Heretic Parfum\u2019s Douglas Little crafts fragrances that breathe, shapeshift, and flirt with the dark. We caught up with him on Black Salt, rewriting summer, and how a perfume earns its goth stripes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Douglas:<\/strong>I don\u2019t think petrichor is necessarily a difficult note to capture. It\u2019s more that it\u2019s having a moment\u2014kind of the way Palo Santo was a few years ago, when suddenly it was everywhere. Now petrichor feels like the new Palo Santo. It\u2019s become one of those concepts that every perfumer interprets in their own way, like how we all approach gourmands or ambers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For me, I love giving our customers what I want out of a fragrance: an unapologetic petrichor note. The molecule responsible for that scent is called geosmin<\/strong>, and it\u2019s found in dirt\u2014it becomes airborne when it gets wet. That\u2019s what we recognize as the smell of rain hitting the ground. It\u2019s earthy, grounding, a little dirty (in the best way).<\/p>\n\n\n\n I find it intoxicating. Honestly, when I go to the nursery for mulch, I\u2019ll bury my face in a fresh bag just to take in that smell\u2014it\u2019s grounding, oddly erotic, and wonderful. I\u2019ve been weaving that note into several of our fragrances. Nosferatu<\/em><\/a> used it in a softer, more transparent way\u2014almost lacy\u2014blending with lilac and violet to feel watery and ghostly. In Black Salt<\/em><\/a>, I pushed it harder: earthier, more mineralic, almost volcanic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Petrichor itself is an accord, made up of about six different notes, and every perfumer pushes and pulls them differently, depending on the story they\u2019re telling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Douglas:<\/strong> I was really transfixed by the idea of rewriting what a summer fragrance could be. Summer isn\u2019t a strong season in perfumery, and I wanted to change that for Heretic. I\u2019ve also been embracing my gothic roots unapologetically, and it\u2019s been really fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The truth is, I\u2019m not a summer person. As a goth teenager, the beach sounded like a nightmare. But I thought, what if we retold that story from my perspective? What if Black Salt<\/em> captured my kind of beach\u2014overcast, maybe haunted by dead pirates, preferably in Scotland?<\/p>\n\n\n\n I started visiting the beach at dusk and at night, and I realized how dramatically the scent shifts. When the air cools, the plankton, the brine\u2014everything changes. That\u2019s what I wanted to capture. The result is something volcanic, mineralic, even a little chilly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I used eucalyptus, something I almost never do, to create that cooling effect. It gives Black Salt<\/em> this crisp, oceanic edge without actually smelling like eucalyptus. It\u2019s one of the few Heretic fragrances that plays in that marine, ozone space, yet it still feels dark and mysterious, like incense wafting across the beach at night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Douglas:<\/strong>For me, it\u2019s rose absolute<\/strong>. I have a real affinity for it, and it\u2019s been scientifically proven to change brain chemistry, creating feelings of optimism, happiness, and well-being.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most people think they know what rose smells like, but real rose absolute is completely different. When people smell it for the first time, they\u2019re usually overwhelmed, it\u2019s rich, emotional, and deeply human.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Douglas: <\/strong>Beauty smells like strangeness<\/strong>. For me, beauty isn\u2019t about symmetry or perfection, it\u2019s about something that\u2019s thought-provoking and unexpected. Something that makes you pause and think. That\u2019s what draws me in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Douglas:<\/strong> Definitely Tones on Tail<\/strong>, an offshoot of Bauhaus. I listened to them constantly while working on Black Salt.<\/em> Their sound is what I\u2019d call California Gothic<\/em>, this surfy dissonance that\u2019s dark, beautiful, and hypnotic. It inspired the entire mood of the fragrance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Douglas: <\/strong>It has to be immersive. It has to take you somewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Take Bloodberry<\/em>, for example, it\u2019s actually a fairly uplifting scent, but hidden beneath the bright grapefruit and cassis is a dying rose note, grounded by vetiver. It\u2019s that touch of decay, that whisper of something fading, that makes it goth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even when we do lighter, more optimistic fragrances, they still have to take you on a journey. That\u2019s when I know it passes the goth vibe check.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Heretic Parfum\u2019s Douglas Little crafts fragrances that breathe, shapeshift, and flirt with the dark. We caught up with him on Black Salt, rewriting summer, and how a perfume earns its goth stripes. Q: Petrichor ranks just below \u201cbaby\u201d on the impossibly hard-to-capture smells scale. How did you do it? Douglas:I don\u2019t think petrichor is necessarily…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":33498,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1798],"tags":[4168,3078,26,4170],"class_list":["post-33497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-brand-feature","tag-heretic-parfum","tag-interview","tag-perfume-trends","tag-perfumer"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.scentbird.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/63c0d4f4bb52daddef250b0c_Scentbird_GuestImage_Heretic_DouglasLittle_2161x1020.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scentbird.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scentbird.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scentbird.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scentbird.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scentbird.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33497"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.scentbird.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33497\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33501,"href":"https:\/\/www.scentbird.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33497\/revisions\/33501"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scentbird.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scentbird.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scentbird.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scentbird.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Q:<\/strong> How and when did you decide that Black Salt<\/em> needed a wet lava rock note?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Q:<\/strong> What\u2019s the most uplifting scent in the world, and why does it lift you?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Q:<\/strong> Describe what beauty smells like for you.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Q:<\/strong> If Black Salt<\/em> had a soundtrack, what would it be?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Q:<\/strong> All of the scents in the Beach Goth<\/em> set are hauntingly beautiful. How do you decide if a scent passes the goth vibe check?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n