growing synthesis between niche esotericism and popular accessibility. I’ve written at large about Cherry Cheng’s Joussiance Parfums for HALOSCOPE before, but since spending time with my bottle of what I believe to be the standout from her collection, Les Cahiers Secrets, I’ve developed a greater appreciation for how Cheng’s work sells conventions often regarded as undesirable by younger women right back at them with a smile. It’s delicate territory, and one I tread quite often – when girls call powdery fragrances “grandma perfume,” they do a disservice not only to their grandmothers but to their senses of smell. That said, I love not only how unabashedly powdery Cahiers is but also how sweaty it is. The fragrance is primarily cumin and lily, two notes often associated with underarms and funeral homes, yet in the right hands, can be some of the most gorgeous. Its drydown yields a sort of expired body powder tang that reminds me of Diptyque’s Fleur de Peau, and is outright addictive to someone like me. I’ve found myself reaching for this on days when I just don’t know what to wear and want something to cover me like a second skin or gauze of thinly veiled fabrics.
Pearfat Parfum, Up North
A limited summer release from hometown hero Alie Kiral’s Pearfat Parfums, Up North is an unexpected and wholly unique take on the summer freshie. Where most houses opt to convey that sweet summer feeling with bright fruit, creamy white florals, or tropical coconut, Up North does what Kiral does best, and captures the idiosyncratic Midwestern reality of summer along Lake Michigan. There is a sort of nostalgia, here, but it is nothing like the fantastic dolce vita vacations of Tom Ford’s Soleil Blanc or Diptyque’s Ilio. This is a summer fragrance for kids whose parents couldn’t afford to take them out of the country, and who had the time of their life splashing around crowded beaches in coastal Michigan nonetheless. Up North is crazy subtle, so much so that it took me weeks of owning a sample to wear it one day and realize, “ait, this is actually genius.” Its most charming point is an instantly recognizable powdered lemonade accord, like taking a standard cola note and drowning it in watery Lemonheads. Behind it lies the familiar ghost of gentle, almost-rotted florals, deemed willow and white trillium. Deeply aquatic, fleeting, and skin-like, it’s hard not to smile after spraying. Even in the thick of my long-awaited Christmas festivities, smelling Up North makes me yearn for Chicago in June. Needless to say, I hope it will make a triumphant return next summer, to comfort us gentle winter-minded folk who find little to romanticize about the thick summer heat without creatives like Kiral taking the reins.
Parfum d'Empire, Un Bel Amour D’été
Another hot-weather beauty: Un Bel Amour D’été (trans. a beautiful summer love) smells like Goutal’s Songes on stimulants. Take all the creamy, thick, fleshy, and divine aspects of gardenia, champaca, and ylang-ylang and throw them into one giant sexpot. What you get is a viscerally solar, effortlessly feminine floral organza to rival the perennial reign of Ropion’s Carnal Flower. I think those two perfumes do very different things, but I do think the women who flock to spend increased Estée Lauder money on the crown jewel of tuberoses might also find it in their hearts to shell out $150 USD for this equally luscious blend. The vanilla supporting note really brings out the summertime feeling in this fragrance and moves it closer to sweet bubblegum banana coconut florals like Guerlain’s Terracotta. An absolute delight to wear, and something I will find myself craving like Odysseus and the Lotus Eaters when the weather starts to warm up again.
