The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Strange and Unusual debuted in 2024 as part of Sixteen92's Recently Deceased collection, the house's Spring/Summer seasonal release. The collection borrows its name and spirit from the film Bio-Exorcist, with this particular fragrance pulling from a specific register of black lipstick, red lace, and ritual. Claire Baxter, the brand's owner and perfumer, has built Sixteen92 around translating specific cultural references into scent, and Strange and Unusual is a textbook example of that practice: a concrete character study rendered in olfactory terms rather than a vague mood board. The notes read like a deliberate inventory: lipstick, fabric, plum, saffron, turmeric, because the brief was never abstract.
What makes the composition unusual is how the gourmand and mineral impulses share space. Saffron and turmeric bring a golden, slightly bitter warmth, while the lipstick accord and stone fruit pull toward something sweeter and more cosmetic. Fabric and mineral notes anchor the whole thing in something tactile. The accords list fruity, warm spicy, sweet, powdery, and metallic all at once, which is precisely the point. These categories don't politely partition themselves in this bottle. They coexist, they overlap, they pull at each other through the wear.
The evolution
The opening is lipstick and saffron, almost aggressively present, the way a new tube of dark color announces itself on the back of your hand. The plum arrives quietly underneath, red and slightly syrupy, and the turmeric settles in early as a kind of warm dust. As the wear progresses, the lipstick fades into a general skin-warmth and the saffron steps forward, golden and a little sharp. The fabric note emerges in the later stages of wear as something soft, almost paper-like, cushioning the spice. The turmeric lingers longest, grounding everything in that warm, mineral root quality that people either love or find too savory. The composition shifts gradually from a cosmetic-forward opening through a spiced, golden heart and into a softer, more skin-like finish where the warmer notes dominate.
Cultural impact
Strange and Unusual sits comfortably within Sixteen92's existing catalog, the kind of release that confirms the brand's commitment to story-driven, slightly theatrical scent-making. The fragrance leans hard into its references and doesn't dilute them for broader appeal. The lipstick accord is central, the saffron and turmeric provide a golden architecture, and the plum and fabric notes round out a composition that knows exactly what it wants to be.
