Heretic Parfum: Wearing Nature’s Dirty Beauty with a Rebellious Spirit

“Fragrance is an invisible world that connects us to our own sensuality and allows a deeper connection with ourselves and the world around us.”

— Douglas Little, founder of Heretic Parfum​

Essential Information

• Brand: Heretic Parfum
• Founded: 2016, in Los Angeles
• Founder: Douglas Little
• Official website: hereticparfum.com

The Founder and the Origins of the House

Born in Los Angeles in 1974: A Boy Enchanted by Smell

Douglas Little was born in Los Angeles in 1974 to two photographers. His parents ran a photography studio in North Hollywood and worked as freelance artists. With self-employed parents who were constantly on the move, the young Little was always surrounded by the adult working world: business negotiations, photo shoots, and hair and makeup teams. His father also taught evening photography classes at UCLA, the University of California, Los Angeles, and Little would sit in on them. By the age of fourteen, he reportedly had also completed courses in Japanese calligraphy, pastel drawing, herbalism, and ikebana through his own initiative.​

From an early age, Little’s companions were not children his own age. He raised snakes, spiders, lizards, toads, and a crow named Poe, planted a garden of carnivorous plants, and immersed himself in books. His encounter with fragrance came on the way home in North Hollywood. Passing an inconspicuous little shop called Herb Products Inc., he was stopped in his tracks by the smell of camphor that seemed to seep out of the building.​

“The shop sold dried herbs and essential oils by the ounce, mainly to herbalists. I spent hours poring over its catalog, looking up everything with a strange name and accumulating knowledge.”

— Douglas Little​

He reportedly began selling homemade fragrance oils to his mother’s friends at just twelve years old. He has also recalled a childhood game at a garden center: his mother would take him there, tear off leaves, and ask him to identify their scents. A correct answer earned him twenty-five cents. That was where his sense that “every plant has an invisible signature” began.

As a teenager, he became deeply immersed in Gothic subculture: the sound of Siouxsie and the Banshees, deathrock clubs, clove cigarettes, and black eyeliner. He says that this “world of beautiful decay” still flows beneath Heretic’s fragrances today.​

Where Design and Scent Meet: UCLA, ArtCenter, and Grasse

In terms of formal education, Little studied marketing and product development at UCLA and ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena. After graduating, he worked in marketing for a major cosmetics company, but could not shake the feeling that he did not fit within the industry’s mainstream. He says he began to feel that the mainstream beauty industry lacked authenticity in every aspect, from manufacturing to sales.

Following his instincts, he traveled to Grasse, the southern French city often described as the heartland of the global perfume industry. There, he attended lectures at the Syndicat National des Fabricants de Produits Aromatiques, the educational institution of the French aromatic-products manufacturers’ association, learning the fundamentals and chemistry of fragrance composition, as well as a profound respect for the art form.​

“My time in Grasse taught me the structure of composition and fragrance as an art. It gave me a grounding in chemistry and a foundation to build on. More importantly, it gave me a great respect for this wonderful art form and the confidence to boldly color outside the lines.”

— Douglas Little​

2003: Launching D.L. & Co., Candles with Gothic Sensibility and Craftsmanship

After returning from Grasse, Little founded his first fragrance brand, D.L. & Co., in 2003. Also known by the full name “D.L. & Co.: Modern Alchemists and Purveyors of Curious Goods,” it was a brand with an edgy Gothic sensibility centered on artisan-composed scented candles. It reportedly distinguished itself through details such as a special patented blend of soy, palm, and maple waxes, Burmese silk boxes, and Swiss-made pleated tissue paper. Like Aladdin’s magic lamp, the brand found success almost instantly.

Little left D.L. & Co. in 2009 and, after a brief respite, began moving toward his next stage.
In 2010, he heard a woman from a prestigious perfume house remark at a fragrance-industry panel that “natural perfumery is merely the work of housewives and heretics.” Feeling that the word applied to both himself and his brand, Little immediately called his lawyer, applied for a trademark, and made it his company name.

2012–2016: The Birth of Heretic Parfum

After leaving D.L. & Co., Little was convinced that niche fragrance represented the future of the market. He also sensed that the time was coming when natural fragrance materials would finally find acceptance within luxury perfumery.​

“In 2012, I began developing Heretic Parfum. I made a conscious decision that if I was going to put myself through the stress of developing another product line, it had to be exactly what I envisioned, without any compromises.”

— Douglas Little​

In March 2016, the house officially debuted at Barneys New York’s new Chelsea store in Manhattan. Heretic Parfum became the first 100% natural perfume collection to be carried by Barneys.​

The beginning was not smooth, however. In an interview with the New York Post, Little looked back candidly.