Hiram Green, Philtre
I had the honor of speaking with Hiram at the launch and limited world tour associated with this fragrance — and found myself taken not just by the beauty of this particular fragrance but by the singular passion that drives his exploration of natural materials in all releases from his house. I generally find quote-unquote “natural perfumery” to be more of a tagline for marketing than a coherent genre of smell, but here, Green’s creations not only speak to the paired-down absolutes that constitute a fragrance oil but also the photorealistic essences of delights from the natural world. I have been a longtime devotee of classics from his line, like the narcotic honey tobacco Slowdive, and the snarling leather birch tar creature Hyde — but Philtre surprised me in a way I was not expecting a Hiram Green to be able to do. This is Green’s most dated composition, in a way that feels delightfully thrilling. Centered around the lusty and romantic historical associations of the carnation flower, this perfume spotlights a smell you would be hard-pressed to find in many contemporary releases. I am personally most familiar with carnation in vintage-inspired Oriza L. Legrand’s Oeillet Louis XV: a prim and proper sheer powder recognizing the historic brand’s past as perfumers to the royal court. To modern audiences, carnation is not a smell typically associated with lust, but in the twentieth century, this was downright salacious. Powdery and peppery, silky and spicy, it embodies many contrasts and speaks most recognizably to ‘70s spicebombs and the note it is most often paired alongside: clove. Green follows suit, but the clove here is not overwhelmingly sweaty but rather far more green and stemmy. It is as if a late-century Austin Powers-type groovy conversation den had been transplanted into a countryside meadow. I think of carnations’ history in the Belle Époque‚ the fad-like frenzy around donning them on lapels and over the nose, and Oscar Wilde’s own affinity for the pin-like bloom. This is a decisively old-fashioned perfume but one that does not apologize for its timeless sensibilities. To the untrained nose, a blend of sticky resins, autumnal cinnamon, and vague florals is enough to charm a hapless witness over to the side of true glamour and flamboyance.
Jorum Studio, Monolith
Another release that is undoubtedly not for everyone, but in its raw, unabashed dirt and smoke, is definitely for me. A rework of an earlier entry into their Psychoterratica series, Monolith is defined by an overdose of peat, a material used in the production of certain malt whiskies. Dirty, smoky, and grimy, the opening is pure and intense — like licking the bottom of an outdoor grill. Heady castoreum supplements the initial censing, adding an animalic undertone that almost knocks the breath out of you. Intentionally provocative, I was surprised by how quickly this initial assault wears off, and how easily it yields into quite a handsome aged earthen vetiver. Euan McCall reportedly spotlighted a vintage vetiver oil in high concentrations in this limited composition, and I think it truly shines in the drydown. I would almost go so far as to say the gorgeous, bloody Firewater is more of a scary composition than this one — yes, the opening of Monolith is fierce, but what’s under the mask is kindhearted and reasonable. Try to source this for the man or nominally insane woman in your life who wore Imaginary Authors City on Fire and thought it wasn’t hardcore enough.
Lush, Vegan Leather Jacket
Speaking of smoky scents — who knew a perfume from modern Lush with such a stupid name would actually be amazing? Back in their day, Lush’s Gorilla Perfume label put out some truly amazing heavy hitters. But over the last ten years, it’s seemed as if they’ve eschewed niche experimentalism in favor of remaking three of their popular shower gel scents over and over again in different forms. I see cause for hope in the new line of perfumes they released this year. Some, like The Dew on Their Hems, were standard niche fare, a pretty aquatic reminiscent of something you might find at Jo Malone. Others, like the fun Leonard Cohen sendup No Way To Say Goodbye, were interestingly hyper-saccharine to the point of obscurity. I can quite easily imagine this perfume, which smells somewhere between children’s toothpaste and nightcore bath bomb blackcurrant, fitting in mixed with ironic cigarette smoke on some disaffected twenty-something girl’s jean jacket. The clear standout from the collection, however, was Vegan Leather Jacket, which perhaps is trying to appeal to a tongue-in-cheek sense of postured edginess. I honestly don’t care, because this smells reminiscent of something Jorum Studios would make, and can be bought at a strip mall. There is no leather, here, only a heavy-handed trio of cloves, cade oil, and vetiver. Tart, supple, and gorgeously smoky, this opens with a blast of animalics, not unlike Monolith, and then settles into a flaming spice medley that lasts on skin for a neat couple of hours. People online seem to compare it to Estée Lauder’s creamy ‘70s spicebomb Cinnabar, but I only really agree inasmuch as the drydown occasionally drifts toward dark orange Opium territory. To me, this is really just a fine one-trick pony to scratch the arsonists itch in your wretched little heart without breaking the bank. I love to see mainstream perfume retailers cater to niche markets like this — and know that in their refusal to pander down to a younger consumer base, they will eventually be rewarded.
