The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Seance began as a special-order release from Sorce, the indie perfume label Caitlin Hayes founded. The name carries weight, a ritual, a summoning, a circle of light in a dark room. Hayes built the composition around that energy: warmth and smoke folding into bitter citrus and spice, the moment between invocation and reply. It's wearable séance, not costume. The kind of scent that puts you in the room without announcing why you're there. Released as a perfume oil, Seance stays in Sorce's intimate, small-batch catalog, a quiet piece of bold scent art for self-expression, which is how Hayes frames her whole practice. The composition moves like a held breath, then release. Bitter opens the door, smoke fills the threshold, and the warmer notes follow like a slow exhale.
What's unusual here is the Campari. Most warm spicy fragrances lean on cinnamon, vanilla, and amber as their whole story. Seance wedges a bitter, herbal-citrus note right into the center, the bitter herbal pull of ambrette underneath. It keeps the composition from going soft. The immortelle absolute adds a maple-syrup-curry edge that's neither fully sweet nor savory, and the jasmine sambac absolute is used sparingly, almost like incense smoke curling through the room. Australian sandalwood and cashmere wood ground everything without flattening it.
The evolution
Seance opens with a bright, bitter lift, Campari and orange slicing through the first few minutes, almost like a cocktail that's been left sitting too long. Salt sharpens the edges. Within the first 15 minutes, cinnamon starts warming the composition from underneath, and the smoke note arrives early, lending the opening a candlelit, slightly charred quality. The heart is where Seance gets interesting. Jasmine sambac absolute doesn't bloom so much as flicker, present but restrained, layered against immortelle's maple-syrup depth and vanilla sugar's quiet sweetness. The Australian sandalwood and cashmere wood settle in around the 45-minute mark, giving the composition a powdery, ambered backbone. The drydown is where this one lives.
Cultural impact
Seance earns its place in Sorce's catalog through a combination of daring composition and restrained movement. It's the kind of fragrance that gets remembered for its bitter edge and its refusal to resolve into simple sweetness. The composition treats each layer with reverence, balancing smoke and bitterness against immortelle's golden depth and the woods' quiet grounding. There's a ritualistic quality to the way the scent unfolds, evoking atmosphere and mood. It rewards attention, drawing you in through its bitter citrus opening and holding you through the warm, smoky finish.
