REX Apollo

Amber from a thirty-five-million-year process.

Oleum succini, or Anbar, out of the Himalayan Mountains, the product of a thirty-five-million-year process for the gemstone industry. An excellent fixative. Not the sweet wintery amber accord, and not ambergris.

Natural rum extract from Robertet opens it, tamer than expected from the extended aging. The woods are Atlas and Virginia cedars, with oakwood, and tonka bean paste. The spices are dosed small enough that picking any single one out is hard. Omani frankincense provides the pine-like, lemony, resinous brightness, and a complete halo.

Joe Vega began blending essential oils at seventeen, out of New Age bookstores and health food stores, and exhibited paintings in several shows before the work turned from the visual to the olfactory. Formal training followed in 2017, on top of a Bachelor of Arts in English spent on Western philosophy and linguistics. Lupus & Vega runs on that combination, and on a long draw toward Arabic and traditional profiles for their unapologetic boldness.

The house works in oils, attars and mukhallats sold by weight, alongside sprayed extraits, and it publishes its percentages: seventeen percent white lotus absolute, twenty-five percent deer musk tincture. The work leans dusky, slightly severe, elegant but not polished to death, and a little unsettling in a good way. Ouds do most of that. Every release is trialled for materials, proportions and intensity before it goes out.