Maksim Perfume, Oud Indochine
Another recent example of questionable name, great perfume. A collaboration between experienced perfumers Maksim Bortnikov and Rajesh Balkrishnan, Oud Indochine is animalic oud at its most camphoric and green. Containing three different oud tinctures — Kinam, South Thai, and Hindi — the nuances in these raw materials would be enough to compel me on their own, but are most notably accented with spices like cardamom, saffron, and cocoa. Orientalist fantasies hardly do this blend justice; it smells like a barnyard was converted into a Hermès boutique, with its windows left open in the summertime. Think waxy-sweet, herbaceous, and astringent. Powerful performance, continually evolving — this fragrance demands to be worn seductively on the wrists of an impeccably dressed man of ambiguous national origin at an outdoor benefit gala.
Phronema Perfumes, Desert Water
I was absolutely taken by the work of Weston Adam under the moniker of Phronema Perfumes late in the year. His work is very visibly marked by his deep faith as an Orthodox Christian, but also takes cues from miscellaneous works of theory, manga, and pop culture. His many rough and ragged scents are made with abundant homemade tinctures, and given names after holy prophets and Continental philosophers alike. My favorite he’s released this year (and, indeed, I have tried many favorites he won’t be releasing until next year) is the austere potion called Desert Water. Immediately, you can tell the color of the liquid is pitch-black, and will obviously leave stains on anything not equally dark in color. This formulation functions less like an eau de parfum and more like an ointment. Centered around crystal clear distillations of fir and frankincense, it smells like the ancient Greek predecessor to Slumberhouse’s Norne or my beloved Fille en Aiguilles. Cracking branches of spruce between your fingers, this smells like pine sap was made into a resin and censed. Spraying this on for the first time, my face lit up at something that might make lesser perfume enthusiasts recoil — this liquid is literally sticky like tree sap. I love moments when perfume can call attention to the nature of its ingredients, and herein the raw tinctures used in its creation feel so unrefined they barely even squeeze themselves out of the bottle. This would certainly be problematic to wear on clothes, but the easy solution is to simply wear this perfume completely naked and run without abandon through the winter woods. Taking its name from the storied life of Father Anthony the Great, arguably the first Monastic, this perfume is requisitely hardcore — but like the monastic life, it yields its beautiful fruit to faithful adherents quietly and gently by the abundant graces of God.
Clue Perfumery, The Point
I know I have a clear bias towards wunderkinds Laura Oberwetter and Caleb Vanden Boom of Chicago-based Clue Perfumery, but to be fair, I truly do think the degree of intention they put into their scents — not even just with respect to Oberwetter’s perfumery and Vanden Boom’s design — exceeds the output of “trying too hard to be down-to-earth and cool” recent venture capital buyouts like D.S. & Durga, and with a fraction of the budget of my occupationally betrothed Manzanita Capital. The first scent to be released following the brand’s three-scent debut, The Point answers the evocative and site-informed original perfumes of their launch with something far more abstract and referential. The scent profile is inspired by a psychedelic scene from the eponymous animated children’s film soundtracked by Harry Nilsson and voiced by Ringo Starr. Having attended the launch, where the perfume was smelled at the exact moment of this particular scene where jasmine tea pours from ornate cups and whale carcasses slowly melt into the bottom of the ocean, I can attest that the atmosphere of the fragrance feels perfectly suited to the cartoonish-yet-unsettling tone of the filmic referent. Oberwetter, in a strange sense, draws quite literally from this scene: the principal note is what she calls “jasmine tea brewed with ocean water” — here, the previously referenced overly dominant 2000s-esque calone vibe is nowhere to be found. When Oberwetter does conjure the ocean, it is less sea salt and more a musky sort of ambergris wax. It is this note that fuses to a sweet Pez-dispenser jasmine to form the principal accord. Underneath, however, is the intriguing one-two abstract mineral punch of a dry sand note and a chalky porcelain scent. Combined, The Point is perhaps Clue’s easiest and most accessible wear, yet a fragrance that decisively does not falter on the brand’s proven mission to render the experimental approachable and fun. Wear The Point to question the meaning of life by the poolside, or simply to rejoice in the hallucinogenic aromas of childhood.
