Artifact Is a New Perfume Brand You Won’t Need to Gatekeep
Most perfumes come with a backstory, but new brand Artifact has launched and it would rather you brought your own.
The British fragrance house is starting with two genderless extraits de parfum. “Traditionally, fragrance has spoken about itself, its origins and its inspirations,” founder Keely Parsons said. “Artifact speaks about the wearer.”
It’s a brand for fragrance fans moving away from mass-market signature scents towards something more complex and hard to place. Artifact calls its approach Neo-Adaptive Fragrance, which uses time-released layers that react to your skin’s temperature and pH. The result is a scent completely unique to you. One that also continues to change as the day goes on. At last — a fragrance we don’t need to gatekeep.
Neo and Hot are the debut fragrances and they’re designed to contrast each other, so you can skip the layering. Neo has a sharp and bright opening thanks to yuzu and aldehydes (that soapy, fresh-laundry scent). A heart of green tea and bamboo quiets things down before cedar and transparent musk create a soft, woody finish. Hot is something altogether different. It’s a warm, spicy, woody amber fragrance, with cardamom and clove bringing the spice, and plum and whiskey adding a sweet, boozy edge. Amber, tonka, and musk round out the base, while geranium adds a floral touch.
Whichever you pick, you’re promised lasting power. Both are 25% extraits, which means more perfume oil and less alcohol than your average eau de parfum. Still, £150 for 50ml is quite the investment on a blind buy. Luckily, there are more affordable ways to try the scents. Each comes in a 10ml size for £40, or there’s The Debut Discovery Set for £60, with 10ml of both, plus a £60 voucher towards a full-size bottle that never expires. So the minis are essentially free if you go on to buy a 50ml.
Both scents are available now exclusively in the UK at your-artifact.com, priced from £40, with select boutique stockists to follow.