Deep Midnight Perfumes after Cat Marx: what the house kept and changed

Deep Midnight Perfumes is the largest catalogue in the library, at 242 fragrances, and most of it was built by a perfumer who died in December 2020. The Minneapolis shop still trades under the name Cat Marx gave it, now run by John, her business partner and co-owner, which makes it a well-documented case of what an independent house keeps, and what it quietly alters, once its founder has gone.

Twenty-four years of oils

The shop's memoriam page gives Cat Marx's dates as 29 August 1965 to 19 December 2020. In an interview with Enchanted Living magazine she dated the work to well before the shop: she started making perfume oils in 1996 "for myself, friends and family", began selling lip balms, soaps and perfume oils in 2003, and opened Deep Midnight Perfumes on Etsy in 2010.

Her method, as she described it, started from narrative rather than from a material. She thought of a scent "as a character or setting", usually began with a base note she wanted to work around, and let the process turn into "a dialogue between me and the scent". The house line on the homepage is still "Artisan Perfume Oils Inspired by Fantasy, History, Legends, and Lore". The shop says it keeps over 300 perfumes; Deep Midnight Perfumes has 242 of them listed here, priced between $33 and $35.

What carried over

The format. The about page describes the oils as vegan, preservative free, alcohol free and cruelty free, carried in scent-free organic jojoba oil from plants grown in the USA. The listings describe a 9ml frosted cobalt blue roll-on bottle. Because the line is vegan, notes with animal associations are stand-ins: the CATRIANNA'S CORDIAL listing states that honey, leather and musk notes are "high quality synthetic or plant based substitutes". That is worth remembering when reading a note list such as SNOW ANGELS, which names both musk and leather.

The naming. Scents in the catalogue arrive with a story attached, and John's about text frames that as a shared habit rather than Cat's alone: "the scent is informed by the story."

The pictures. The memoriam page announces a packaging change with a bracketed aside. All orders now use the new sample vials "regardless of images that have been preserved for Cat's legacy". The listing photographs stay, even where they may no longer match what arrives in the parcel.

What changed

John's about text is plain about how the work was split: "Cat and I collaborated on nearly everything. She was a brilliant perfumer, and I was... also there." His stated plan was to run the shop first, "and later by supplementing her catalog with creations of my own". He also names the scents that are his: Vintage, Wildwood, Sangreal, Drummer Boy, Faerie Knight, Prairie Gothic, the Walking Dead sets and Feathers in the Moonlight. In an Enchanted Living piece on her legacy, he named Sympatheia as "the last scent Cat formulated" and owned up to "a slightly undisciplined streak", a habit of sneaking in something unexpected or bizarre.

The practical changes are smaller. The free sample that comes with each purchase is now a half-dram (2ml) vial with a screw cap. The about page puts the Etsy years in the past tense, 2010–2020, and the catalogue sells from the house's own site.

That list of John's own work is the most useful thing on the page for a buyer. None of the three fragrances below appears on it.

Three oils across the range

CRONE'S WOODS is the autumn end of the catalogue. Its sixteen listed notes run from cedar, oak, firewood, dead leaves and guggul incense through clove, nutmeg, pimento, cinnamon and wood honey, down to rosewood, wenge, vetiver, benzoin and amber, with "evening florals" somewhere in the mix. The listing says it was made for the artist and costume designer Morgan Crone and sets it in a rocky woodland in early Ireland. It reads more like a place than a formula, which is the point. Readers who want more in that direction can browse the house's smoky oils, including Fountain of Memory, where incense, frankincense, myrrh and oud sit with patchouli and almond.

SKELLIG shows the story-first method most clearly. Its notes are stone, ocean water, parchment, vellum, earth, woods, moss, driftwood, herbs and ink over an amber base, and the listing says it recalls an old stone and wood building, rocky soil and "a distant hearth fire". It is credited as inspired by a short story, "A Light on Skellig", by John Keske. For a very different route to sea and moss, Sultan Pasha Attars, a one-person attar house working mainly in natural materials, pairs seaweed with oakmoss, mushroom and tobacco in Fougère Noire, at $68.92 for 1ml.

CATRIANNA'S CORDIAL is the sweet end: pomegranate liqueur, redcurrant, citron, caramel and pistachio, lifted with ozone and cedar and settled on spices, amber and musk. The listing still speaks in the first person, of "a cordial I make for family and friends during the holidays".

Amber appears in all three, which is unsurprising: 419 fragrances in the library carry it. What differs is everything around it.

When the name outlives the maker

Small houses are usually one person's hand, and the name on the label is a promise about whose hand it is. Toskovat', founded in Romania in 2022 by David-Lev Jipa-Slivinschi, writes its about text in a first-person voice ("I am Toskovat, a cage in search of a bird") and sells alcohol-based extraits built on personal memory, such as Hoary Date at $326. Sultan Pasha Attars carries its perfumer's own name; Shamamah, smoky with oud, frankincense and rose, runs from $121.29 to $1033.76. In both cases the house and the person are hard to separate.

Deep Midnight's answer to that problem is notable for what it does not do. It does not suggest Cat is still formulating. It names her last scent, keeps her photographs and the oil format, and separates John's creations from hers by title. A buyer can tell whose work is in the vial, and the catalogue stays readable as hers.

Where to start

• CRONE'S WOODS, $35: for anyone who wants clove, woodsmoke and dead leaves for the weeks after the equinox.
• SKELLIG, $35: for readers who prefer stone, ink and sea air to anything sweet.
• CATRIANNA'S CORDIAL, $35: for gourmand wearers who want fruit, caramel and pistachio ahead of the winter holidays.