strangelove nyc: A Story of Strange Love That Begins with Oud

“I think of what we do as ‘telling stories of strange love through the art of perfume.’”
— Elizabeth Gaynes, founder and CEO

Basic Information

Brand name: strangelove nyc (hereafter, strangelove)
Year established: 2013
Founder: Elizabeth Gaynes
Creative director: Helena Christensen
Principal perfumers: Christophe Laudamiel (in Japanese) (the first five creations), Hamid Merati-Kashani (A Fire Within)
Official website: https://strangelovenyc.com/

Strangelove is an independent perfume brand based in New York that places natural oud (in Japanese) at the center of every creation. Although the company was founded in 2013, its product debut came the following year, in 2014, with the perfume oil Dead of Night, launched at Harrods’ Salon de Parfums in London. The company was born in 2013, and its fragrance reached the sales floor in 2014. The brand began its journey through these two milestones.

The clues to that journey lie less in a résumé listing birth dates and education than in the many encounters Elizabeth herself describes: handwork she saw in Italy, farms in Borneo, and friends she met in New York. How did someone who came from outside the perfume industry become drawn to a drop of oud? Let us begin with that path.

The Founder and the Origins of the Brand

From Los Angeles to Vancouver

Elizabeth was born in Los Angeles and grew up in Vancouver, Canada. She did not begin her career in the perfume industry; early on, she helped start-ups around the world with fundraising and market entry.

“I am adventurous, unafraid to take risks, and completely unconventional.”
— Elizabeth Gaynes

This experience in business development also connects with the later strangelove. Bringing together the different worlds of ingredient farms, producers, perfumers, and department stores, and carrying rare materials through to a finished product, required not only an instinct for scent but also the ability to build a business.

Handwork She Saw in Italy

Before moving to New York, Elizabeth lived in Italy for three years. Based in Rome, she observed a culture in which regions and families passed down particular crafts: one town making wedding dresses, another ceramics, and another place shoes for Venetian gondoliers.

It was here that her preference for objects whose makers and processes are visible, rather than mass-produced goods, took clear shape. She explains that the pride Italian families took in their work and their “love of the process of creation” still guide her own work today. Strangelove’s small, carefully chosen lineup and willingness to spend a long time searching for ingredients can be seen as an extension of this experience.

2008: A Door Opens to Borneo

The turning point came around 2008, at the time she moved from Rome to New York. A friend from a prominent Bornean family asked her to help with business development and marketing for sustainable agriculture. The family owned agarwood plantations and produced sustainable oud.

Oud refers to the aromatic resin accumulated within trees of the genus Aquilaria in the family Thymelaeaceae, distributed mainly in Southeast Asia, as a defensive response to injury or fungi, or to a fragrance material obtained from it. It combines nuances of sweetness, smoke, leather, earth, and animalic character, and its expression varies considerably with the place of origin, tree, and distillation method.

“How could I not plunge into this adventure?”
— Elizabeth Gaynes

Elizabeth worked with the Bornean farms for about three years. At the time, she says, customers of major fragrance companies were increasingly demanding transparency and sustainability in ingredients, while few suppliers could meet those needs. Eventually, they partnered with the fragrance giant Givaudan, establishing a 600-acre patchouli plantation and a vetiver plantation.

During this period, she traveled between farmland in Borneo and boardrooms in Geneva, learning about the fragrance industry from farmers, distillers, perfumers, marketers, and executives. In other words, she did not work backward from finished perfume to raw materials. She entered this world from the very beginning of the supply chain: soil, cultivation, distillation, and distribution.

The company undertaking this work was GaiaOne, which Elizabeth co-founded to develop sustainable essential-oil farming and sell and distribute natural raw materials. She dates its establishment to 2010. Regardless of what subsequently happened to GaiaOne as a company, the eye for materials and connections with producers she developed there became the foundation of her perfume-making.

The Drop That Moved Helena

Helena and Elizabeth did not meet at a glamorous fashion-industry gathering. Their sons attended the same school, and they came to know each other as parents. Elizabeth has said that their children were close friends from elementary school through high school and later attended the same university, New York University.

Recalling the moment Helena decided to join, Elizabeth describes an evening at her home when she discussed the plans for the brand and had Helena smell the first prototype of Dead of Night. What remains in Helena’s memory, meanwhile, is an oud sample her friend had brought back from Borneo. The focus differs slightly in their accounts, but the common point is that the instant she smelled that drop, Helena felt she wanted to be involved.

“The moment I smelled the first sample, I thought, ‘I’m going to be part of this.’”
— Helena Christensen

Helena was not simply a public face for advertising. As creative director, she was involved in fragrance stories, names, photographs, bottle design, and the presentation of the brand. She explains that the entire sequence of learning about different ingredients in the laboratory, blending and smelling them, preparing photographs, and thinking about names and bottles stimulates her creativity.