“I believed I had great taste and that everyone would love it. But it didn’t work at all.”

— Douglas Little​

Customers were confused by names that were “too mystical,” scents that were “too complex,” and, above all, the very concept of “natural perfume.” Little paused, discontinued the fragrances that were not selling, and concentrated on those that remained. Then, in 2017, he introduced the Dirty series, which became a turning point.​

“Just when everyone was starting to talk about dirty chemicals, I wanted to respond with a bit of irony: this is a 100% clean perfume, but I’m going to call it Dirty.”

— Douglas Little​

This reversal in naming worked. Fragrances made only from natural materials yet named “Dirty” began attracting attention, riding the wave of clean beauty while setting themselves apart from established clean-beauty brands.

Gwyneth Paltrow and Worldwide Attention

Shortly after the Dirty series was released, a beauty editor at Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle brand Goop reportedly fell in love with Heretic’s fragrances and introduced them to Paltrow herself.​

“Gwyneth has a clear eye for distinguishing quality from what isn’t quality.”

— Douglas Little​

The two collaborated and, in early 2020, released a candle called This Smells Like My Vagina on Goop’s e-commerce site. Its ingredients included bergamot, cedarwood, ambrette seed, and Damask rose. With the impact of its name, it sold out almost immediately and became a talking point worldwide. Follow-ups such as This Smells Like My Orgasm and This Smells Like My Prenup turned the collaboration into a series.

“I received both praise and harsh criticism. That is when you know you have truly stirred something.”

— Douglas Little​

Through this series of collaborations, Heretic moved beyond the boundaries of a niche fragrance brand and established itself as a provocative cultural voice.

The House’s Commitments

“Radical Transparency”: Ingredient Disclosure as Rebellion

For many years, the perfume industry has legally been allowed to conceal every ingredient in a bottle under the single word “fragrance” (the U.S. Fair Packaging and Labeling Act of 1966 exempts ingredient disclosure as a “trade secret”). Heretic directly challenges this practice, making it a principle to disclose every ingredient in every product on its product pages. Harper’s Bazaar described Heretic as “breaking the industry’s boundaries by offering complete transparency about perfume ingredients.”

Choosing Organic Sugarcane Alcohol

Most commercial perfumes use a denatured alcohol called SD40, alcohol to which toxic chemicals have been added to make it undrinkable. Concerned about its toxicity, Little developed his own sourcing route for non-GMO organic sugarcane alcohol.

“The problem was that, because the alcohol was undenatured, the government assumed we were buying it to make drinks. In the end, we had to team up with a beverage manufacturer, because they were already using this alcohol in their products.”

— Douglas Little​

Little also explains that the sugarcane alcohol itself has a slightly sweet scent, making it part of the aromatic profile and providing the foundation for a more complex, dynamic fragrance.​

The Philosophy of Natural Materials: Beauty in Imperfection

All Heretic fragrances are based on plant-derived natural materials such as essential oils, concretes (semi-solid fragrance materials obtained through solvent extraction), and absolutes (liquid fragrance materials obtained through solvent extraction). The current range also includes formulas combining natural materials with ingredients the brand labels “Safe Synthetic,” as in Spectral Grace and the revised The Veil. Their product pages disclose the individual ingredients and classify their origins.

“With natural fragrance, as with wine, you can sense the nuances of the plant, the soil, and its environment. It has an individuality that synthetics cannot achieve. These scents are alive and leave an olfactory fingerprint.”

— Douglas Little​

The word “Dirty,” which Little favors, refers to a material’s unrefined, unpolished, wild character. Nature’s rough-hewn individuality, from the soil to the stem and petals, with its organic imperfections and earthy beauty intact, is the essence of Heretic’s scents.​

Another characteristic is its view of fragrance not simply as something consumed for a pleasant smell, but as “functional fragrance” based on ancient wisdom such as Ayurveda, the traditional medicine of India, homeopathy, and herbalism.​

“A chemist once told me that products made with high concentrations of natural materials are elevated almost to the level of treatments. I ask this question in terms of the functionality of the ingredients: can this fragrance communicate something beyond simply smelling good? A calming effect, for example?”

— Douglas Little​

Small-Batch Production in the Los Angeles Studio

Production is still carried out by hand in small batches in the Los Angeles studio. Each fragrance is born at a perfumer’s workstation that Little calls an “organ,” with at least two hundred glass bottles neatly arranged on a wooden desk. Each batch differs subtly with the harvest, which is another reason the fragrances have individual character, like wine.

