The Observer

Jeanne Mammen sat in the cafés and drew what was there.

A fly on the wall in Berlin after the first war, illustrating the burgeoning city life and the queer scene inside it. The city was written off then as an unrepairable den of sin, and that left space for queer folk to make lives unburdened by the conservative masses.

Bright violet strikes through cold mossy cobblestone streets. The lights of a small café pierce the dark night. Café Nollendorf, the sign read. One violinist in the corner playing a somber song to a room mostly not paying attention, and two women slow dancing to it anyway, looking deeply into each other's eyes. Incense and oakmoss hold the smoke of the room, and there is enough oakmoss absolute in it to come with an allergy warning. Sandalwood thickens it. Black pepper cuts it and vanilla softens it. Mammen takes a table and starts to draw.

Hayden Grossman formulates every fragrance in the line, illustrates it, designs it and labels it, working out of a studio in an Oregon apartment. The route in was visual art and illustration. Each batch is mixed, bottled, labeled and assembled by hand, and the operation is exactly as small as that sounds. The illustration on the bottle and the liquid inside it are the same person's work.

Releases come with writing of their own, and one of them runs as short fiction with dialogue in it. The strength is decided per release rather than set to a house standard. Limited editions come in small batches, and past ones get re-released. The full ingredient list is published, down to the trade names of the synthetics, and a material that is not vegan is declared on the page it belongs to.