The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
The name and the scent share the same pulse. Sunyata Calogeros-Smith, a former psychotherapist turned independent perfumer, carried a fantasy feeling, playful and voluptuous and softly animalic, that demanded to be translated into something wearable. The result, launched in 2021 as part of her fledgling house UNTAMED, opens with the snap of Sichuan pepper, then pours itself into dark red fruits before revealing its wilder register. It's a perfume that refuses to choose between sweet and untamed, and the tension between those poles is the entire point. The Sichuan pepper doesn't just sparkle; it crackles, a cold-tingle buzz that wakes the dark cherry and red apple into something almost edible, almost alive.
What makes this composition structurally interesting is the deliberate collision of the confectionery and the carnal. Black cherry and red apple read almost like a dessert plate, almond and tuberose lending a soft, creamy sweetness that rounds the fruit without smoothing it. The base then strips the politeness away with animalic notes, leather, woody tones, and oud. The almond and tuberose work in tension with the cherry, softening the fruit just enough to keep the composition from reading as one-dimensional, and the result is a scent that moves through registers rather than settling into one.
The evolution
The opening belongs to Sichuan pepper, a bright, almost electric heat that prickles the back of the throat and demands attention. Then the dark fruits roll in, black cherry syrup-thick, red apple crisp-edged, and the opening reads almost like a cocktail garnish dusted with spice. As the scent settles, almond and tuberose braid themselves through the fruit, and the whole composition starts to warm and darken, the sweetness gaining a creamy, slightly bruised quality that feels closer to skin than to a glass. The shift happens once the fruit begins to lift: the bright cherry and apple recede like fog burning off, and what remains is the animalic base, leather worn close to skin, the woody facets of oud smoldering underneath.
Cultural impact
Running With The Wolves holds a distinctive place in the indie fragrance landscape because it refuses to commit to a single category. The dark red fruits and Sichuan pepper opening pull the scent toward the gourmand and the cocktail-fruity end of the spectrum, but the animalic base, the leather, the oud, the raw musk underneath, drags it somewhere altogether less polite. The result is a composition that moves between registers rather than settling into a clean classification, and that ambiguity is part of what makes it memorable.
The House
UNTAMEDUntamed Perfumes is an independent niche fragrance house founded in 2021 in Vancouver, British Columbia. The house emerged from the creative vision of Sunyata Calogeros-Smith, a Canadian-born perfumer who transitioned from a career in somatic psychotherapy to pursue olfactory art. Handcrafting each composition in small batches, Untamed creates fragrances that function as sensory explorations rather than conventional signature scents. The catalog spans themes ranging from Pacific Northwest landscapes (Salish Sea, 2022) to mythological imagery (Running With The Wolves, 2021), Mediterranean warmth (My Greek Lover, 2022), and introspective darkness (Ghost, 2024). The brand operates without a dedicated in-house perfumer attributed to each release, suggesting Calogeros-Smith serves as the primary creative force across the entire collection. Untamed maintains an active presence in niche fragrance communities through direct-to-consumer sales and social media engagement, building recognition among collectors who value unconventional approaches to fragrance composition.
The Creator
Sunyata Calogeros-SmithSunyata's style resists the predictable architectures common in commercial fragrance. She favors natural materials and botanical complexity, working with the irregularities that make natural ingredients unpredictable and alive.