The official website does not publish a detailed explanation of the packaging. Reviews describe the bottle design as a minimalist expression of the house’s philosophy of “radical transparency,” but the research for this article did not locate an interview in which the founder discussed the design concept in detail.

A Non-Gendered, Nonbinary Approach to Perfume

Heretic positions all its fragrances as “non-gendered,” not bound by gender. Rejecting the traditional perfume market’s divisions into women’s and men’s scents, it aims to create fragrances anyone can wear without being constrained by gender.​

Heretic’s range includes Dirty, named for materials; Blood, which connects plant vitality with blood; and Nocturnal, devoted to night-scented flowers. Collaborations with people and films sit alongside projects that bring existing and new fragrances into one story. Dirty Hinoki, for example, is both an individual perfume and one of the five fragrances in Rhubarb Thief’s narrative.

The Dirty Series: The Heart of the House

Introduced in 2017, Dirty deliberately gave natural fragrances an apparently contradictory name. Little has recalled wanting to challenge associations between natural perfume and old-fashioned hippie culture or spa scents. Familiar subjects such as vanilla and rose meet woods, resins, and spices.

For Dirty Patchouli, the choice of material was the starting point. Little described discovering a small producer’s CO₂-extracted patchouli whose woody, leafy-earth and sap-like character surprised him, with less of the camphoraceous or sulfurous facets he associated with the material. He added a generous amount of benzoin and some blond tobacco for a boozy, caramel-like depth.

The inspiration also came from nights in his friend Betony Vernon’s Paris apartment: drinking champagne, rolling cigarettes, burning patchouli paste, and cutting leather. Recalling those evenings, Little identified the unusually generous benzoin as a key to the blend. He suggested layering with Dirty Vanilla to move toward a gourmand effect, or Dirty Suede for a more provocative character.

Dirty Hinoki translates forest bathing into fragrance. Hinoki and cypress are joined by lemon, thyme, nutmeg, and cedar, with elemi, fir, balsam, and frankincense adding resinous depth. Alongside dry timber, green facets suggest crushed herbs and conifer needles, evoking breathing in a forest.

Dirty Vanilla draws inspiration from the orchid that produces vanilla. Cedar, ho wood, and coriander surround its sweetness, supported by patchouli, sandalwood, styrax, and vetiver. Dirty Rose layers Damask rose with pink pepper, nutmeg, blackcurrant, and elemi. Labdanum, cypriol, patchouli, and vanilla lend earthy and resinous shadows to the softness of the petals.

Dirty Coconut combines CO₂-extracted coconut with substantial sandalwood, vanilla, cedar, and ambrettolide. Its milky flesh-like texture develops into warm wood and sweetness. The sculptural inspiration includes the Seychelles coco de mer fruit, but the coconut extract used in the formula comes from Cocos nucifera, the coconut palm.

Dirty Peach takes peach skin warmed by early-summer sun as its subject. Orange, mandarin, and grapefruit lead into peach notes, jasmine, strawberry, blackcurrant bud, and violet leaf, finishing with vetiver. Dirty Suede combines cedar, white amber, and pink pepper with jasmine sambac, balsam, and Ambroxan in a soft leather-and-musk composition.

Dirty Violet was introduced in 2019 as a collaboration with drag artist Violet Chachki, who was drawn to Heretic’s lightness and natural impression. Its current scent brings violet leaf, orris, and Turkish rose together with jasmine sambac, frankincense, patchouli, and labdanum. Amber-like and leathery facets accompany green leaves and soft flowers.

Earlier experiments include Dirty Grass and Dirty Lavender. At launch, Dirty Grass contained hemp-derived CBD oil alongside vetiver, lavender, rose, and citrus. Dirty Lavender’s 2023 formula included lavender absolute, neroli, cedar, palo santo, and amyris. These are historical formulas; their current composition and continued availability have not been confirmed.

Dirty Grapefruit also appeared in a body-and-hair-mist project. Pink grapefruit meets a wet-rose-petal impression, black tea, and vetiver. Alongside Dirty Lemon and Dirty Mango, it was offered as a mist for skin and hair.

The Blood Series: Four Creations Carrying Nature’s Vitality

The Blood series imagines plant essences as carriers of the earth’s life. Blood Berry joined Blood Cedar, Dragon’s Blood, and Blood Orange to make four fragrances. Red fruit, trees, and resins express that vitality, while the Blood Box brings them together in four 2 mL samples.

Blood Cedar depicts a deep forest. Frankincense and spruce lead into blood cedar and Siberian fir absolute, accompanied by cypress, pine, and wormwood. Several conifers, resins, and bitter green notes create the sense of being surrounded by trees rather than isolating cedar alone.

