ABOUT US
THE APOLOGUE
/ apo-log / a story within a story
The APOLOGUE for which the website is named is a story about a little girl and the Great Names of Beauty. A Collection by the same name has been our first and enduring love. The story is slowly unfolding on our blog pages, illustrated with perfumes. The collection is being released on an evolutionary time line into the future.
PERFUMERY 
By way of introduction, we are BRANDESSE, a niche, artisan perfumery specializing in natural [functional] fragrances.
The choice to “go natural” came from a “conflagration of clarity’s”, which arrived one by one as we were led through a long and winding path that started in medicine and ended in perfumery.
Today we have our feet firmly planted in old school alchemy. We create perfume-elixirs that are beautiful while transcending fashion and elegance to where perfume’s higher nature helps the human spirit . . . to be used as an edge, a nudge, and an ally.
The perfumes are created with timelessly loved ingredients using a modern version of ancient perfumery, where inner and outer beauty are fragranced as one. We love bringing together the right botanicals with the right energies so you can enjoy beauty and upliftment toward a better life.
OUR CRAFT
HANDCRAFTED
The perfumes are created from rare, exotic, and classic essences, selected for beauty and active plant intelligence, and energetically enriched.
The result is a physically and intuitively beautiful, influential essence or elixir that increases well-being and upliftment..
100% NATURAL 90% ORGANIC
The perfume’s character is voluptuous and moving. The rich and penetrating effects are both arresting and uplifting, grounding and elating. The nose will appreciate that they are not harsh but rather smooth and mellow, even when the individual perfume is designed to be stimulating or bracing. When the perfume is designed for softness, the effect is intensely, sensually soft.
SUSTAINABLE
The ingredients are responsibly sourced and safely biodegradable. Free of molecules not-found-in-nature, (no synthetics, parabens, glycols, and other known hazardous man-made chemicals), these perfumes are naturally beneficial and non-toxic. When essences are strategically selected and combined, the benefit is greater, even as the fragrance grows beautiful. This is what serves, over time.
The packaging is about 90% recyclable or compostable, including the shipping materials.
THE NAMES OF BEAUTY
Our Names of Beauty Collection is inspired by the complex dynamics of inner beauty, or inner power — spoken through fragrance.
In perfumery there is a tradition of naming perfumes after aspects of inner beauty such as “Joy”, “Love”, and “Radiance”. The idea of creating fragrances to include a greater range of these qualities intrigued us. Could perfume be coaxed into a stronger smell or feeling of the inspiration itself?
The thought of layering inner beauty with outer beauty, fragrance upon fragrance, became an irresistible path that led us further on. Asking perfume to smell and feel like Courage, for example, and also asking it to support Courage in the wearer would be a challenge. One that we eventually met.
It’s been quite a journey. What we found is crafted into our perfume; each one conceived as a fragrant mirror reflecting how beautiful you really are . .
PARFUM PETITES
There is a NEW collection in development . . . Look for it in 2025.
It will will offer you a unique way to have the fragrance you want, when you want it, to go with any mood, challenge, or occasion.
You can be as masculine or feminine as you like . . . with any complexity you want . . . and enjoy the right notes for every season you find yourself in.
Have the flexibility and variety in your scent wardrobe without piling up big bottles of perfume that you’ll rarely use up before they age out.
This collection expertly assists you be your own perfumer.
Who created that perfume?! You did!
MISSION
OUR “WHY”
We exist to elevate overlooked, fragrant, functional, enchanting beauty — so you can experience a softer, happier, kinder reality — and smell divine!
The seeds we plant have a great trajectory and will grow tall someday.
We are inspired by the belief that as long as women are prevented from attaining their highest possibilities, so long will men be unable to achieve the greatness which might be theirs.
We are guided by the research that shows that uplifting women and girls is the fastest and surest way to A) Transform all of humanity, B) Protect the environment.
So, our service is via females. See the Hiari Project and Pa’Arriba websites if you want to join us.
When perfuming of the depths disappears,
Leaving only a perfuming of the surface,
and when perfume ceases to ensure its role of fluid of eternal or earthly life —
to be only a light liquor dedicated exclusively to elegance,
it is fatally affected by a loss of meaning.
And even in this ultimate function,
its growing divorce with the living nature, the vegetable matter,
will induce a deficit of its sensuality.
ANNICK LE GUERER