The scent
It opens the way a garden smells in the minute after the heat leaves it. Cool, green, still deciding.
Then the jasmine arrives, and it is not the soap-and-linen kind. It is the real kind: heavy, honeyed, a little indolic, the note that made perfumers say jasmine is the one flower that smells human.
It stays there a long while. Tuberose gives it weight. Orange blossom keeps it from going airless. Underneath, a warm wood holds the whole thing against the skin.
By the fourth hour it has stopped behaving like a fragrance and started behaving like a temperature.
- Jasmine
- Tuberose
- Orange blossom
- A warm wood base
Why the batches are small
Jasmine will not be hurried, and it will not be scaled.
The flower opens after sunset and is picked in the dark, by hand, because by sunrise most of what you wanted from it has already left. Everything about the material argues for small quantities and short runs.
Ritual is made the same way. One batch at a time, filled by hand, and when it is gone it is gone until the next pour.
3 A.M.
When picking begins. The flowers are gathered before first light and taken in within hours.
1000 KG
Roughly the weight of fresh blossom behind a single kilogram of jasmine absolute.
300 +
Individual aromatic compounds in that one material. No synthetic reproduces all of them.
Made by hand
- Small batch
- Each batch is mixed, rested and filtered before it is bottled. The size of the batch is set by the materials, not by demand.
- Hand-filled & numbered
- Every bottle is filled and numbered by hand. Your number tells you which pour it came from.
- Engraved to order
- The 100 mL bottle can be engraved. Pour List members are offered engraving first, before a batch opens.
- Formulated to safety limits
- Ritual is composed within international fragrance safety guidelines for skin application.
The Pour List
Batches are announced here first, and nowhere else.
Pour List members get the batch size, the pour date, and first claim on engraving before a batch is opened to anyone else. Most batches do not last past the list.
You are on the list.
The next notice you receive from us will be the pour. Until then, silence — that is the arrangement.
One notice per pour. No other mail. Leave whenever you like.
The first pour
Batch 001
Sunday, 30 August · 11–3
- Where
- Higher Vibes Market at Flying Buddha Studio
814 West Diamond Ave, Suite 100
Gaithersburg, MD 20878 - Admission
- Free. Part wellness festival, part local market.
- Sizes
- 3 mL · 10 mL · 30 mL · 100 mL engraved to order
Batch 001 is being sold in person only. Nothing ships until Batch 002.
If you cannot be there, join the Pour List and you will hear about the next one before it is poured.
The founder
I have taught for most of my working life. More recently, yoga.
I meditate in my garden most mornings. Sitting outdoors long enough that you stop looking at a flower and start smelling it turns out to be a good way to learn what one actually does over the course of an hour. Ritual began there.
I am also an aerialist, which is how I know Sarah, who owns Flying Buddha Studio. Batch 001 has a launch because she told me to bring it to her market this month instead of waiting until everything was perfect. She was right.
I formulate, mix, rest, filter, bottle and number every batch myself. That sets a natural ceiling on how much there can be, and that is the point. I would rather run out than pour something I would not wear.
Ritual is my first release. It took a long time to get the jasmine to sit exactly where I wanted it, and I am not in a hurry to add a second scent before this one is right.
Cher · Founder
Contact
Questions about a batch, an engraving, or stocking Ritual?
Or find us on @the.house.of.vega. Replies come from one person, so give it a day.