No, it’s not just you. Londoners smell particularly good right now. A new generation of small-batch fragrance houses is emerging, swapping the bucolic backdrops of classic perfumery for the streets of the capital.
Marylebone’s Gabar makes evocative scents inspired by the co-founders’ native Myanmar. Spitalfields’ The Nue Co blurs the line between fragrance and supplement. There are the heady blends of Dalston-born Vyrao; the unconventional aromas of Perfumer H, founded in Mayfair by Lyn Harris of Miller Harris; and Ffern on Beak Street, whose seasonal drops are so in demand that the waiting list reportedly tops half a million. These homegrown perfume brands emphasise natural ingredients, sustainable production and distinct identities, with many rejecting fragrance’s conventional language of seduction in favour of more personal narratives.
Winder Ton, the former dietician behind perfume house Urania, is one of them. He launched his brand two and a half years ago, when fragrance was “either unisex or very commercial and masculine or feminine”, he tells Broadsheet. There was a distinct lack of queer influence, he felt. Named after an epithet of the Greek goddess Aphrodite, Urania embraces self-expression and plays with gender conventions – it’s “a place where misfits are not only represented, but celebrated”, Urania’s website says. “I wanted a story that was more romantic and daring,” Ton adds.
Made in Ton’s Hackney Wick studio, each long-lasting scent is made with vegan ingredients; the top seller, Queer Magic, has notes of lemon and cardamon, with a darker, woody base. The brand is now stocked in Liberty and Goodhood, and Ton’s list of collaborators includes Patrick McDowell for London Fashion Week, Selfridges and Shoreditch Arts Club.
Sophie Beaumont founded Tenth Muse – the name another play on Greek mythology – in her north London studio four years ago. After contracting Covid-19, she discovered that traditional alcohol-based spray perfumes irritated her sinuses and the alternatives were limited. She turned to travel-friendly solid perfume. With Tenth Muse, she reimagined the format “to make it more design-led and something that people would want to show off”.
Her four flagship scents, each housed in a refillable, plastic-free vessel, are made without alcohol and hand-filled in the UK. “We try to create scents that sing to the experience you have living in a city like London,” she says. The popular Date Night was inspired by “dimly lit restaurants in Soho”.
Maya Nije founded her namesake brand in 2016 and has seen the indie perfume scene grow significantly since then. “[These brands] offer stories, depth and individuality that mass-market scents often don’t. Wearing one feels intimate and personal,” she says. “There’s definitely been an exciting rise in independent perfumers here.
“People come here for exchange and collaboration. The energy of the city lends itself to experimentation.”
She launched her perfume line after stumbling across an old family photo album. “It made me wonder what those captured moments smelled like,” she says. Her small-batch fragrances are gender-neutral, and all developed and manufactured at her Shoreditch studio. The most popular scent, Nordic Cedar, is a blend of cardamom, earthy patchouli and warm notes of amber.
Njie thinks of fragrance as a sensory archive, and taps into her own experiences and dual Swedish and Gambian heritage to inform her scent design. “I start with memory – often a photograph,” she says. “It’s a very iterative process: blending, letting the scent rest, revisiting it days later. Each bottle is a vessel for memory – mine, and hopefully the wearer’s too.”
London offers a natural springboard for idiosyncratic fragrance makers like Njie, Beaumont and Ton because it “gives ground to crazy ideas”, Ton says.
“You see it in fashion, in songwriting, in beauty. London has this beautiful ground to nourish them.”
