Indie perfume is a great treat, especially as we’re heading into the new year and you’re looking to refresh and reset. And I do promise there is an indie perfume out there for everyone! In this indie perfume guide, there’s a pizza-inspired perfume and a Hannibal Lecter-inspired perfume. The duality of man! I’ve split this guide by general fragrance family: gourmand, aquatic, green, and animalic for the truly bold.

Gourmand

1. Kerosene Unknown Pleasures ($152)
2. Snif Soda Snob ($25) and Slice Society ($25)
3. Lovesick Witchery Green Tea Latte ($20)

Have you ever tasted something so good that you’ve wanted to spray it on your body and carry the memory of it with you wherever you go? Gourmands are perfumes with edible notes (vanilla, honey, fruit, coffee, etc.) and for the most part, are safe bets for all types of scent seekers. The two Snif perfumes above are the most unusual; they’re meant to evoke the classic pizza and slice combo. Snif also has other gourmands (another notable is Crumb Couture, a croissant scent) but IMO the pizza/slice combo is too good to pass up. If you’re more of a tea person, both Unknown Pleasures and Green Tea Latte are tea-forward gourmands.

Aquatic

1. Imaginary Authors Falling Into The Sea ($46)
2. Poesie Oyster! ($21)
3. Death And Floral With the fishes and the dead ($23)
4. TANAÏS SÁNDALO ($125)

If you’re a former swimmer, or obsessed with octopuses and/or Tipping The Velvet, aquatic scents are the way to go. You can find aquatics at big stores fairly easily (Beach Walk, Salt Air, and SALT all come to mind) but the indie houses are doing some really interesting things and also have much cooler names. Imaginary Authors is a fragrance house trying to unlock memories, and Falling Into The Sea is meant to remind wearers of lounging on the beach (there’s also Every Storm A Serenade, which is more misty mornings and has notes of Baltic sea mist). As an Oyster Person, I will be mourning the fact that my oyster CSA is no longer a thing and will be buying Poesie! Oyster (ocean brine, cucumber) to fill the gap. Death and Floral takes a more sea as infinite, desolate expanse approach to the aquatic family, and would be good for a moody Pisces. Also, the first note is black squid ink. They’re only periodically open to orders, so follow them on Instagram to stay up to date on when they open up. If you’re looking to support queer artists with your perfume purchases, Studio TANAÏS is created and run by queer author and perfumer Tanaïs, who wrote the scent-guided memoir In Sensorium: Notes for My People. Their scents are also offered in 10ml perfume oils at a lower price point than the full perfumes. SÁNDALO is sandalwood-forward and inspired “by the vanishing earth and the one being reborn in the sea.”

Green

1. CB I Hate Perfume Black March ($71)
2. XINÚ Monstera No 4 ($109)
3. Alkemia Moss Maiden ($48)
4. LVNEA Foret Dormant ($42)

I’m using green broadly here to refer to anything earthy, vegetal, or nature-y. I love green perfumes (really, I just love the smell of wet dirt which both Black March and Foret Dormant do (I own the latter and love it)). XINU’s Monstera is my Special Occasion Scent and technically, it straddles the line between gourmand and green but it’s more green than anything else! Moss Maiden is wet fern and autumnal leaves and would be perfect for a witchy queer.

Animalic

1. Zoologist Hyrax ($48)
2. LVNEA Ronds De Sorcière ($68)
3. Filippo Sorcinelli But Not Today ($220)
4. Francesca Bianchi Under My Skin ($108)

Animalic is… different. Think barn, sexy, dirty. Zoologist is the first name that comes to mind when I think of animalic scents (each of their perfumes is named after and inspired by animals). Some of their scents are really divisive (I love Beaver, my partner hates it), but they offer samples so you don’t have to commit to a whole bottle just to try something! Hyrax’s base notes include both castoretum (beavers use this along with pee to mark their territory) and civet (another mammal secretion). I was poking around Reddit and someone’s Hyrax review included the phrase “feral bog witch”!!

If you want to lean more heavily into the poop of it all, you could go indolic. It’s like the combination of sweet-poop. Jasmine is a classic indolic scent. LVNEA’s Ronds De Sorciere is both animalic and indolic — one of the notes is “sweet decay”. Also, unsurprisingly, the Hannibal Lecter perfume is an animalic one. But Not Today is inspired by Silence of the Lambs!! If you want something equally human skin inspired but less murder-y, Under My Skin is an option too!

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