Skip to content
Undernotes
Shelf
Image from the maker’s site, reproduced with attribution.

HouseArtisan niche

Toskovat'

RomaniaDavid-Lev Jipa-Slivinschiest. 2022

Toskovat' is a Romanian perfume house selling alcohol-based "extraits de memoire": concept-driven fragrances organized into collections, the Betrayal Collection among them, inspired by personal memory and the Russian concept of "toska". Visual concepts for the brand are credited to a collaborator, @egg_winner.

In their own words

Reproduced from their about page. The words are theirs.

I’ve kept everything bottled up for so many years that I almost forgot.

I have all these memories from You. I don’t know my memories anymore… I’m trying to learn them back. I’m trying to understand You. Stuck here, I was occasionally offered glimpses of beauty: past, present & future. And you can lie to anybody but not to yourself. These memories flow through my brain into my soul. They are my fluid DNA.

I am Toskovat, a cage in search of a bird. Sharing now all my humanity with all of humanity.

These extraits de memoire, just like what inspired them, are non-linear.

Sometimes brutal, sometimes uplifting, always evocative and seen through a clouded glass. Please take your time understanding them! I recommend re-visiting the sights and sounds of these memories, together with the smells, to fully remember. “No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.”

Catalogue

24 fragrances

Alphabetical. Prices are in the maker's currency and link to their own shop.

24 fragrancesSearch within Toskovat'

Palette

Notes they reach for

The notes that appear most across the catalogue; the number is how many fragrances carry each.

From the journal

Writing about Toskovat'