The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
By 2020, Neandertal had been asking uncomfortable questions through fragrance for five years. Neandertal Us arrived first, a study in closeness, in the grammar of togetherness. Then came Them. Not as a sequel, not as a contrast, but as the other half of a split-screen question the brand keeps returning to: what happens when you step back and look at identity from the outside? The name is deliberate. Them is not us. Them is everyone else, and the strange tenderness that comes from recognizing we're all them to someone. The brief was specific: build a fragrance that moves. Not nostalgia, not comfort, not the past reframed. The promise of what comes next, carried in unconventional molecular materials and natural essences that read as clean rather than heavy.
What's unusual about Them isn't any single material, it's the way they coexist. Sea kelp and ambergris shouldn't work. One carries the mineral weight of deep water; the other carries the warmth of something alive, almost animalic in the drydown. They bridge through magnolia and the transparent woods, which do exactly what McCall intended: they read as clean without reading as sterile. No sharp aldehydes, no soapy barbershop quality. Just clarity. The ambrette in the base is the quiet workhorse here. Musk mallow seed provides the soft animalic thread without anything heavy or intrusive, the kind of skin warmth that shows up hours later when you've already forgotten you're wearing it.
The evolution
The first thirty minutes are the negotiation. Grapefruit fires sharp and bright, the zest cutting through before the lavender and carrot seed step in to round the edges. Iris appears midway through the opening act, powdery and slightly waxy, arriving like someone who was already there when you walked in. Sea kelp holds the top notes together with something that reads as clean mineral, not ocean brine, the specific marine quality of tide pulling back from warm stone. By hour two, the heart takes full command. Magnolia blooms, not loud, not floral in the traditional sense, more like the idea of a garden than the garden itself. Neroli adds a bitter-orange blossom quality that keeps the heart from being sweet. Hinoki cypress grounds everything with its cedar-adjacent, slightly camphoraceous wood.
Cultural impact
Neandertal emerged from a Japanese artist in London, treating scent as a philosophical exploration. The brand interrogates themes of identity and belonging, with Them representing perception from the outside versus Us representing closeness. This conceptual approach uses unconventional ingredients like carrot seed and sea kelp into a coherent artistic statement. The house bridges conceptual art with commercial fragrance, creating a body of work that positions fragrance as something more than product. Each scent functions as an argument about what perfume can do when it refuses the conventional vocabulary of the industry.
