The Sunset Strip in the ’60s had a curious mascot twirling above the Sahara Hotel sign: a larger-than-life cowgirl visible from Gore Vidal’s room at the Chateau Marmont. “For me she is Hollywood, and mesmerizing,” says the title character in Myra Breckinridge, Vidal’s 1968 novel. Daniel Patrick Giles might agree, given the L.A. arcana infused into his new fragrance project, Perfumehead.
“I love that mix of history with modernity,” says the founder, unpacking the cultural trawl that informed the brand’s three-year development. For Giles, a beauty-industry veteran, the reading list included The Mirage Factory and The Castle on Sunset; visual cues ranged from Mulholland Drive and La Piscine to Kate Moss’s cameo in a Primal Fear music video. “She talks about, ‘Flowers are the things we grow, secrets are the things we know,’” Giles says. Such lyrics conjure up fragrances laced with cinematic suspense.
The seven hand-poured extraits, debuting this month at Violet Grey’s Melrose Place boutique, glimmer with lore. Cosmic Cowboy (musk, orris, cinnamon) takes cues from Myra, Orville Peck, and a Nudie-suited Robert Redford. Moon Flower imagines 3 a.m. blooms along a Runyon Canyon hike—nature with a glimmer of white-floral refinement, à la Robert Mapplethorpe’s black-and-white still lifes. “Over my shoulder is the Chateau Marmont,” Giles says from his home in West Hollywood, describing the legendary hotel as a nexus for Perfumehead’s “osmocosm.” Room No is an overt nod, with sensual, spicy notes: “I started to think about ‘If these walls could talk.’ ”
Created in batches of 50, the fragrances come with glass stoppers, reinstating an old-world gesture for the present. “At the core of this, I personally wanted to experience more of the human element, the touch,” Giles says. Ahead, he plans to add an eau de parfum with proceeds that benefit mental well-being, in part influenced by his odyssey with long COVID. Scent as “an emotional connection—that’s what really excites me.”