The Language of Fragrance

Some stories are written in words. Others unfold in scent.

This holiday season, we have teamed up with Hedengrens, the beloved Stockholm bookstore founded in 1897, to explore the connection between fragrance and literature. Together, we present six literary works paired with six of our eau de parfums – a collection celebrating how perfume and prose alike can evoke emotion, memory, and imagination.

White Forest

Paired with Miranda July – “All Fours”

The forest is where we Swedes go to be alone - to feel free, unseen. In All Fours, the unnamed narrator escapes her ordinary life and ends up at a nondescript motel off the highway. On a whim, after buying a silky pink bedspread, she hires an interior decorator to redo one of the rooms.

We imagine that bedspread carrying this scent - blackcurrant, vetiver, sweet tonka - a fragrance that sparks awakening as she remakes the dull motel room into a small, shining world of her own. A secret place for lust, dance, and self-discovery.

A forest is a place to be unseen, to become yourself. In All Fours, a woman escapes the ordinary and remakes a room into her own small world. The scent - blackcurrant, vetiver, tonka - is her awakening.

Shop

Never Spring

Paired with Jeanine Cummins – “Speak to Me of Home”

Never Spring evokes that suspended moment between winter and spring - freshness, yearning, and the promise of renewal. Cummins’ storytelling about belonging and displacement shares that same liminal quality: a longing to find home, to thaw into something new.

Never Spring holds the breath between winter and bloom - cool air, wet soil, the promise of change. Cummins writes from that same edge, between exile and belonging. Both ache toward renewal.

Shop

Vanilla Veil

Paired with F. Scott Fitzgerald – “The Great Gatsby”

At Jay Gatsby’s parties, decadence hides sorrow and longing. The air hums with laughter, jazz, and smoke. A waiter carries a silver tray of champagne glasses from the mansion’s deep rooms to the terrace, where the night glitters on.

We imagine notes of vanilla, almond, and sandalwood lingering in the air as one guest drifts away - stealing a piece of cake, watching the dancers under the stars. Somewhere in that crowd is the one he loves, and will never tell.

Laughter, smoke, and the taste of champagne. Vanilla and sandalwood drift through Gatsby’s golden rooms, masking sorrow with sweetness. Beauty fades, but longing stays.

Shop

Violet Sky

Paired with Ursula Parrott – “Ex-Wife”

New York, the 1920s. Patricia, newly divorced, steps into a world shimmering with dance, desire, and double standards. After nights of jazz and heartbreak, she and her friend Lucia meet the dawn - elegant yet undone.

The air is heavy with Violet Sky: tobacco smoke, ripe plum, tonka - an echo of freedom, glamour, and the night that never quite lets you go.

Powder, tobacco, and ripe plum. Patricia walks through New York nights, free and unmoored. The scent lingers like smoke - soft, defiant, unforgotten.

Shop

Ros

Paired with Virginia Woolf – “Mrs Dalloway”

Ros - soft, layered, luminous - mirrors Mrs Dalloway’s quiet radiance. Woolf writes in scent: air after rain, flowers in a drawing room, the hush between thoughts. Clarissa moves through her day like a single bloom opening and closing in time.

Both perfume and prose hold what cannot last - memory, light, and the beauty of being alive for a moment.

Morning rose, fresh and brief. Woolf writes in fragrance - rain, silver air, a hush between thoughts. Both scent and story hold the grace of what cannot last.

Shop