Johanna Venables
Johanna Venables doesn't want you to trust her. That's the first thing she tells you, and it might be the most honest opening line in perfumery right now. The Swedish-born perfumer founded NOT Perfumes with a simple premise: the industry tells you what to love, she prefers you decide for yourself. Her tagline, nose and opinions my own, I dared to wear, reads less like marketing copy and more like a dare. Collectors of vintage perfume will recognize the reference points informing her work, those golden-era compositions she studies not to imitate but to understand. What sets Venables apart isn't just her unconventional positioning or her Swedish directness. It's the way she approaches fragrance as an act of genuine authorship rather than commercial calculation. Her debut creation VAAN announced her arrival with green spice, vanillic leather, and a labdanum note so resinous it practically glows. The perfume world took notice. Those who follow the independent scene closely already know her name. Those who don't would do well to start here.
The hits
Notable creations
The signature
How Johanna composes
Venables works in materials that pull at something primal. Her compositions favor depth and darkness, resinous smoke curling through labdanum, leather softened by vanilla warmth, clove and eugenol lending sharp intellectual edge to sweeter bases. Those who have encountered her amber work describe it as wizardly, which is perhaps the highest compliment available in this particular community. Her fragrances read less like products and more like arguments, each one making a case for something. The style resists easy categorization. These aren't mainstream interpretations dressed in indie clothing. They're genuine explorations, evocative and poetic in ways that reward attention. Venables builds accords that unfold over hours, refusing the instant gratification of novelty in favor of lasting impression.
Philosophy
What drives Johanna
Venables operates from a position of deliberate defiance. Not for shock value, but because she genuinely believes the perfume industry has spent decades telling people what they should smell like rather than what they might actually love. Her radically honest, unconventional approach treats fragrance as conversation rather than transaction. She asks wearers to trust their own noses, even when that means challenging established conventions. This extends beyond scent to ethics: NOT Perfumes positions itself as an alternative to industry norms, suggesting that how something is made matters as much as what ends up in the bottle. For Venables, authenticity isn't a marketing angle. It's the only acceptable mode of operation.
The houses