The latest on scents, houses and aromas
The parties have ended. The twinkling lights have been stored away. And moments after the old year exited in an explosion of fireworks, the new one settled around us like a thick blanket. This is the season of quiet. Of footsteps muffled by snow. Nature pushes us indoors to cocoon through winter’s harshest days as we think and worry and dream. For this month, we've chosen three scents to accompany us through this season of quiet as we prepare to emerge into a new year.
Mark Buxton is something of a legend in the perfume world. At 50, he has done it all: designed fragrances for major mainstream brands and, finally, set off on his own path to create his eponymous line. We sat down with Buxton to talk about his earliest perfume memories, the completely crazy story of how he became a perfumer, the extraordinary story of how he designed Black Angel, and his real thoughts on the "big" industry that he happily left behind.
Long-time niche aficionados all know the initials DSH. Dawn Spencer Hurwitz is a Boulder-based perfumer who was one of the earliest to appear on the modern American indie perfume scene, and her irresistible Au Lait is featured in the Olfactif Evening collection. 
If you’re a die-hard scent lover, admit it: You probably hoard old favorites that you haven’t worn in years. But if you pull out a perfume that you loved in high school, hoping for an olfactory trip, you might be disappointed to find that it doesn’t smell the same.
One minute and thirty seconds: That's how much daylight, on average, we are losing each day. By December, darkness consumes well more than half of our daily time. But how can we begrudge the darkness when it is filled with such delight? In December, life is lived in the evenings.
Olfactif subscribers met Neela Vermeire when we featured her vibrant Bombay Bling in the On Holiday collection. So they, and the rest of the perfume world, were waiting anxiously for the release of Vermeire's fourth scent, Ashoka.
Spanish perfumer Ramón Monegal has been creating scents since 1979—his entire professional life. But when he launched his eponymous line, he discovered what many others discover when they move from behind-the-curtains wizardry and into the spotlight: Signing your work with your name and face is like turning up the volume on everything in your life.
Many people think of deep autumn as the perfect time to break out the leather boots and leather jackets. Us? We revel in the smooth elegance of leather perfumes, and we have three sensational leather scents for you luxuriate in this month.
We first fell in love with Josh Meyer's work back when we featured The Soft Lawn in our Vignettes of Spring collection. And when we smelled Cape Heartache, the follow-up scent to his debut collection, we fell a little deeper.
To say that we love Brent Leonesio, the creative mind behind niche house Smell Bent, is not a remarkable thing to say. What's not to love? Especially when he talks to us about his inspiration behind the cheeky Walk of Shame...
Yosh Han has always been a creative a spirit, so it's lucky for us that she encountered perfumery in time to make it a career. Here, she tells us about her start and the idea behind U4EAHH!
If we were to give you an exhaustive bio of Saskia Wilson-Brown, it would be a hefty tome—and as interesting as it is long. In 2012, Saskia decided to launch the Institute for Art and Olfaction, a first-of-its-kind nonprofit organization dedicated to exploring scent as an artistic medium ...