Marissa Zappas, Carnival of Souls
Zappas’ newest not only reiterates her knack for cross-cultural New York artistic collaboration and event planning but cements her current status as the queen of adapting art house movies into niche perfumes. In dialogue with the elusive and atmospheric 1962 horror movie Carnival of Souls, this eponymous perfume is shockingly subtle and delicious. Like whipped cream at the end of the world, it presents a lactonic sort of saline coconut, almost like the fetal embryonic fluid of Secretions Magnifique. I don't get much of the stated incense or spice, but rather, the plasticine, warm, spicy delicacy of perfumer's saffron mixed among various dessert sundries and powdery yellow florals. A very delicate and gorgeous use of mimosa, as if emerging from a harsh winter's frost with hope and perseverance. If this is horrifying, as its textual referent might suggest, it is only so through an abundance of sweetness — like Mary Henry's illusory nightmares, a spoonful of hallucinogenic sugar makes your visions of a ghoulish, pale-faced figure go down.
Adi Ale Van, The White Hero — Potion of a Lifetime
I discovered Romanian indie perfumer Adi Ale Van this month, and the awkwardly named White Hero is without a doubt my favorite thing he made this year. Defined by an overdose of olibanum and mushroom tinctures, this is primarily a dirty and pastoral sort of frankincense perfume bounded with wax and dusty patchouli. Like hastily blown-out candles, pooling beeswax, and sealed envelopes: secrets kept between the two of us in the dark. Feel it dripping, dripping, dripping down your wrist — out the window and down onto the Sodom below. Jumping from your second-floor bedroom window and landing in freshly tilled soil. Think the toxic mushroom omelet from Phantom Thread, a wooden country chapel down the road. It's dark outside now, brisk but not too cold. Wild sage growing along the side of a dirt road. Elopement, digging graves, wreaths of Spanish moss, and mushroom rigor mortis kisses. This perfume is something of a haunting, something of a curse.
Chris Rusak, Caji
I saved my favorite for last. Chris Rusak has been long established in the world of niche and indie perfumery for making tincture-based DIY experimental powerhouses. I’ve loved his animalic pepper Beast Mode, for a while, and he’s surely reached notorious renown with the enigmatic and dirty AEOOJ(LMB). With Caji, however, I truly think he’s done something special. A unique take on the Foin Coupé (freshly mown hay) genre of French perfumery, this is at once rustic and alien. Technically a release squeezed into the last few weeks of 2023, I’m including it here because it really was the perfume that most wowed me this year. Upon first spraying it, you’re met with an incredibly puckering sour blast of cucumber, purple florals, and fatty carrot seed. This alone smells like nothing else in niche fragrance and is worth the price of admission, but into the drydown, the powdery aspects reach their fleshy, flushed fulfillment, accompanied by a waxy sort of vanilla that just barely evokes the likes of my forever favorite Lipstick On. The hay is just barely discernible past this chaos but is very much a stringy setting for the main action of the perfume. Civet is also present here, but I can’t even bring myself to describe the timing at which it appears or the effect it has on the greater aroma of this perfume, other than to say it really makes it smell sexy. If I had to make a comparison to any other existing fragrance, I would grasp towards the outlier of Marlou’s extreme but terse ouvré, Corpalium, inasmuch as barnyard orris root is portrayed among an extremely evocative set of secondary players. Composed of 80% natural materials and intended to maturate gracefully throughout a many-yeared lifetime, I cannot recommend snagging a bottle of this seemingly limited artisan release enough.
The Year’s Biggest Disappointments
I won’t spend too long, here. Both because I don’t love speaking ill of others, especially independent perfumers, and also because, to be honest, there wasn’t that much in the world of niche perfumery I felt overtly scandalized by this year. That said, there are several wider releases I feel I have to speak out against, for your own wellbeing.
