The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Butterfly began with an unusual question: what does the habitat of a butterfly smell like? Not the insect itself, but the fragrant plant life that sustains it. Stephen Dirkes, the self-taught perfumer behind Euphorium Brooklyn, built the composition from that ecological premise, wild mint as the dominant voice, surrounded by the wildflowers, herbs, and mosses that make a meadow viable for pollinators. The opening bursts with bright, herbaceous greenness that feels like pressing your face into a sun-warmed patch of wild mint, alive and slightly resinous. Around it, the softer edges of clover and chamomile emerge, lending a faint honeyed sweetness that tempers the mint's sharpness without dimming it.
The interesting structural move here is the mint. In most fragrances, mint reads as a fleeting top note, bright, then gone. Butterfly keeps mint present throughout the wear, threaded through the wildflowers, hovering over the moss. The heart is unusually wide: violet, lilac, lavender, geranium, and marigold all competing without crowding, held together by the cool continuity of mint and the grounding green of sage, hyssop, and artemisia. As the florals unfold, they create a soft, slightly powdery chorus that never overwhelms the mint's presence but instead provides texture and depth.
The evolution
The opening is all mint, moving fast, like morning light across wet grass. Cool and slightly sweet, with the herbal clarity of sage and hyssop underneath, a green that breathes rather than bites. For the first thirty minutes, mint dominates and it's a genuine statement of intent: this is not a polite fragrance. Then, gradually, the wildflowers arrive. Violet and lilac bloom through the mint without overpowering it, bringing softness and a faint powdery sweetness. Lavender keeps things honest, slightly camphorous, herbal, preventing the whole thing from floating off into abstraction. Geranium adds a green-spice undertone that deepens the heart without darkening it. The moss announces itself here too, along with milkweed and mugwort, giving the composition a pressed-herbarium weight beneath the brightness. In the drydown, the mint doesn't disappear. That's the tell. It cools and slows, settling alongside the moss as violet and lilac fade to a whisper.
Cultural impact
Butterfly arrived as part of a broader botanical series from Euphorium Brooklyn, a collection that treats plant biology as narrative material rather than mere ingredient. The fragrance participates in a lineage of compositions that draw on ecological and naturalist themes, inviting wearers to imagine specific environments rather than abstract scent categories. The wild mint at its core anchors the composition in a very particular sensory reality, one that feels grounded in observable plant life rather than synthetic interpretation.
The House
Euphorium BrooklynEuphorium Brooklyn is a niche fragrance house founded by artist and self-taught perfumer Stephen Dirkes in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. The brand draws its name and inspiration from a fictional enterprise called Euphorium Bile Works, which the founder's mythology places in 1860s Brooklyn. Each fragrance from the house carries this narrative weight, blending historical fiction with olfactory artistry. The collection spans dark, smoky compositions like Wald and Cilice, alongside brighter studies such as Ume (inspired by Lady Murasaki's Tale of Genji) and the gourmand Chocolatl. Handcrafted with reportedly rare and exotic materials, the house occupies a distinctive position in contemporary niche perfumery, appealing to collectors who value unconventional storytelling and bold, characterful scents.
The Creator
Stephen DirkesDirkes brings a filmmaker's sense of pacing to fragrance composition. He builds scents that reveal themselves gradually, with layers that do not simply coexist but interact.
