Cape Disappointment

The Pacific Northwest coast in autumn, wind and all.

Sweet fir balsam, fir needle, cedar wood and cypress build the coastal forest and hold the whole thing up. Then the ocean gets put back in as it actually is. Seaweed absolute, a salt accord and a reconstruction of ambergris carry the delightful stink that real water has and that oceanic work often leaves out. The musk is a real animal musk, harvested humanely and without contact with the animal, which makes this one not vegetarian.

Rocky beaches, with cloud running all the way out to the horizon. Cliffside trees have grown permanently bent by the wind coming off the water. The warmth of a jacket against all of it, and the waves crashing to shore.

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.