The original version of this perfume, entitled Paradoxe, was maddeningly simple and a reduction of everything that white floral perfumes could and should stand for. This year, the fine men and women at Prada have decided to release a version that’s basically the same, Paradoxe Virtual Flower, except it uses fifteen more buzzwords and tries to incorporate Chat-GPT in the most gimmicky way possible. The scent itself is just vaguely clean ISO-E super musk designed to appeal to women who want to smell unobtrusively pleasant to other women and nothing else. I get it — it’s easy for me to punch down on designer perfume. And, generally, during the rest of the year, I try not to say much about it, because it obviously isn’t really for someone with as repugnant and hyper-specific tastes as me. That said, I call out atrocious marketing when I see it, and this should truly not have been made. I see people comparing this scent to MFK’s 724, which is somehow a hopeful compliment to me — and I didn’t even like that perfume.
Maison Margiela, Afternoon Delight
Did they try and make this a vague Proust reference? This isn’t even the first time a perfumer has tried to do this bit, and back then, it was actually a creative concept. Honestly, I’m going to alienate myself from most people reading this and say I actually enjoyed the now-discontinued Whispers in the Library and much prefer that to what seems to be its successor in the disaffected vanilla slot in Margiela’s designer-does-niche lineup. Afternoon Delight smells pretty much exactly like Philosophy’s original Fresh Cream fragrance, a pungent, untamed stale vanilla that overpowers any attempt at a lactonic accord. There is a reason its layered sequel, Fresh Cream Warm Cashmere, sells by the crateful. You can’t do vanilla on its own if you’re not prepared to go hard on the quality of ingredients. I think a fruity note like pear or peach more or less smells the same at all levels of extraction, but there is an obvious difference between a really good vanilla solinote and the lowest common denominator. It honestly doesn’t even end up smelling like food. The whole idea of sweet gourmands has been done so many times that your average consumer now has a baseline scent memory to compare things against, and blends all low-quality vanillas together into vague Bath and Body Works nicety. And to be honest, I have a professed soft spot for Vanilla Bean Noel, because at least it doesn’t pretend to be anything it isn’t. Needless to say, this perfume literally does not register as anything to my brain, and when all is said and done, that’s worse than making a scent so awful it’s at least worth remembering.
Maison Francis Kurkdjian, APOM
Francis, for goodness’ sake! You’ve made countless masterpiece perfumes at all price points, and now your latest self-branded release is getting compared to late-term Killian? You either die a niche auteur or live to see yourself cater to Fragrance-Tok YA literature women who think By the Fireplace smells like mezcal. This perfume smells like if Rihanna wore Love Don’t Be Shy to the gynecologist. It claims to be a genderless fusion of two prototype fragrances I have not smelled, but I would be shocked to find a virile male Baccarat Rouge consumer who wants to wear something this mindlessly saccharine. The fact this claims to be a fougère is an insult to Jicky’s legacy. This updated fragrance now smells like a magazine perfume tester strip version of musky orange blossom and vanilla. I honestly think the legacy of 21st-century musk-forward florals on designer perfume has corrupted what could easily be a pretty and naturalistic flowery scent into something that smells like Justice (2010s clothing store for teens) and early onset body dysmorphia. I can’t really fault perfumers with day jobs that smell like your average American woman’s fantasy of a fancy hotel lobby, but, at its best, designer perfume can subtly challenge the tastes of its consumers, and both nourish and style their scent predilections for the better. Alas, for now, I will have to hope TikTok also influences your average Francophile mother of three to buy a Diptyque sample set. It’s definitely possible — we just have to believe. 🌀
Audrey Robinovitz is a multidisciplinary artist, scholar, and self-professed perfume critic. Her work intersects with the continued traditions of fiber and olfactory arts, post-structural feminism, and media studies. At this very moment, she is most likely either smelling perfume or taking pictures of flowers.