Wild Veil: 336 botanical perfumes from one Vermont grower

Wild Veil is the largest house in this library by a wide margin: 336 fragrances, made by one person in Orange, Vermont, under way since 2013. At that size the question is not whether a house style exists but what holds it together, and with Wild Veil the answer sits in the paperwork as much as in the perfumes: three concentrations, a few repeating size ladders, and a small group of materials that keep coming back.

The grower-perfumer

Abby Hinsman describes herself as a "grower-perfumer" working in "whole plant fragrances" composed from her own extractions, many from plants she grows organically or collects within "the 6 acres of old growth hemiboreal forest that is my childhood home in Vermont". A second off-grid site in De Luz, California, has recently been started. Her summary of the house runs to two lines: "Natural perfume grown in Vermont. Handmade aromatic extracts, including enfleurage, absolutes, resinoids, and tinctures."

The method surfaces in the note lists. Mars in Venus does not list orange blossom; it lists Orange Blossom Enfleurage, naming the extraction next to the flower. The lists also arrive mostly unsorted. Of the nine Wild Veil fragrances detailed here, eight give notes with no stated position, and only Chrysoprase breaks out a base, of Sunny Musk, Milk, Tonka Straw and Liqueur. Compare Sultan Pasha Attars, another one-person house, where Chypre Narcisse and Chypre Chrysantheme are published as full top, heart and base pyramids.

Read Wild Veil's lists as descriptions of a smell rather than inventories and they make more sense. Sleeping Beauty includes Vanilla Warmth and Helichrysum Glow among its orange blossom, honeycomb and beeswax. Those are not materials. They are notes on an effect.

Solid, oil, parfum

Three concentrations carry the catalogue. Of the ten fragrances shown on the house page, five are perfume oils, three are parfums and two are solids. The same perfume is often listed in two formats at once: Blue Topaz is sold as a liquid 1ml sample at $25 and a solid 1ml sample at $29, a liquid 5ml amber glass bottle at $124 and a solid 5ml glass jar at $144. The solid costs a little more at every size where both exist.

Some things are solid only. Ylang Ylang Soliflore comes in a 1ml sample at $60, 5ml and 10ml glass jars, a 10ml tin at $558, and black violet glass jars at $310 and $580. The parfums are the atomiser line: Northern Bitters is the only fragrance here with a 3ml step, a glass atomiser at $134, and the only one offered in both a 5ml atomiser and a 5ml amber glass bottle at the same $221.

Price bands, not price tags

Wild Veil spans $15 to $1200 across the house, but the ladders are not improvised. Five of the oils here, Blue Topaz, Unicorn, Lovers, Chrysoprase and Hothouse, share one identical set of prices: $25 for 1ml, $124 for 5ml, $242 for 10ml, $245 in a frosted roller, $29 and $144 for the solid versions. Mars in Venus and Sleeping Beauty share a second, dearer band: $59, $290, $570. Standardised bands are how one person can keep 336 listings coherent.

The other thing the ladders show is nearly flat per-millilitre pricing. Blue Topaz works out at about $25 per millilitre whether bought as a sample or as a 10ml bottle. Northern Bitters runs $46 for 1ml and $431 for 10ml. Volume buys a few per cent, not a third. That is unusual, and it cuts both ways: samples are not loaded with a premium, and bottles are not discounted into impulse territory.

Set against the other one-person houses here, the contrast is sharp. Sultan Pasha Attars lists 40 attars from $48.24 to $2067.52 and discounts harder with size: Chypre Chrysantheme is $68.92 for 1ml and $620.26 for 12ml. Toskovat', in Romania, goes the opposite way with 24 concept-driven releases and usually a single size, as with Present Gambit at $315 for 60ml, currently out of stock.

What recurs

The house families are white floral, floral, woody and herbal, and the note lists bear that out. Jasmine appears in six of the nine fragrances detailed here, ylang-ylang in three, with Hothouse listing cananga and ylang-ylang separately on the same line alongside tuberose. Bergamot opens both Blue Topaz, where it meets Earl Grey, iris powder and Shala smoke, and Mars in Venus, where it meets oud, tobacco and civet.

The oddest document in the set is Ylang Ylang Soliflore, a soliflore whose note list never names its flower. Instead: jackfruit, Gros Michel bananas, custard, taro pudding, rum, raisins soaked in brandy, soursop, pistachio spoom, rubber, jungle humus and Carrots In Aldehyde Form. Anyone who has smelled a good ylang-ylang absolute will recognise the inventory as the flower taken apart into its fruit, cream and solvent facets.

Against that sits Northern Bitters, which is barely floral at all. Quassia and gentian are bittering agents; calamondin rind, bitter orange rind, navel orange rind, bitter orange tree bark and blood orange tree bark do the citrus; hemlock, balsam fir, spruce, larch and northern cedar do the rest. It reads as an amaro recipe written from a Vermont woodlot, and it is the clearest argument that the white florals are a preference rather than a limit. The herbal side of the catalogue is worth a separate look.

Where to start

• Northern Bitters, 1ml sample $46, 3ml atomiser $134. For readers who want conifer, rind and bark rather than flowers, and the best entry to the parfums.
• Blue Topaz, liquid 1ml sample $25 or solid 1ml sample $29. The cheapest way into the house, and the easiest way to compare the oil and the solid of one formula side by side.
• Ylang Ylang Soliflore, solid 1ml sample $60. For anyone drawn to white florals that tip towards fruit and custard.