Perfumehead is a new range of seven glamorous fragrances inspired by Los Angeles

The world of niche perfumery can be hit or miss, but there’s no doubting the bold, unapologetic attitude behind Perfumehead, a recently launched olfactory label founded by former fashion director and creative director Daniel Patrick Giles. Conceived to challenge our traditional perceptions of fragrance, each Perfumehead scent paints a cinematic picture using unexpected cultural muses drawn from art, music, places and film. Each evokes an olfactory world, a realm that Giles has called the Osmocosm. ‘It’s the universe of scent,’ he explains. ‘We believe every place has a scent, and every scent has a story. Through our perfumes, we are reimagining luxury fragrance one Osmocosm at a time.’

Perfumehead fragrances: ‘a love letter to Los Angeles’

For its debut, Perfumehead has released seven delectable fragrances that pay tribute to Giles’ adopted hometown of Los Angeles, where he has lived for the past decade. Each scent is accompanied by a list of inspirations, including an emotion and a time of day to tie it all together. Room No., an intoxicating, lusty concoction of bergamot, nutmeg, palo santo, vanilla and musk, is described as ‘an affair’ that’s inspired by hotel Chateau Marmont, photographs by Helmut Newton, and Jarvis Cocker’s song ‘Room 29’. It’s time is set at 9pm.

In contrast, Moonflower is a sensual floral portrait of a garden blooming at night (3am to be exact) that combines tuberose, night-blooming jasmine, patchouli and moss to evoke fragrant breezes as everything else sleeps. 

Potent, rich and decadent – each fragrance is produced as an extrait de parfum, the most concentrated form of perfume – Perfumehead not only makes an impression, but leaves you hanging on for more.

‘These seven fragrances are my love letter to Los Angeles. For me, Los Angeles is a city without limits, a city of contradictions, one where you can lose yourself, good and bad, in heady experiences. It's a city radically different and more complex than typical Hollywood clichés allow. I convey that complexity through Perfumehead; each perfume is a curation of intimate scenes, scents and stories that allows me to author a unique portrait of my Los Angeles.’

Giles has worked with an almost all-female roster of perfumers for the project, and notably gave them free rein to create what they wished. ‘Each fragrance is voiced first and foremost by the cultural narratives they bottle. They are rooted in self-expression – themes of sensuality, androgyny and sophistication. It is our master perfumers who express my vision through olfactive raw materials. The master perfumers were given carte blanche, regardless of cost. They create without limits, and we collaborate on a final product that is a pure expression of refined, olfactive luxury,’ he says. 

‘I didn't want to create fragrances characterised by gender, or the narrow focus that this scent is only for a woman or this scent is only for a man. I wanted a strong female perspective in the creation of the fragrances,’ he adds. ‘I brought my male energy and I wanted female energy to balance me out, the ideas and the stories.’ (Moonflower is notably the only scent in the collection created by a male nose, which Giles says was intentional. ‘For Moon Flower, a floral scent, I wanted a male perspective on a very feminine floral.’)

Bottled in glamorous, hand-sized glass flacons, each topped with a black enamel globe stopper, Perfumehead fragrances cut an elegant and memorable figure. With his ode to Los Angeles now complete, Giles drops a hint of future projects to come.

He concludes, ‘The mission of Perfumehead is to explore all of the Osmocosm. That may be other cities, but could also be a desert, a coastline, a kitchen in Tokyo. It's wherever a fragrance finds us, and we find a fragrance whose story needs to be told.’ 

perfumehead.com