The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Wald translates directly from German as 'forest,' and Euphorium Brooklyn's Stephen Dirkes treats the word less like a place name and more like an atmosphere to reconstruct. It was one of the house's early compositions, built around a clear thesis: not a clean evergreen accord, but the forest as it actually exists, damp, smoky, buzzing with insect life, thick with resin and decay and something faintly sweet pooling in the undergrowth. The brief was the woods after a fire, not the woods on a postcard. From the opening minutes, the fir balsam reads cold and almost mentholated, with a woodsmoke underneath that feels closer to a damp campfire than a dry cigar.
What's striking about Wald is the material range Dirkes packs into a single bottle. Fir and arborvitae deliver the green canopy, but birch tar and smoke drag it toward campfire and leather. Castoreum and animalic notes bring a feral musk that most 'woody' fragrances would never touch. Meanwhile maple syrup and honey sweeten the whole thing just enough to keep it from going purely ascetic. It's a deliberate collision of the sacred and the lived-in.
The evolution
Wald announces itself immediately. The fir and smoke arrive together within the first few minutes, and there's no polite citrus overture, no gradual warming-up period. It's cold balsam first, almost mentholated, and the smoke underneath reads more like woodsmoke from a damp fire than a dry cigar. By the 30-minute mark the frankincense and elemi resin start thickening the air, and the maple sweetness creeps in, which catches people off guard because it softens the smoke without diluting it. The castoreum becomes more obvious in the middle hours, a leathery, animal warmth that sits low on the skin. Around hour five to six, the composition settles into its longest phase: vetiver, moss, oud, and that birch tar, all fused into a dark, earthy hum that feels less like a sequence of notes and more like a single continuous material.
Cultural impact
Wald belongs to a small tradition of niche forest fragrances that prioritize atmosphere over approachability. Parfumo's 'Smells similar' listings point toward comparisons with Slumberhouse Norne and Olympic Orchids Olympic Rainforest, both of which share Wald's commitment to dense, immersive naturals rather than clean green constructions. Wearers tend to be people who already smoke or burn incense, who want their fragrance to read as lived-in rather than styled. It's a cold-weather composition that does its best work after dark or on a walk where nobody else is around.
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.
