The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Figueroa was composed by Paul Voulgaridis and released in 2025 by Vanitas Parfums. The fragrance is built around the Rouge de Bordeaux fig, a variety prized for deeply coloured flesh and a rich, almost jammy sweetness. That fig is the whole brief, but the composition refuses to stay in the fruit bowl. Green mandarin and petitgrain sur fleurs bring crushed-citrus brightness. Fig leaf adds that grassy, slightly bitter edge. Fig milk and violet leaf absolute introduce a creamy, leafy cool. The result is a portrait of the tree itself, from bark to branch to fruit, rather than a single note blown up and dressed for perfume.
What makes Figueroa worth a closer look is how naturally the lactonic and green registers sit beside each other. Fig milk sounds sweetness on paper, but in a composition with fig leaf and violet leaf, it reads as the cool inner flesh of a fruit still attached to the branch. Clary sage adds a dusty herbal hush underneath, and Turkish rose brings a soft, powdery romance that stops the greenery from reading sharp or synthetic. Then fig wood grounds the whole thing in something woody and dry. It is a fig that behaves like a tree, not a confection.
The evolution
The opening is all lift and green light. Sicilian green mandarin cuts in with petitgrain sur fleurs, and for a few minutes the composition smells like citrus leaves crushed between your fingers. Fig leaf stretches that brightness into something more vegetal, less citrusy, while fig milk keeps a soft roundness underneath so nothing turns sharp. Then the middle arrives and the temperature changes. Turkish rose and clary sage settle over the fruit accord, and fig wood starts to show through, giving the sweetness a bark-and-wood spine. The Rouge de Bordeaux fig holds its jammy richness as the composition moves through its middle notes. In the drydown, amber and sandalwood take over, mimosa adds a faint powdery bloom, and musk carries the whole composition close to skin. What lingers is the green-to-woody arc, as if the branch was left on the table.
Cultural impact
Figueroa treats a named botanical subject as a concept rather than a flavour, and that approach gives the fragrance its distinctive character. Wearers describe it as realistic fig with green and creamy dimensions, a composition that moves between foliage, fruit and wood rather than staying anchored to sweetness alone. The result is a fragrance with green edges, a woody middle and a structure that never strays into gourmand territory. It's an inviting study for anyone curious about what a fig scent can be when the leaves, the milk and the wood are given room to speak alongside the fruit itself.
The House
Vanitas ParfumsVanitas Parfums is an independent fragrance house founded in 2022 by perfumer Paul Voulgaridis. Working from Paris, the house presents fragrance as a precise and expressive discipline, balancing compositions built around distinctive concepts with a clear sense of atmosphere. Its catalogue spans leathery compositions, shadowed floral accords, layered accords, and scents inspired by place, travel, art, and narrative. Names such as Le Messe Noire, Cuir Insoumis, A Thousand Layers, A Dance of Shadows, Dance With the Devil, and Omukama reveal a house drawn to tension between shadow and light, sensuality and structure, individuality and shared cultural reference. For Silloria, Vanitas Parfums stands apart as a young label with an unusually varied portfolio and a name that evokes the transience of life through scent.
The Creator
Paul VoulgaridisVoulgaridis's style combines polished construction with expressive detail. His compositions often favor a clear central idea supported by carefully judged supporting notes, allowing facets to develop without losing their sense of direction.
