Vintage Tenderness

A four-species jasmine accord.

Jasminum sambac, grandiflorum and auriculatum, with other jasmine oils from select Jasminum species. Then Champaca CO2.

Bergamot and distilled lime make a bright but swift top accord. Underneath, Tolu balsam and the resins, Siam benzoin and a natural ambreine among them. The blonde woods are amyris and creamy sandalwood album.

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.