The Scent of #FeralGirlSummer
An indie perfumer's guide on how to embrace chaos with your perfume
When the #FeralGirlSummer trend first popped up on the internet, I felt seen.
As the founder of Apotheke, a brand that matches perfumes with personality types, Feral Girl Summer was the exact energy we wanted to create with our most deviant ‘perfume personality’ The Lover.
Whereas the internet trend 'Hot Girl Summer' was about posing by a pool and the performance of sexual availability, the latest spin 'Feral Girl Summer' was about actually diving in the pool and enjoying the deed in all its messy glory.
And The Lover was the perfect scent for all those Feral Gals with its pheromone-inducing, sweet-but-musky notes that isn’t trying to please everyone.
The Lover is not your classic "top notes of blah, blah, and bottom notes of XYZ". You can't pull apart what's in it, and that's why it's technically the most interesting of the four Apotheke perfumes - even if it's also the most hated.
It's the only one in our collection that had a waiting list when we released the 100ml bottle, and it's the only perfume that some customers really don't get.
Not everything is for everyone.
And that's one of the things I love about the bonkers and addictive world of perfume: Everyone's scent DNA is completely different. That's why we made The Apotheke Perfume Personality Quiz so that you can find the perfect scent for you based on your psychology, do the quiz here if you haven't already.
The Lover is a confusing triage of cotton candy, skanky sweat, and juicy cassis you want to bite really hard. It was the trickiest to get right. During development, our master perfumer Marie le Febvre made a version we called 'Lover X' which had so much skatole, dogs followed me down the street when I was road testing it.
What is Skatole?
For the perfume-curious, skatole is a synthetic molecule that mimics indoles that are naturally found in skanky white flowers, like jasmine and orange blossom. In small doses indoles are addictive and beautiful, it's that cloying, meaty note that's sensual and sickening at the same time.
Alarmingly it's also the molecule found in the whiff of dead animals, human waste, and acute body odor. In isolation, and at high quantities skatole and indoles are rank, but a tiny bit added to a blend (by someone like Le Febvre who knows what they are doing) can be absolute magic. Like a shaving of truffle or blue cheese and a single anchovy added to a bubbling sauce. It's that small element that's hard to explain that differentiates between craft and art, good and great architecture, and fashion with a capital 'F' and everything else.
The Apotheke perfume personality quiz helps you find the perfume that is not just for you, but is you. We have a tarot card for each perfume, it’s like a horoscope. The perfumes are not about me, or the notes in them, they are about you and The Lovers are Feral Girls before the internet had given them a name.
I’ll always remember this group of girls at the launch of a pop-up shop we had last summer. It was a randomly hot September night, there was something in the air, a gang of friends in their early twenties were vibing off each other, the cold drinks and loud music - the whole night stretched ahead. The friends covered themselves in The Lover, and then pretty much rolled around the floor in ecstasy. It felt quite intimate to be witness to, and at 38, made me nostalgic for the friends I had in my twenties. The perfume wasn’t about making them appear ‘hot’ to others, it just made them hot for it, they were hyped. I saw in that moment that The Lover doesn’t make you the product for others to enjoy you, it’s a tool to amplify your own pleasure and vibe.
During the development stages of the scents, I was living in Berlin and the city’s feral energy inspired The Lover, and in turn, amassed a cult following amongst club kids, artists, and self-proclaimed hippies and freaks. Before the perfume even had a name, one customer would come to me every Saturday for his weekly refill before a 24 hour-stint in Berghain, he called the perfume 'Baby Prostitute' (if you know you know).
It's not a wild leap to imagine that a scent that mimics and enhances your own sexual juices like an olfactory thirst trap is popular with some. Did you see the whole 'vabbing in the gym' trend on TikTok? (I’ll let you read up on that one if you haven't already).
Comments about The Lover overheard in the Apotheke store and DM'd to us by total strangers:
'This perfume saved my marriage.'
'I got laid for the first time in 18 months when I wore this.'
'Oh god! I can't stop smelling it, it made me feel sick, and now I want to devour it. It's too much! I can't take it. I need it. I'll take the big bottle.'
'This is awful.'
'I got followed onto a bus.'
'This smells like caramel and my boyfriend's armpit.'
'This is so addictive, I've smashed through 50mls in two weeks.'
'I crave it when I am ovulating.'
'That's just rude'.
We wanted a chaotic, confusing elixir that incited lustful urges and I think that's what we got. To smell The Lover for yourself, get it here, but remember to do the quiz first because this one's not for everyone.