Meeting the Perfumer

The connection with Christophe Laudamiel also came through acquaintances. A gallerist who was a mutual friend of Elizabeth and Helena was exhibiting Laudamiel’s olfactory installations in Chelsea, New York. Because they knew his fearless approach to established conventions, inviting him to participate when they began the brand felt like a natural step.

Laudamiel is an independent perfumer with a background in chemistry and experience in both functional fragrance and fine fragrance. At strangelove, a triangle took shape: Elizabeth provided the foundation in ingredients and business, Helena the emotional and visual narrative, and Laudamiel the olfactory structure.

“We often try more than a hundred samples and keep going until we reach a version everyone is happy with.”
— Elizabeth Gaynes

In a 2016 interview, Helena recalled spending four to five years on the first Dead of Night, considering hundreds of scents and notes with Laudamiel. Given the path to its 2014 debut, this recollection presumably includes ingredient research and trials that preceded the founding of the company. It does not pinpoint the day formulation began, but conveys the long time devoted to the first fragrance.

Founded in 2013, Debuting in 2014

After the business partnership in Borneo reached its conclusion, Elizabeth decided to build “a perfume brand devoted only to quality and sustainability.” Her idea was to put oud, in particular, and rare materials difficult to handle in ordinary mass production at the center.

“I wanted to start a perfume house devoted solely to the quality of the perfume itself, using oud and rare, unusual materials.”
— Elizabeth Gaynes

The brand was founded in 2013 and officially launched in 2014 at Harrods’ Salon de Parfums. There was only one product: Dead of Night pure perfume oil. Rather than filling shelves with an extensive range, it concentrated the oud at the brand’s core into a single drop and made its debut through that one creation.

A spray version was subsequently added, followed by Melt My Heart, Silence the Sea, Lost in Flowers, and Fall into Stars. After reaching five creations by 2019, the brand did not rush to release more. In November 2024, it introduced its sixth fragrance, A Fire Within, with an initial launch at Harrods. This latest creation alone was composed not by Laudamiel but by Hamid Merati-Kashani.

What Defines the Brand

Oud as a Way of Exploring Love

For strangelove, oud is not a fashionable “oriental symbol.” It is the structure common to every fragrance and a medium that reflects a different aspect of love in each creation. Dead of Night portrays a night of stepping into desire; Melt My Heart, devotion and intoxication; Silence the Sea, a bond beyond words; Lost in Flowers, the shock of new love; Fall into Stars, love that crosses boundaries; and A Fire Within, self-discovery and inner strength.

While placing the same material in every fragrance, the brand changes the scenery through flowers, the sea, chocolate, incense, wood, and fire. The line is therefore not a “repetition of similar oud scents,” but a series testing how far oud can carry different emotions.

Ingredients and Sustainability

The brand explains that it uses two kinds of natural oud in each perfume, sourcing them directly from farms practicing sustainable cultivation in India, Vietnam, Thailand, and Cambodia. Recent interviews also describe connections with small farmers and independent distillers in India. Although Borneo was the starting point, the sourcing network that supports the fragrances has spread across several places in South and Southeast Asia.

Beyond oud, the brand has used orris butter, ambergris, red champaca, gardenia enfleurage, jonquil, sandalwood, and other materials. Enfleurage (in Japanese) is a traditional, labor-intensive extraction method that transfers the fragrance of flowers into fat. According to the official website, one kilogram of orris butter requires one tonne of iris roots, which are aged for three years before distillation.

The phrase “from 100% sustainable farms” is the sourcing policy the brand itself presents. Those words alone do not guarantee third-party certification or audits, or a system that traces the history of ingredients from each individual farm. Even so, the brand’s journey conveys an approach that treats oud not simply as a rare luxury ingredient but makes where it grows and who distills it the starting point of perfume-making.

Concentration and Production

In the brand’s overall description, spray products contain a fragrance concentration of 20–30%, and it positions them as “extraits de parfum.” That wording is also used in current product names, although “eau de parfum” and “parfum” remain in some descriptions. Even when choosing the same fragrance, looking beyond concentration terminology to whether it is a spray or oil, and to its volume, helps clarify the differences.

The perfume oils are described as “100% pure perfume,” and the brand states that they are gluten-free, cruelty-free, and free of parabens and phthalates. Because natural materials vary by harvest year and season, slight differences may occur between batches even with the same formula. In a recent interview, Elizabeth said that completing a new creation “really takes two years.”

Bottles and Adornments

The presentation combines black or pale-colored boxes, elegantly formed French glass, and custom-made 24-karat gold-plated caps. The official website cites the glass and caps as concrete examples of its approach of “prioritizing product development over marketing.”

Particularly distinctive is the potion pendant, a perfume necklace holding a 1.25 ml vial of perfume oil. The design transforms fragrance from something merely sprayed on into something like a “private aphrodisiac” worn and carried with the body. With Helena involved in photography, naming, and bottle design, perfume, story, and adornment are designed not as separate elements but as one coherent world.

The Fragrance Lineup

The core represented in the discovery set comprises six creations. Sharing natural oud as their foundation, they shift the scenery through flowers, chocolate, the sea, wood, and fire. Taking the compositions presented on the official product pages in September 2026 as our guide, let us look at the forms of love each depicts.

