Every fragrance has an origin story. Most are made up after the fact, retrofitted from a marketing brief. Ours actually has one.
In October 2024, I was sitting on a back porch in midtown Memphis. It was the kind of fall evening where the air finally lets go of summer — cool but not cold, dry leaves nearby, the smell of someone burning brush a few houses down. Bourbon in a heavy glass. A leather chair that had absorbed a decade of dinners.
I wanted a fragrance that smelled like that.
The brief
I wrote it on the back of an envelope: Smoky vetiver. Bergamot up top — just enough to keep it from going dark. A little amber at the base. Should feel like 7pm in October, not noon in July.
That envelope sat on my desk for three weeks before I started blending.
The build
We started with the base — Haitian vetiver, the smoky kind, distilled from grass roots that have been steeped in iron-rich soil for two years. Vetiver is the spine of this fragrance. It’s also the most expensive ingredient in the bottle.
From there: a small amount of guaiac wood for warmth, a touch of labdanum for resin, and a whisper of birch tar to push the smokiness without making it heavy-handed. The heart is sage and clary sage — herbal, dry, earthy. They sit between the smoke and the citrus and keep the whole thing from collapsing into one register.
The top is bergamot — specifically Calabrian bergamot from a supplier in Reggio. It’s brighter and a touch greener than what you’ll find in most commercial fragrance. It opens the bottle. Without it, Dusk Vetiver would feel like winter. With it, you can wear it in September.
The testing
We made eleven versions before we signed off. The first three were too smoky — like sitting downwind of a leaf fire. The next three were too clean — we’d leaned too hard on the bergamot and lost the chair-on-a-porch quality. Versions seven and eight got close. Version eleven was the one.
We aged the eleventh batch for six weeks before re-testing. Fragrance changes as it macerates — the molecules settle and the harsher edges round off. Version eleven, week six, was the bottle we sent for IFRA compliance review.
What it’s for
Dusk Vetiver isn’t a daytime fragrance, exactly. It’s not an evening fragrance, either. It’s a fragrance for the in-between hours — the part of the day when the light is changing and you’ve earned the right to slow down.
That’s the scent we wanted to bottle. That’s the scent that’s in the bottle.