strangelove NYC

strangelove NYC grew from a moment in 2010, when Helena Christensen smelled raw oud that Elizabeth Gaynes had brought back from Borneo to her Manhattan apartment. Gaynes, whose background is in farm sourcing in Borneo, is the founder and CEO, and Christensen is creative director. The brand was first called ERH1012. It launched in 2014 at the Salon de Parfums at Harrods with a single perfume oil, deadofnight.

Every scent is built on oud. Robb Report says the oud comes from smallholder farms and independent distillers that Gaynes knows, and that each scent takes about two years and hundreds of trials. The perfumer Christophe Laudamiel has worked with the founders from the start. The core line has six extraits, each also sold as a pure perfume oil. The house says everything is blended and bottled in the US, in glass bottles made in France.

It has no shop of its own. In New York its stockists include Osswald at 242 Mulberry Street in Nolita, Scent Bar at 244 Elizabeth Street, and Stele at 339 Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn. On its own site the extraits start at $270 and the perfume oils at $78. Try Dead of Night first: it was the first strangelove scent, oud with violet leaf and amber.