Laboratory Perfumes are currently one of the best-selling fragrance houses in Liberty, with shelves constantly having to be re-stocked with this unconventional brand that’s gone ‘back to basics’ while shaking up the fragrance world. We are thrilled to now stock the Laboratory Perfumes Discovery Set in our shop – so scroll down to fall for them madly, as we have…
In 2011, Aaron Firth founded Laboratory Perfumes by charting what he admits is a rather unconventional course. Ignoring ‘existing industry norms’, he says he wanted to strip away the sometimes confusing – and often alienating – ‘noise’ often associated with fragrance today, and with this kind of ‘no nonsense’ approach, take inspiration ‘directly from the flowers, herbs and aromatic botanicals native to Britain and beyond.’ Hence the one-word name for each scent – literally doing what it says on the… well, box – and the pared-down style of contemporary packaging.
Inside the cardboard tube, understated glass bottles allude to their ‘laboratory’ origins. And yes, those names are refreshingly simple – tempting you to try something you’re drawn to. Yet the scents themselves are seriously intriguing – your skin teasing complexity and depth from each creation.
In 01 AMBER – Laboratory Perfumes‘ first fragrance – you’re taken on a summer ramble along Britain’s rugged coastline and rolling green hills. The warm earthiness and spice of the top notes whipped by a salty breeze before coming back to rest on a bed of verdant grassiness and a smooth, supremely comforting woody base.
For 02 GORSE we travel across the channel to the south of France, crisp citrus swooning into lusciously smooth coconut and cardamom for a sudden hit of sun-warmed wooziness.
Back to Britain’s coastline, 03 SAMPHIRE evokes ‘a sprig of verbena plucked from a friend’s garden’ with the juicy greenness of samphire seguing to juniper berries and a herbaceous drift over white amber and oakmoss – a bracing walk, bottled.
04 TONKA is dark, earthy, fusing pink pepper, mandarin and woodland aromatics lapped by cold milk. Completely addictive, we feel, and most certainly an all-day wrist-sniffer!
And then there’s √25 ATLAS , which whisks the wearer to the Atlas Mountains of Morocco – hot, heady clouds of pipe tobacco and decadently boozy rum and cognac laced with a souk’s spices: cinnamon, ginger and black pepper hazily swirled into a dry down of warm, creamy vanilla, alongside sun-warmed hay.
Close your eyes and allow yourself to be transported, to inhale the scents and imagine where they take you – and, blissfully, the Laboratory Perfumes Discovery Set allows you to take those journeys again and again. Where will you land up, we wonder?
By Suzy Nightingale
