As much as the world sterilizes, optimizes, or flattens the many joys in life, fragrance has stayed remarkably intact. It is one of the few things that threads us together with the natural world and human tradition, with many materials recognizable to what was used centuries past, from the burning incense of Ottoman mosques to the fragrant oils popular in the thermal baths of ancient Rome. Even now, perfume still hovers in the realm of the uncanny or sublime. Luca Turin, a biophysicist turned expert nose, called the study of smell as coming “face-to-face with the enduring strangeness of raw sensation.”
It’s this strangeness that the Toronto-based perfumer Courtney Rafuse, 32, relishes. In the years since it launched, in 2016, her brand, Universal Flowering, has gained a cult following. There’s something mysterious about a Universal Flowering scent that a paper test can’t capture.