Dead of Night

The debut creation of 2014. It opens with violet leaf and the green of fresh foliage, Damask rose and damascenone, and ginger, then moves into jasmine, spices, rose, and Paradisone. Oud, patchouli, musk, tuberose, carrot seed, vanilla, sandalwood, incense, amber, cedarwood, and Wolfwood support the depths of the night.

Early descriptions and Fragrantica also retain note lists centered on bergamot, violet leaf, jasmine, amber, and similar materials. Differences between those entries and today’s detailed composition do not, by themselves, establish that the formula has changed. The way a note list appears can also vary with the time of the introduction and which aspects of a scent it emphasizes. Both descriptions offer ways to view the fragrance’s outline: leafy green, flowers, and deep oud.

Melt My Heart

A gourmand-style creation known for the combination of dark chocolate and orris butter. Bergamot, ginger, mandarin, fennel, artemisia, and magnolia lead into oud, dark chocolate, ylang-ylang, nutmeg, and absinthe. Orris butter, sandalwood, clary sage, and musk create a soft lingering impression.

Chocolate and orris butter appear not only in the brand’s ingredient guide but also in the notes on the current product page. The bittersweet chocolate and powdery, buttery-smooth orris together keep this creation from being merely a sweet oud fragrance.

Silence the Sea

Rather than a refreshing marine fragrance, this creation portrays the sea’s saltiness, darkness, and sense of life. It moves from a deep-sea accord, white truffle, lime, and angelica root to elemi, frankincense, narcissus, tuberose, salty jasmine, and leather-like mimosa. A handmade ambergris infusion, oud, ambrette, ambrettolide, Ambrox, and African hyraceum create a lingering impression of sinking to the seabed.

Ambergris (in Japanese) is a rare fragrance material formed from a substance originating in sperm whales and aged at sea. It has sweet, salty, and animalic qualities and is also known as a fixative that helps a fragrance last. Hyraceum is a fragrance material derived from hyrax excretions. With its animalic nuances also layered in, this is positioned as one of the most challenging of the six creations.

Lost in Flowers

It depicts the moment of encountering new love as a torrent of flowers. Lily of the valley, Guatemalan cardamom, and tagetes flowers lead to red champaca, jasmine, saffron, and oud. Gardenia enfleurage, French oakmoss, patchouli, white musk, and sandalwood receive and support those flowers.

Red champaca and gardenia enfleurage have long been presented as emblematic materials of this creation, and their names remain in its current composition. Fragrantica lists its release year as 2018, but a founder interview at the end of 2017 was already discussing it as a new fragrance. Its exuberant floral world became more widely known from late 2017 into 2018.

Fall into Stars

Added in 2019, this creation takes cosmic expansiveness as its theme. Pink pepper, saffron, ginger, bergamot, and oud lead to French jonquil, henna flower, rose, and rosewood. Peru balsam, Siam benzoin, amber, oud, and labdanum envelop the flowers and spices.

The official ingredient guide also introduces rosewood sustainably sourced from a distillery in the Peruvian Amazon, and jonquil, now rarely used as a natural fragrance material. Elizabeth has said that this creation took about a year to complete.

A Fire Within

The sixth creation, initially released at Harrods in November 2024 as the first new fragrance since 2019. Its current composition lists vanilla, apple, cypress, carrot, chamomile, geranium, pink pepper, incense, cedarwood, spices, and natural oud.

Its theme is the inner fire of someone who has passed through adversity: resilience and transformation. Elizabeth explains that it “represents the beauty that emerges from hardship, like a flower blooming in an arid desert.” Although the perfumer changed to Hamid Merati-Kashani, the brand’s grammar of placing natural oud at the emotional center remains intact.

An Additional Note…

The brand reportedly had the working name “ERH1012” at first. Rather than trying to decipher the origins of the letters and numbers, what is intriguing is the contrast between its impersonal sound and the emotion carried by the present name, “strangelove.” The very name through which the fragrances are described changed as the brand took shape.

Elizabeth explains that the name Dead of Night comes from a line in the Beatles’ “Blackbird.” Its nocturnal sound connected with the dense world of oud. Before release, some worried that the word “dead” would put customers off, but she reportedly felt instead that it was a name that would make people stop and take notice.

Elizabeth’s work has also attracted attention from the fashion world. The brand’s profile states that she has been nominated three times for a Fashion Group International, or FGI, award for her work in fragrance. This is a record of being shortlisted, not of winning. For someone leading a small independent perfume house, it is another marker of the widening reach of her work.

In short, strangelove’s story is not that of a brand that sought rare materials in order to sell perfume. It is the story of someone who encountered oud through sustainable agriculture and the world of fragrance raw materials, then created a perfume house to follow that material all the way through. Its approach of limiting the number of creations and choosing strong reactions over easy likability is not for everyone. Yet that is precisely why it is worth trying a drop at a time and discovering how it changes on your own skin.

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