The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Scented by Willam is a 2017 collaboration between Killian Wells and drag performer Willam Belli, and it wears its source material proudly. The pairing puts two distinct sensibilities in the same bottle, and the result is a fragrance that refuses to sand down its edges. The brand's own tagline for the launch: sandalwood and sex. A 50 ml extrait de parfum with notes that read like a dare. Lavender, chamomile, sage, and cumin up top. Cinnamon and saffron in the heart. Amber, sandalwood, musk, and latex in the base. Wells composed it as a unisex fragrance, the kind of bottle that doesn't ask who you are before it speaks.
The unusual element here is latex. It gives the base a skin-tight, second-skin quality that shapes how the amber and musk read on skin, pulling them toward something more intimate and less traditionally resinous. Pair that with cumin in the opening, a note that leans savory and almost sweaty, and the whole composition stops behaving like a polite aromatic. The cumin-latex combination pushes the scent away from clean herbal territory and toward something more bodily, more present.
The evolution
The opening arrives cool, almost bracing. Lavender and sage do the early work, herbal and clean, with chamomile rounding the edges. Chamomile brings a soft, almost tea-like sweetness that keeps the lavender from going sharp or soapy. Then the cumin shows up, and the temperature shifts. It's a dry, almost peppery warmth, less food and more skin. Within the first twenty minutes, the cinnamon and saffron settle into the center, turning the composition warmer and spicier. The lavender doesn't vanish. It just retreats to the edges, a cool border around a warm middle. The cinnamon reads slightly sweet and slightly hot, while the saffron adds a dusty, leather-adjacent texture that keeps the spice from feeling like a bakery accord. The latex and amber show up quietly in the base, giving the musk and sandalwood a slightly synthetic, second-skin sheen that most amber compositions don't have.
Cultural impact
Scented by Willam is a drag-culture collaboration, and that fact alone makes it stand out. It launched in 2017 with a bold, unapologetic tagline, sandalwood and sex, and the composition backs it up. The latex note and the persistent cumin make it one of the more provocative releases in the brand's catalog, a fragrance that wears its influences openly and doesn't soften them for a mainstream audience. The fragrance is composed as a unisex release, the kind of bottle that doesn't sort itself into a gendered category before you've even opened the cap.
