Loreto Remsing
Loreto Remsing arrived in the United States as a teenager, carrying the scent of Chile’s highlands in her memory. Poverty forced her to work multiple jobs, but she earned a scholarship to the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, where she graduated in graphic design. While sketching logos, she began mixing essential oils in a dorm kitchen, a habit that grew into a disciplined practice. Eighteen years ago she abandoned the design studio for a lab bench, teaching herself aromatherapy, extraction techniques, and the chemistry of natural absolutes. In 2012 she launched LARŌ, a line devoted to 100 % natural ingredients, and followed it with Laromatica, a mixed‑media house that pairs scent with visual art. Her debut fragrance Animus earned a silver award at a national competition, announcing her arrival on the independent perfume scene. Today she mentors emerging noses in the Bay Area and curates scent installations that echo her love of flora, memory, and cultural roots.
The hits
Notable creations
The signature
How Loreto composes
Remsing’s technique blends graphic‑design precision with botanical intuition. She sketches a composition before she pours, assigning each ingredient a visual weight and a spatial relationship. Natural absolutes—clary sage, Chilean pepperleaf, sandalwood—form the backbone of her work, while she layers them with unexpected accents such as smoked cacao or sea‑salted amber. She favors cold‑press extraction for citrus, steam distillation for florals, and maceration for resins, allowing each material to reveal its true character. In the studio she works in small batches, testing on blotter strips and on skin to capture the evolution from top to base. Her signatures often include a crisp, mineral opening that settles into a warm, earthy heart.
Philosophy
What drives Loreto
Remsing believes scent works like a diary, each note recording a moment she cannot rewrite. She starts every formula with a story—an afternoon in a Chilean market, a rain‑soaked San Francisco street, a childhood garden. Her training is self‑directed; she reads botanical texts, experiments with carrier oils, and listens to the way a single drop changes the air. Sustainability guides her choices; she sources wild‑harvested botanicals that respect local ecosystems and favors biodegradable packaging. The goal is not to dazzle with novelty but to translate lived experience into a transparent, tactile aroma that invites the wearer to pause and remember.
The houses