Before Rogue Perfumery existed, Manuel Cross collected fragrance with unusual focus. He was drawn especially to bottles from the late 1970s and early 1980s, a period he still returns to often. “I was always scouring eBay,” he says. At one point his collection grew to more than seven hundred bottles. Today he keeps closer to three hundred, having pared it down over time to what continues to hold his interest. What drew him in was not rarity so much as character. The compositions felt structured, with oakmoss that carried weight, lavender that retained its edge, and bases that lingered and shifted rather than disappearing after an hour. “There’s just a certain nostalgia,” he says. “It reminds you of being a kid again.”
He grew up in Southern California, where scent was part of the environment rather than an accessory. In summer, jasmine drifted through open windows at night, dense and persistent. The memory stayed with him and would later inform Jasmine Antique, a fragrance shaped less by abstraction than by recollection. Still, collecting gradually turned into something more analytical. “I got to a point where I started wondering how you actually put these things together.”
Cross did not come to perfumery through formal training. After high school in the early 1990s, he attended culinary school and worked professionally as a chef. He and his wife later ran a catering company for nearly a decade. Kitchens taught him proportion and restraint. Ingredients alone do not produce a finished dish; balance determines whether something holds. When he began experimenting with fragrance, he assumed instinct might be enough. It was not. Essential oils blended at home failed to resemble the perfumes he admired. “There’s a whole lot more than just mixing lemon and rose,” he says.
What followed was a long period of self-education. He began isolating materials and studying them individually, trying to understand how small aromatic fragments could form a coherent whole. Through online forums he connected with perfumer Paul Kiler and eventually spent time in his lab, observing and asking questions. Much of the learning, however, happened alone. It took nearly nine years before Cross felt he had composed something complete enough to release. Even then, refinement continued. Over time he began to focus on what he describes as the core of a fragrance, the internal structure that makes it recognizable from the first spray. “If someone sprays Eternity, you know it’s Eternity,” he says. “There’s something in there that makes it what it is.”
Rogue Perfumery launched quietly in 2017 on Etsy. There was no orchestrated debut. Interest built through fragrance communities where wearers responded to the density and classical balance of the compositions. Retailers began reaching out, and by early 2019 Cross left his regular job to focus fully on the brand, just months before the pandemic dealt a heavy blow to the restaurant industry. Today Rogue operates from Idaho Falls, where he and his wife handle production, bottling, labeling, and fulfillment themselves. The operation remains small, shaped by the same discipline that once guided their catering work.
From the beginning, his focus has been consistent. He gravitates toward traditional forms such as chypres, fougères, and tobacco-rich compositions, not to reproduce specific perfumes but to work within established frameworks. “I wasn’t looking to do copycats,” he says. “I just wanted to channel that older aesthetic.” Projection has never been the goal. “It doesn’t need to blow the walls out of the house,” he adds. For him, cohesion matters more than volume.
He no longer wears fragrance himself, preferring not to influence his own work. He also avoids reading reviews. The direction of the brand is shaped internally rather than in response to commentary. Some of Rogue’s strongest releases required that independence. Mousse Illuminee, built around fir, frankincense, laurel leaf, and moss, nearly remained unreleased. “I kept thinking no one’s going to get it,” he says. It became one of the house’s best sellers. Bonded began with a specific image of oakmoss resting in bourbon. Cross spent close to a year refining the whiskey accord before shaping the final composition. “I wanted it true to life, but not overly sweet.”
With Rogue now established, he is preparing Rogue Reserve, a line composed entirely of natural materials. The first release revisits Mousse Illuminee in all-natural form, followed by new compositions developed specifically for the collection. Working exclusively with naturals requires a different calibration. “Once you start mixing them, there’s a lot going on,” he says. The adjustments are smaller, the margin for error narrower.
Rogue remains a contained operation, but the work continues to evolve. What began as curiosity became study, and study became practice. The full conversation with Manuel Cross, including his reflections on regulation, materials, and the development of Rogue, can be viewed below.
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