Elevated Classics

There has always been something very modern about Vyrao. The perfumes are well made, the bottles are beautiful and the branding is unusually coherent. Founder Yasmin Sewell understood from the beginning that Vyrao was selling more than fragrance. It was selling ritual, emotion and, increasingly, the idea that scent might…

I spent a month in Cap Ferrat in June with one of the Hermès travel bottles of Musc Pallida in my bag, and somewhere along the way it became the perfume of that trip. I wore it often enough that the powdery iris and warm musk began to settle into…

I have a complicated relationship with the word niche. There was a time when it told you something useful. A niche perfume house existed outside the machinery of the big fashion and beauty companies. Distribution was limited, the perfumer was often given more room to experiment, and the fragrance itself…

When I was in college, I worked for Clinique in Los Angeles. Our counter sat directly across from Estée Lauder, our parent company, so two perfumes were simply part of the atmosphere of my working day: Clinique Aromatics Elixir on our side and Estée Lauder Youth-Dew across the aisle. I…