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Having just returned from the remote red deserts of southern Utah, surrounded by juniper bushes, wind-polished stone, and the occasional tumbleweed, the mind drifted towards the natural elements harvested for Serviette’s beautiful blends. Shall we take a tour?
Sour Diesel contains geranium from Egypt. It also features juniper berry sourced from the Balkans, where the coniferous shrubs grow wild across limestone hills. Byronic Hero is a veritable passport of delicately sourced naturals: rose centifolia from both Bulgaria and Morocco, Canadian fir balsam, and patchouli from Indonesia—home to over 90% of the global supply.
Frisson D’Hiver includes jasmine from India, its petals plucked in pre-dawn darkness, as they have been since the Mughal courts. And in Ruche, one finds a verdant note of Turkish galbanum—a resin used in incense in Mesopotamia as early as 1300 BCE, prized for its intensity and arcane, almost photosynthetic depth. What a wonderful world!
It’s natural to want to travel to these locations when encountering the vivid materiality of their scents. Perfume lovers may enjoy Jean-Claude Ellena’s descriptions of Egypt in The Diary of a Nose: A Year in the Life of a Parfumeur, when Ellena was sourcing inspiration for Hermès’ famous Un Jardin Sur Le Nil.
Of Mauritius, an island off of the coast of Madagascar with endless acres of lush sugarcane fields surrounded by jagged volcanic mountains, Mark Twain once wrote, “You gather the idea that… heaven was copied after Mauritius.” In 1834, the island became one of the first regions to produce commercial vanilla outside of Mexico, thanks to the ingenuity of Edmond Albius, a 12-year-old enslaved boy who discovered how to hand-pollinate the orchid. Smell has a way of locating us somewhere else entirely, even if we’ve never been there before.
The modern fragrance industry no longer demands we trek to these places in person, though if the opportunity arises, one shouldn’t resist. Much of what we know as “natural” scent is, in fact, the result of complex logistics, historical trade routes, and the careful stewardship of farmers, distillers, and chemists across hemispheres. They are the real heroes of fragrance creation.
We invite you to think about the places your fragrance takes you, not metaphorically, but materially. To ask not only what a scent means, but where it comes from.