The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Starfish & Coffee arrived in 2018, Jarekhye Covarrubias reaching into the strange corner of American food memory and pulling out something wearable. The name itself resists easy interpretation, no obvious reference point, no brandable nostalgia. Just two words that belong in a sentence together only because someone decided they should. Covarrubias has spoken about capturing emotional memory through scent, and this one leans fully into that impulse: the particular pleasure of a late breakfast that has no business tasting this good.
The composition refuses the usual gourmand template. Coffee sits beside smoked bacon instead of chocolate or vanilla. Sea salt doesn't soften, it stays, grounding the sweetness like a check against excess. Butterscotch and maple syrup aren't performing dessert; they're bringing depth and a faint edge of burnt sugar that keeps everything honest. The strawberry jam doesn't candy the notes, it jams them together, lets them press against each other until something slightly unconventional emerges. What makes this noteworthy isn't the individual parts but their refusal to resolve into anything predictable.
The evolution
The opening hits salt and black coffee first, the brine of sea air mixing with something roasted and dark. Tangerine sparks briefly, bright and citrus-clean, before the heart takes over: smoked bacon and strawberry jam, the savory and the sweet occupying the same sentence. Butterscotch builds slowly, sweetening the edges without hiding the meat. The drydown is where it settles into itself: marshmallow and maple, soft and warm, the salt never quite disappearing. What surprises is how long the coffee holds on, not dominant, but present, a quiet anchor beneath everything else. By the end, the skin holds a faint sweetness that smells like the morning after a meal nobody else would have made.
Cultural impact
The fragrance occupies a specific corner of niche gourmand territory, bold enough to polarize, specific enough to inspire conversation. Community sentiment clusters into two camps: those who find it memorably unusual and those who find it too far from traditional fragrance expectations. Wearers tend to either adore its audacity or remain perplexed by it. The smoked bacon note in particular draws attention, something you don't expect to smell in a perfume, which is exactly why people remember it.
