BeauFort London

BeauFort London was started in 2013 by the musician Leo Crabtree, and its first product was not a perfume but a handmade moustache wax in an aluminium case. The name comes from the Beaufort Scale of wind force, drawn up in 1805 by the naval officer Sir Francis Beaufort. The company is registered in Willersey, near Broadway in Worcestershire, England, in the United Kingdom.

Its scents are built around smoke, after the Latin root of the word perfume, per fumum, through smoke. Notes such as gunpowder, tar, incense and charred wood come back again and again. Each perfume is made in small batches in Great Britain, at a strength the house says is well above the usual. Its perfumers worked from briefs drawn from paintings, poems and history. The first collection, Come Hell or High Water, came out in 2015 with Tonnerre, Coeur de Noir and Vi et Armis. Revenants followed in 2017 and Force Majeure in 2024.

It has no shop of its own. In London its stockist list names Bloom Perfumery in Covent Garden, now at The Yards, Jovoy at 21 Conduit Street, and the Boots Fragrance Boutique at 1 Broadgate. On its own site a 50 ml eau de parfum costs £125. Try Fathom V first: it is the house's take on a sea scent, moving from stillness to storm and from surface to depth, with juniper, cumin, salt and cedar.