The Concept of Love

Electric punk, pumped in through brain-melting screens.

Kids on skates run riot through the city with graffiti and loud music. On a steep hill, the board starts to wobble underfoot. Summer breaks go by with friends, broke and always finding trouble. It is a letter to the media of a childhood, and a downtown city center at its most electric, full of color and culture.

Spray paint spiked with fruit is shockingly pleasant, fruity and bright with some dirty edges. Osmanthus absolute, often thought of as the bridge between floral and animal, turns slowly from apricot floral to rich leather and puts an edge on all that brightness. Hot metal from the grinding rails gives up its stored heat as the paint dies back, peak summer in the city distilled to its most idyllic.

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. The strength is decided per release rather than set to a house standard. Limited editions come in small batches. 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.