Numbers game: Eddie Roschi and Fabrice Penot kept it simple and consistent for Le Labo, their 18-year-old niche New York-based perfume brand. The fragrance naming format is as such: The perfume’s principal essence in French, followed by the number of ingredients used to formulate the scent. Hence, Santal 33 is, as the name suggests, a sandalwood perfume that comprises 33 ingredients.
Claim to fame: Le Labo started off in 2006 with 10 fragrances and a sandalwood candle, Santal 26, which was formulated by perfumer Frank Voelkl. The candle didn’t meet commercial success initially until it was both used to scent the luxury Gramercy Park Hotel and given away as a beauty editor’s wedding gift for her guests. Despite its surging popularity, a personal fragrance in the Santal note was never created – instead a Santal 26 room fragrance was launched soon after. It wasn’t until both founders were at a bar that they caught a whiff of Santal 26 on a stranger did they realised that it was time that they released a modified version of the Santal 26 as a personal fragrance.
With the help of Voelkl, Santal 33 was finally born in 2011. Famous faces like Justin Bieber and Sophie Turner have been said to be fans of this voluptuous blend of sandalwood, iris, cardamom and violet. In the mid-2010s, cooler-than-thou hipsters further catapulted the unisex fragrance to Instagram fame, thanks to the flacon’s sleek and minimalist architecture.