Dragon’s Blood takes the red resin of that name toward smoky and leathery effects. Cedar, frankincense, rosewood, and coriander meet May rose and dragon’s blood, followed by oud, patchouli, and benzoin. Resinous warmth and substantial oud distinguish it from Blood Cedar’s coniferous composition.

Blood Orange combines Italian blood orange with bergamot, red mandarin, bitter orange, and lemon. Cedar and ylang-ylang are followed by champaca, pink lotus, rose, and jasmine sambac, then ambrettolide, benzoin, and vanilla. Sharp fruit develops into full flowers and gentle sweetness.

Blood Berry connects ripe red berries with a warm, spicy impression. Bergamot, grapefruit, and geranium introduce Damask rose and blackcurrant bud, with a raspberry note in the finish. Citrus acidity and the green character of buds accompany the sweetness of the fruit.

The Nocturnal Collection: Flowers That Scent the Night

Nocturnal’s three fragrances explore night-scented flowers and the transformation, secrecy, and transience they suggest. Each floral subject is paired with a tarot card: Death for Angel’s Trumpet, The Lovers for Nocturnal Tuberose, and The High Priestess for Queen of the Night.

Angel’s Trumpet takes Brugmansia, with its hanging trumpet-shaped flowers, as its subject. Green freesia, damp-leaf-like violet leaf, and rich jasmine express its musky floral scent. Hyssop, geranium, ylang-ylang, water lily, tiare, and vetiver also form part of the composition. The Death card symbolizes transformation from an ending toward a new beginning.

Nocturnal Tuberose pairs dense white flowers with the honeyed brightness of orange blossom and the soft green character of gardenia. Neroli, linalool, and Sichuan pepper introduce tuberose, jasmine, ylang-ylang, and rose, supported by ambrette seed, vetiver, and cistus. The Lovers represents tensions between heart and reason, love and obsession, light and darkness.

Queen of the Night focuses on the night-flowering cactus Selenicereus grandiflorus. Vanilla and jasmine meet powdery-green mimosa, with ylang-ylang, bitter orange, lime, and vetiver. The fleeting mystery of a flower lasting one night is connected with the introspection and wisdom of The High Priestess.

Collaborations and Signature Creations

Scandalwood is a collaboration with burlesque artist Dita Von Teese. At the time of its creation, she and Little had been friends for fifteen years and shared an interest in rare and beautiful objects. Sandalwood, coriander, and Bulgarian rose form the center, with Atlas cedar, labdanum, and white musk. Creamy wood, flowers, and spice create an intimate, close-to-skin sensuality.

Nosferatu grew from a collaboration with Robert Eggers’s 2024 film and its distributor, Focus Features. Rather than recreating vampire blood, its story begins with a thunderstorm outside Count Orlok’s castle. Petrichor evokes wet earth and stone, while lilac in the rocks and dark violet connect the flowers with the heroine, Ellen.

Lilac and ambrette are followed by violet, orris, cypriol, vegan ambergris, oud, and labdanum. Little described being drawn to the film’s restrained palette and its light within darkness, imagining lilacs crushed beneath cold stone and a faint suggestion of decay. Flowers, minerals, and animalic nuances translate its color and damp atmosphere into perfume.

Ghosts and Chelsea Wolfe

Ghosts, featuring musician Chelsea Wolfe, brings together five sheer, veil-like fragrances that appear and disappear close to the skin: Spectral Grace, Ektoplasma, The Veil, Doppelgänger, and Shadow People. Little described beginning with the question, “Could I distill the scent of the unseen?” Fragrance and music explore the presence of something that cannot be clearly seen.

Spectral Grace imagines an abandoned Hollywood soundstage, adding fine dust and damp stone to the delicate character of lily of the valley. Shadow People conveys the unease of sensing something at the edge of vision through dust, oakmoss, a static-like sensation, and geosmin’s damp, mineral smell.

The Veil depicts light passing through translucent fabric with varied musks, orris butter, vetiver, Atlas cedar, and patchouli. The current product has a revised formula, different from the 2025 version. Ektoplasma moves from cold vapor toward milky flowers and sandalwood; Doppelgänger develops from sheer woods and musk toward the warmth of skin.

Other Major Creations

Smudge began as a fragrance Little made for himself after moving to New York, seeking distance from the overwhelming atmosphere of city life. Looking to his Scots-Irish roots, he drew on cleansing rituals involving burning juniper. Juniper and clary sage meet frankincense, labdanum, sandalwood, patchouli, and tonka bean, turning smoke and resin into something to wear without burning branches.

