Blog post by Gwen

Haunted Rose – floral and spicy and unique

Photo: perfumeniche

The appetite for rose-based fragrances never wanes; they never go out of fashion and are always in demand. This makes creating a unique and exciting rose perfume a real challenge, but American indie fragrance house Future Society has cracked the code, literally.

Future Society was developed by Arcaea, a Boston-based beauty biotech firm founded in 2021 by MIT-trained chemical engineer Jasmina Aganivic.

Arcaea’s mission is to develop a new foundation for the beauty industry through biology. In the case of perfume, this means using genetic sequencing from samples of extinct flowers taken from the Harvard Herbarium, to reveal some of the key scent molecules they produced. Then, top perfumers were asked to formulate the scent molecules into a fragrance. Free Society launched six fragrances in 2023, all based on extinct flowers and the results are truly unique fragrances that have never been smelled before.

My favourite of the five, Haunted Rose, resurrects the smell of Macrostylis villosa subspecies 1 + 2, an extinct shrub native to South Africa that has not been seen since 1960.

On me, Haunted Rose opens with a burst of nose-tingling black pepper; its spiciness warms an opulent note of rose that’s just a little powdery around the edges. Lush saffron links to the black pepper with its spicy facet that keeps the warmth humming into the heart without overtaking the rose. As it blooms, the rose is given a leathery dimension and a hint of sweetness from the saffron, just as a splash of tangy, citrusy passionfruit adds freshness to the composition. The rose stays right down to the base, hovering over creamy, woody sandalwood and smooth, sensuous ambroxan.

Jerome Epinette signed Haunted Rose, and his attention to the nuances of the perfume's development in the skin is evident here.

Haunted Rose smells like a sun-warmed rose that’s beautifully sensuous, opulent, exciting and totally unique.

If breathing new life into extinct flowers sounds like a bit gimmicky, well, I'm all for it if it produces fragrances as unique and beautiful as Haunted Rose. 

Check out Haunted Rose in our Shop.