Undernotes
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Reading about independent perfume: what the season smells like, who is making what, and how one material behaves in a hundred different hands.
Trend
Ensar Oud, Jinkoh Store and Rising Phoenix Perfumery sell agarwood on three incompatible logics: a catalogue priced by the distillation, a flat fee for the composition, and attars sold by the gram.
Undernotes4 min read
Roundup
Birch tar, gunpowder, scorched sandalwood and a fireplace full of pinyon: where smoke comes from when no censer is involved.
3 min read
Maker profile
Abby Hinsman has been listing perfumes since 2013 in three concentrations and a few fixed price bands, and the shape of the catalogue is as telling as…
4 min read
Beginner guide
Perfume oils and solids are sold as whole small bottles, while natural parfums are priced by the millilitre, which is why a first order can cost $4.75…
5 min read
Seasonal
Six indie scents with gothic titles, read line by line against the notes their makers list, plus the plain-named ones that quietly carry the smoke.
4 min read
Note deep dive
Three indie oil houses label the same material four different ways, and the qualifier on the note list tells more than the family tag does.
4 min read
Seasonal
Three autumn releases read side by side on their listed notes: a pumpkin patch with dirt and mushroom in it, a cream-and-incense oil, and a spiced…
5 min read
Note deep dive
Sorted by house type, the lichen behaves differently in natural extraits, oil-house chypres and attars, and several makers build the same damp forest…
4 min read
Maker profile
Thirteen eau de parfum entries from Buenos Aires whose regional detail sits in the materials, from yerba mate to Gran Chaco guaiac wood, rather than…
5 min read
Dispatch
The $800 duty-free threshold was suspended for every country of origin in August 2025, and US Customs wrote that suspension into regulation in July.
4 min read
Beginner guide
Staging notes into top, heart and base is a documentation habit rather than a property of the liquid, and in the library the split cuts across oils…
4 min read
Maker profile
The Vietnamese house reached the Independent category of the 12th Art and Olfaction Awards with ink and whisky, but its everyday catalogue is a…
4 min read
Three mornings a week the journal publishes one piece about independent perfume, drawn from the same catalogue as the rest of the site: 21 articles so far, every one of them linking back to the houses and the notes it talks about. It is published by Undernotes; nothing in it is sponsored, and no link is an affiliate link.