Florgasm takes the uninhibited sensuality of flowers as its subject. Pink pepper, bergamot, and orange blossom introduce jasmine, tuberose, and ylang-ylang, with ambrette-seed musk in the drydown. Bergamusk pairs bergamot with lime, lavender, thyme, and verbena, moving through jasmine and cedar toward ambrettolide, musk, and sandalwood. Where Florgasm emphasizes abundant flowers, Bergamusk centers on citrus and musk.

Little has identified Coeur Noir and Poltergeist as particularly personal creations. Coeur Noir portrays an inner world moving between light and shadow, with rosewood, labdanum, and Madagascan vanilla providing woody and resinous warmth.

Poltergeist explores the presence that remains after someone or something has passed. It imagines riding a motorcycle through a pine forest at night, using the sharp greenery of pine, juniper, and wormwood and the smoke of birch tar, cade, and frankincense. Champaca and labdanum contribute to a sense of disturbance and physical force rather than woodland stillness. One of the house’s early fragrances, it has been reissued in small batches as natural materials become available.

Häxan was inspired by the 1922 silent film of the same name. Its world of witchcraft and paganism becomes the apricot-like and leathery facets of osmanthus, Turkish rose, and damp oakmoss. Fossilized-amber-like notes and musk add dark resinous tones beneath the flowers.

Black Salt is set on a coast at night. Lime, black pepper, tangerine, and eucalyptus lead into water lily, jasmine sambac, Turkish rose, and a smoked-sea-salt impression. Seaweed, labdanum, and petrichor evoke wet lava and the tide.

Midnight Toker takes blond tobacco and clove-cigarette smoke as its subjects. Clove and cypriol meet orris, jasmine, and apricot, followed by tobacco, vanilla, birch tar, and labdanum. Honeyed apricot sweetness combines with the impression of scorched vanilla and smoke.

Rhubarb Thief: A Story in Five Fragrances

The Rhubarb Thief project tells the story of Monsieur Lapin, a rabbit perfumer who steals rhubarb and turns it into perfume. A book-shaped discovery set recalls nineteenth-century fairy-tale volumes, with watercolors by Sam Wolf Connelly and five fragrances; stop-motion film extends the story. The selection comprises Rhubarb Thief, Fourteen Carrots, Beekeeper, Jasmine Smoke, and Dirty Hinoki.

Rhubarb Thief moves from grapefruit peel, angelica, thyme, verbena, and carrot seed into rhubarb, pink jasmine, and cypress, with elemi and oakmoss. Tart, green, snapped-stem effects form its center. Fourteen Carrots explores the earthiness and sweetness of carrots, placing carrot absolute alongside carrot seed, clove, orange peel, patchouli, vetiver, and oud.

Beekeeper reflects Little’s interest in beekeeping. Beeswax absolute meets honey, myrrh, helichrysum, papyrus, styrax, vetiver, and cistus to suggest wax, smoke, and warmed wood around a hive. Because it contains beeswax, it is not vegan. Jasmine Smoke, brought back from the archive, combines jasmine with clove, guaiac wood, patchouli, and tonka. Together with the existing Dirty Hinoki, the five fragrances can be worn individually or layered.

Discovery Sets Built Around Themes

The Smoke Box gathers Poltergeist, Smudge, Midnight Toker, Dirty Vanilla, and Dirty Hinoki: five fragrances centered on smoke and wood. Season of the Witch includes creations from different projects, among them Häxan, Angel’s Trumpet, and Coeur Noir. Such thematic selections sit alongside sets devoted to a particular series, such as Blood or Nocturnal.

An Additional Note…

• Alongside his work as a fragrance designer, Douglas Little is highly regarded for visual installations and window displays created for leading names such as Van Cleef & Arpels, Bergdorf Goodman, and Maxfield Los Angeles. He has also worked with Swarovski to design a fifty-foot Christmas tree in Milan’s Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II.
• He often emphasizes that he is a Scorpio, joking that “a Scorpio’s mission is to convert patchouli haters into patchouli lovers.”​
• At least two hundred glass bottles are arranged in the studio on a wooden desk called an “organ.” In a perfumer’s atelier, “organ” is the general term for the shelving used to organize fragrance-material bottles, a traditional industry name likening the arrangement to a pipe organ.​
• Little also has a strong interest in screen adaptations of science fiction and Gothic literature. He has described designing the set for a film adaptation of Joris-Karl Huysmans’s novel À rebours, or Against Nature, as his “fantasy project.”​​