The Music of the Understory: Making Our Perfume Oil Sing
In the fourth vintage of our beloved perfume oil, we explore the world of the redwood forests not only through scent, but also through sound: an entrancing piece of music composed using the botanical ingredients themselves.
Every living plant carries a faint electrical charge. It moves through the roots, stems and petals, shifting gradually with light and water, far too subtle for human ears to detect. For as long as forests have existed, this quiet hum of energetic music has gone unheard. But this year, while developing a new vintage of our small-batch perfume oil, Understory, we found a way to listen.
Five years ago, we crafted the first bottles of Understory as an homage to the redwood forests of our home in Northern California. In partnership with master perfumer Loreto Remsing, we formulated the perfume oil using exclusively natural botanical ingredients found within the forest itself, where a rich botanical world blooms beneath the trees’ canopy.
While these core ingredients remain the same from year to year, every vintage of Understory contains subtle and distinct variations, and we challenge ourselves to approach each formulation with fresh eyes. “The forest is never the same twice,” explains our founder, April Gargiulo. “Beyond the scent itself, our goal is always to create a unique moment of connection between the wearer and the natural world.”
In Understory Volume 4, we set out to harness not only the complex fragrances of these whole plants, but also the music they are capable of making. By gently attaching electrode pads to conifer branches, jasmine blossoms and violet leaves, we were able to observe their slight but steady electrical pulses and graph them into waves, each with their own particular pitch. We then shared these recordings with our friend and musical artist Federico Laini in Bergamo, Italy, who helped us compose them into an original piece of music.
It gives you that same feeling of peace you feel standing among the redwoods, that stillness, that sense of everything alive around you.
— April Gargiulo, Founder and CEO
Every note of the song can be traced back to one particular moment in one specific botanical, some small shift in the plant’s world causing a ripple effect in ours. "It sounds like science fiction at first,” says April. “The first time I listened to the complete song, I didn’t expect to be so moved. But it gives you that same feeling of peace you feel standing among the redwoods, that stillness, that sense of everything alive around you.”
Together, the scent and soundscape are designed to be a complete sensory experience, turning the moment of application into a deeply grounding ritual, or even a small daily meditation: as you roll the perfume oil across your pulse points and the music begins to swell, you are fully transported to the shaded world of the forest floor. Jasmine and violet arrive with the opening notes; conifer and moss settle in beneath them. Your breath slows to meet the score.
“So much of modern life pulls us out of our senses,” says April. “I hope this feels like an invitation to settle back in, take a deep breath, and listen to the living world.” For as long as the music plays, wherever you are, you are standing in the understory.
