Oh My!

Some decisions take years. Others take one breath.

Ripe banana lands first, soft and sugared, then Sichuan pepper snaps in behind it, all bite and spark. Lily of the valley widens the room — green, bright, a little dizzy. Vanilla, patchouli and musk settle in after that, warm and unhurried, once the spark has caught. Nothing here is careful. It is made for the moment when thinking stops helping and the answer is already yes.

• Spyros Drosopoulos

BARUTI is the Greek word for gunpowder. A second sense attaches to it, used of a person or a thing with an edge. Spyros Drosopoulos held a doctorate in neuroscience and a teaching post at the University of Amsterdam before an introductory perfumery workshop redirected the trajectory entirely. Drosopoulos resigned the post. The years that followed went into hundreds of raw materials, worked through alone, without a school or a mentor.

Nothing is outsourced. Drosopoulos writes the formulas and compounds them in the BARUTI laboratory, in small batches, and the standard for raw materials does not move. The references are visual art and travel, along with raw materials rare enough to be difficult to source. Each fragrance is constructed as a persona, with a character of its own. Conventions of the category are disregarded, though never so far that the result becomes unwearable.