The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Top Shelf arrived as part of One Way Bridge Perfumes' 2019 debut trio alongside Date With a Dame and Stout 'n Smoke. Elise Walraven had spent years working with native botanicals from her Wairarapa farm, manuka honey, totara extract, before reaching for something darker. The name itself is the statement: the bottle on the highest shelf, the one you don't hand out casually. Top Shelf is built for those who ask what a fragrance smells like and then lean in closer to find out. It was never meant to be safe.
What separates Top Shelf from the pack is the civet, not buried as background texture but allowed to breathe, to assert itself. Civet is polarizing for a reason: it carries the warmth of living skin, the musk of presence. Pair that with New Zealand ambergris and you add a marine-animalic depth that most fragrances chase with synthetic alternatives. The ash tree note, from the native totara, grounds the composition in something geographically specific rather than generically smoky. This isn't a fragrance that borrows its references from other fragrances.
The evolution
The opening arrives fast, smoke and ash, the smell of tobacco leaves left too close to a flame. There's no gentle easing in. Within the first hour the leather announces itself, dry and worn, softened by amber that stops it from becoming harsh. The civet emerges around the second hour, not aggressive but present, the warmth of skin, of someone standing close. By the third hour the drydown settles into black musk and amber, lingering for hours on most skin types. The sillage starts bold and moderates into something personal, intimate, close. On fabric it can last into the next day.
Cultural impact
Top Shelf occupies the same conversation as tobacco-leather compositions like Tom Ford Ombré Leather and Serge Lutens Chergui, though its civet-forward animalic register puts it in rarer territory. For the wearer who chooses it, Top Shelf is a statement about preferring presence over polish, the kind of fragrance that stops a conversation mid-sentence.
