The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
In This World arrived in 2024 from a collaboration between Liis co-founders Alissa Sullivan and Leslie Hendin alongside perfumer Jérôme Epinette. The three were interested in sensation itself, the particular pleasure of being fully present in a moment, feeling something rather than just noticing it. Blood orange gave them the electricity of that idea: juicy, immediate, almost too bright. Fig and violet offered the warmth underneath, the slow, green lushness of an afternoon that refuses to end. Lavender and sage kept the composition grounded in something herbal and slightly camphorated. Tonka wood in the base brought the whole thing into a register that's intimate rather than announced. The fragrance is named for something deliberately open-ended. Not a place. Not a concept. Just the invitation to be inside your own senses.
What makes In This World's architecture interesting is how the fruity and the camphorated keep pressure on each other without fighting. Blood orange and eucalyptus open with a clean, almost clinical brightness, citrus peel and mentholated air. Fig usually softens that sharpness, but here it arrives later, slipping under the camphor as the eucalyptus begins to recede. The result is that the heart doesn't feel like a contrast to the opening. It feels like the opening remembering it has a body. Violet adds a powdery floral dimension that lifts the fig's lactonic quality and keeps the whole heart from feeling too heavy on the skin.
The evolution
In This World opens bright, clean, and slightly electric. Blood orange and eucalyptus arrive together, citrus peel and mentholated air, the scent of cold glass and morning light. There's a sharpness here that feels purposeful, like the opening is announcing exactly what kind of fragrance this is before anything can get comfortable. Within the first hour, the blood orange softens. Eucalyptus fades. Fig takes its place in the heart, creamy and lactonic, but elevated by violet's powdery floral quality. Lavender moves quietly through the mid-section, providing a spa-like continuity rather than dominates. Sage arrives in the drydown and shifts the register, herbal now, slightly bitter, the smell of stems and leaves rather than flowers. Tonka wood emerges last, sweet and warm, and this is where the composition does something unexpected: the sweetness doesn't disappear. It persists alongside the sage, creating a drydown that's simultaneously herbal and warm, close and present. On fabric, blood orange and tonka carry into the second day.
Cultural impact
In This World arrived in 2024 amid a cultural recalibration around personal space and intimacy. Liis built its entire brand philosophy on proximity over projection, a direct rebuttal to fragrance culture's longstanding obsession with filling rooms and announcing arrivals. In This World rewards close encounters rather than broadcasting from across a space. The brand's co-founders, Alissa Sullivan with classical perfumery training and Leslie Hendin bringing a self-taught visual sensibility, designed this scent to be discovered by people standing nearby, not to announce the wearer entering a space. This philosophy gained traction in a post-pandemic world where scent became tethered to memory and personal connection rather than social performance. The fragrance's green-fruity-herbal profile reflects a broader shift toward fresher, more considered compositions that invite rather than overwhelm. In This World occupies a specific cultural moment where consumers seek meaningful sensory experiences over loudness, positioning itself as a quiet, intentional alternative to the industry's projection-driven norms.
