The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
To the Roots comes from Maria Ruban of Margie Doesn't Make Perfumes, a Ukrainian brand operating on a small, independent scale. Launched in 2025, the fragrance digs deliberately downward, away from the bright and the showy, toward the soil and the ash. The name is the thesis: not roots as decoration, but roots as the part that holds everything in place when the visible parts wither. Ruban built it around two kinds of tea, a smoky accord, and Haitian vetiver, pulling the composition toward something grounded and earthy. The citrus zest and black pepper in the opening offer a brief brightness before the tea notes take over, lending a tannic, slightly astringent quality that reads more like brewed leaf than flavoring.
What's interesting here is the stacking of two tea notes, pu-erh and black, against labdanum and smoke. Pu-erh brings fermented depth, that damp-earth quality of a well-aged leaf, while labdanum adds a sticky, almost amber-like warmth that bridges the smoke to the skin. Haitian vetiver anchors the composition with its characteristic dry-root character, giving the smoke something to grip rather than float away on. The result is a structure where no single element dominates; instead, they create tension, pulling between brightness above and weight below.
The evolution
The opening feels almost like a different fragrance. Citrus zest arrives first, sharp and quick, paired with black pepper that snaps rather than burns, and the combination gives the first impression a bright, almost startling clarity against everything that follows. The black tea and pu-erh start to surface as the citrus recedes, and the composition begins to settle into something darker and more contemplative. The smoke arrives not as a campfire but as something more intimate, like a trace of woodsmoke caught in wool, dry and distant rather than thick. The Haitian vetiver takes over as the tea notes fade, dry and green and unmistakably rooted, pulling everything downward with that characteristic earthy bitterness that vetiver carries when it's not smoothed out.
Cultural impact
Released in 2025, To the Roots lands in a fragrance landscape that has grown more interested in compositions built from earthy, grounded materials rather than the bright and the crowd-pleasing. The citrus-spicy opening makes the first impression immediate and inviting, but the vetiver-and-labdanum drydown is where the composition reveals what it's actually interested in: the smell of things close to the ground, of smoke and tea and root rather than sparkle. It appeals to wearers who want something that smells considered and personal, a fragrance that asks for attention rather than demanding it from across a room.
