This New Fragrance Brand Was Built for Layering
Haeze is a new brand that wants you to park your luxury perfume in favour of an affordable fragrance wardrobe that lets you experiment more with scent.
It launches on 1 November with five original fragrances, none over $49, all designed to be layered, so you can mix and match depending on your mood.
Josh Williams and Eric Prum are the duo behind Haeze. Through Very Great, their AI-enabled consumer product company, they’ve spent the past 15 years launching brands, from kitchenware label W&P to pet brand Wild One. This latest one is their first move into beauty.
“We created Haeze to empower self-expression through fragrance, for those that refuse to be just one thing,” said Williams and Prum. “Our original, beautifully crafted scents invite you to collect, experiment, and build a fragrance wardrobe entirely your own, without compromising on quality.”
To help steer the brand’s vision, Andy Anderson was brought in as creative director, which is unsurprising, considering his résumé. He’s worked across theatre, dance, comedy, and photography, before moving into fashion, tech, and design, and he has shaped everything at Haeze from the fragrance profiles to the packaging. Each scent, he says, started from a shared, identity-shaping moment and was then twisted with an unexpected note.
The fragrances were developed with Givaudan, one of the biggest names in the business, and the collection was co-developed with Target, which will be Haeze’s exclusive retailer.
Each of the five scents represents a different fragrance family, so there’s an easy starting point if you’re wondering what to reach for. SPF 1987 is the gourmand, and it’s giving beach holiday with piña colada in hand — think banana leaf, sea salt, crème de coco, and what Haeze calls ‘sunkissed amber’.
Ember Noir is the woody option, heading somewhere darker with fir balsam and torched cedar softened by vanilla absolute. Down Pour, the fresh one, smells exactly like you’d hope: rainwater, neroli leaf, water lily, and vetiver. Petal Pusher covers floral, with pink pepper to spice things up.
& Only This is the most intriguing of the five. It’s the amber of the collection, and an ambroxan-based skin scent. If ambroxan rings a bell, it’s because it’s the sole note in cult favourite Molecule 02 by Escentric Molecules — the one that reacts with your skin chemistry so it smells slightly different on everyone. In & Only This, ambroxan is paired with clove bud, sheer iris, and soft woods, creating a warm, musky, faintly salty scent profile.
Every scent comes as an eau de parfum ($49), a Body, Hair & Linen Mist ($25), a solid fragrance ($20), and a scented candle ($10), and there’s also a $20 discovery set. Target reckons the full EDP collection costs about the same as a single fine fragrance. Five bottles come to $245, so depending on your scent of choice (Baccarat Rouge 540, we’re looking at you), it’s not wrong.
Haeze launches exclusively at Target stores across the US and at target.com on 1 November. No information has been given about a UK launch.