LVNEA: Perfume as Folklore, Ritual, and Return

There are some creators whose work feels less like a product and more like a place. LVNEA is one of them. A perfume house built not on trends or excess, but on quiet intensity, botanical knowledge, and the belief that scent can hold memory, myth, and meaning all at once.

What draws us to LVNEA is the same thing that draws us to old books, shadowed forests, and hand-crafted objects with a soul: an uncompromising devotion to process, story, and atmosphere. Each fragrance feels like a passage into a living world - rooted in plants, folklore, and an almost animistic dialogue with nature - where the familiar and the otherworldly coexist.

In this conversation, we step inside the creative universe of LVNEA to talk about storytelling through scent, raw materials with ancient histories, and the quiet magic of working with nature as a collaborator rather than a resource. Consider this an invitation: to slow down, breathe deeply, and wander through a world where perfume becomes ritual.

1. For readers discovering LVNEA for the first time: how would you describe the soul of your perfume house?

LVNEA is built around the idea that perfume can be a form of art and storytelling. Each fragrance is composed exclusively of natural extracts; an artistic interpretation of the natural world drawing on its history and plant-based folklore. The perfumes are meant to simultaneously feel like stepping into a world both mythical and familiar, like arriving back home.

2. LVNEA is known for its atmospheric, naturalistic fragrances. What sparks your imagination when you begin creating a new scent?

Every perfume begins with a story. It might come from a folktale, a seasonal shift, or the lore surrounding a particular plant. I spend time imagining the atmosphere of that story–what it looks like, what it feels like and, ultimately, how that might translate into scent or perfume. 

3. You often work with raw, natural materials. Which ingredients or accords feel most deeply tied to your personal universe—and why?

Materials with a strong connection to the landscape and its inhabitants tend to resonate most with me. Resins, herbs, and flowers with deep, established folklore are the inhabitants of LVNEA’s world. What interests me most is how each ingredient carries both a scent and a story; when I use them in a composition, they are not just notes, but fragments of a larger story.

However, if I had to choose one single ingredient, it would probably be the rose. Her ubiquity never tires me—on the contrary, her role as a healer, muse, and fierce protector is inspiring.

4. Many LVNEA scents feel like entering a specific world or memory. Is there a fragrance in your collection that holds a particularly emotional story for you?

Oh, hmm–you know, I don’t think there’s one single fragrance of mine that holds more emotional significance than the other. Each one comes from a deep, personal connection to the plants and materials used so, in a way, I would say they’re all steeped in sentiment

5. Your aesthetic blends the botanical, the ritualistic, and the otherworldly. How does this translate into your daily work as a creator?

My process is rooted in a relationship with the natural world. I garden, grow, and forage a portion of the plants I work with and approach nature through an animistic lens. When I work with raw materials or their extracts, I attune to their essence or spirit, noticing how they reveal themselves through their emotional impact and intuitive impressions. When you experience nature as animate and communicative, it takes on a sense of mystery or otherworldlyness. Translating that feeling into something tangible is at the heart of my process and aesthetic. 

6. What does your creative space look like right now? Any tools, books, materials, or tiny obsessions living on your workbench?

When I’m in the throes of creativity, it looks a little like a chaotic mess–but in the best way. There are little bottles for dilutions covering my workbench, along with multiple notebooks, mouillettes (or scent strips), reference books and tinctures. I’m a bit of a collector, so there are antique fragrance and apothecary containers, unusual trinkets, and pressed plants scattered about; it’s giving a bit of a mix of a laboratory and old apothecary. 

7. LVNEA has a strong and devoted following. What do you hope people feel—or remember—when they wear your scents?

Ideally, the experience of wearing a LVNEA fragrance transports the person somewhere else–into a story that is both new and exciting, while also comforting and strangely familiar. I want the wearer to feel as though they’ve stepped into a story or a landscape, something intimate but also timeless. Scent has the ability to connect us to memory, but also life and creation; nature and imagination. If someone feels that connection, then the perfume has done its work.

8. Can you share a recent moment, discovery, or experiment that surprised you in the studio?

Some of the most interesting moments come from trying to recreate scents that don’t typically exist as commercial materials, and attempting to build those impressions through unconventional accords and extraction methods, like tincturing. Experimenting with your own extraction methods can yield unexpected results–you never really know what you’ll have until it’s finished. For example, I’ve tinctured some damp, antique books, and was delighted to discover the sweet vanilla note that emerged from beneath the signature ‘old book’ mustiness. 

9. What is next for LVNEA? Any whispers you can share about upcoming releases, collaborations, or directions?

I’m most excited to share The Language of Flowers, Volume II: Strange Flowers (coming next month), but we do have a few more releases to look forward to later this year–ones that contain some really unconventional materials (see next question)! We’re also working on a long overdue packaging update for next year that I’m super excited for.

10. And finally: what scent, natural or otherwise, is haunting you these days?

Because the natural palette has its limitations, encountering a new extract or raw material is quite exciting. I recently came upon a new, rare mushroom extract and needed to begin working with it immediately, flooded with inspiration and ideas of different ways to incorporate this mushroom into fragrance. I recently started my own extract using corn kernels, as well–-sunny and sweet. A corn-based perfume is surely on the horizon. 

LVNEA reminds us that perfume doesn’t have to shout to be powerful. It can whisper, linger, and reveal itself slowly - like a memory resurfacing, or a story told in fragments over time. There is patience in this work, and reverence. A deep respect for materials, for nature’s voice, and for the emotional landscapes scent can unlock.

Reading these answers feels much like wearing a LVNEA fragrance: intimate, transporting, and strangely grounding. It’s a return - to craft, to intuition, to the idea that beauty can be both wild and precise.

We’re grateful to share this world with you, and to support creators who move through darkness, folklore, and nature with such care and integrity.

With curiosity, quiet devotion, and a love for all things beautifully atmospheric,
Kit & Emil