14 Smelling Strips and a Switched-Off Ceiling Fan: How Our Oils Get Made

It's a little past 11 as I write this. There are fourteen smelling strips fanned out on my desk, labelled in handwriting only I can read, and the ceiling fan is off because a ceiling fan is the natural enemy of a smelling strip. Batch three of a new blend went wrong somewhere around hour six of the drydown — too much sweetness, not enough smoke — and I'm sulking about it productively, by writing this post instead.

People ask me all the time how our oils are actually made. Usually the question underneath the question is: can something that costs this little actually be good? Fair question. Here's the honest walkthrough, no factory-tour gloss.

How we choose which perfume to interpret

Two filters. The first is you — I keep a running tally of every fragrance customers request on WhatsApp and Instagram. When the same name shows up eight, ten, fifteen times, it gets a row in my spreadsheet and a spot in the queue. That's how Creed Aventus entered our catalogue; it wasn't my idea, it was forty of yours. For years the most requested fragrance in India that almost nobody had actually smelled from a genuine bottle.

The second filter is our weather. A composition that smells transcendent in a Paris boutique can collapse into a puddle by Andheri station at 2pm. Airy musks that vanish in humidity, delicate florals that turn sour in heat — some famous fragrances simply don't survive here, and I've stopped interpreting things I know will disappoint an Indian summer. If it can't handle a rickshaw ride in May, it doesn't make the list. This rule has killed some blends I personally loved. The spreadsheet doesn't care about my feelings.

How perfume oils are made — the unglamorous version

An "inspired" oil starts with taking the original apart on paper: published note pyramids, the known aroma chemicals behind them, and my own nose against a legitimate reference bottle. Then we source. Fragrances aren't made of mangoes and mystery — they're made of specific aroma chemicals and naturals, the same families of materials the big houses buy. Take Iso E Super: a soft, velvety woody material that's in half the famous masculines of the last thirty years. We sell it as a raw material too, because we're suppliers before we're anything else, and honestly, watching hobbyist perfumers order it makes me irrationally happy.

Then comes evaluation, which is where the actual work hides. A new batch gets smelled on strips at hour zero, hour two, hour eight, next morning, day three. Strips lie less than skin but skin pays the bills — so the survivors get worn. On me, in real Mumbai humidity, through an actual working day. Not a climate-controlled lab. My arms in July are the lab. Batches get rejected for being too sharp in the opening, too thin in the base, too different from the reference after hour four. Rejection means the supplier hears about it and we start again. Nobody claps for this part, but this part is the product.

Why we blend in oil instead of alcohol

Three reasons, in decreasing order of romance. One: performance in our climate. Alcohol flashes off the skin in minutes and takes a chunk of the fragrance with it — great for a dramatic first impression, terrible for hour six in Chennai. Oil releases slowly, sits closer, lasts longer. Two: skin and sentiment — no alcohol means gentler wear, and many of our customers prefer alcohol-free fragrance for personal or religious reasons. Attar culture figured this out a few centuries before I did. Three: control. We build on a carrier we trust — the same Universal Perfume Base with fixatives that we sell to other perfumers — so every blend sits on an identical, predictable foundation. When something's off, I know it's the fragrance compound, not the base playing games.

What "inspired by" honestly means — and what it doesn't

Let me be blunt, because this industry has a fog problem. An Unravel oil is an interpretation. We study a famous fragrance's character and rebuild that character in oil, in our own formula, sold under our own name, with the brand's trademark belonging entirely to them. You will recognise the vibe. On some skins it gets astonishingly close. It is not the original, we've never claimed it is, and if someone tells you their ₹600 bottle IS Creed, walk away briskly.

Because that's the actual scam in this market — "first copy" bottles. Counterfeit packaging, fake batch codes, mystery liquid of unknown origin, sold as the genuine article at suspicious discounts. That's not perfumery, that's fraud with an atomiser, and it's what gives this whole category a bad name. The honest version of affordable fragrance says what it is on the label. That's the entire moral difference, and it's not a small one.

Why everything we make has a ₹100–₹140 sample

Because fragrance is the most personal product I can think of, and I'd rather you buy small and come back than buy big and regret it. Skin chemistry is real — the same oil can smell like warm honey on one person and like flat cola on another, and no review, including mine, can predict yours. So every single listing has a sample at roughly ₹100–₹140. Some months, samples outnumber full bottles in our orders three to one, and my accountant side sighs while my perfumer side grins. The perfumer side wins, because sampled customers come back, and they come back sure.

That's the whole operation: your requests, real materials, slow testing on sweaty real-world skin, an oil base we stand behind, and labels that tell the truth. If you want to see what all that fuss produces, the complete collection is open all night — and the best sellers will show you where everyone else started. Meanwhile, I have fourteen strips and one sulk to get back to. Batch four goes better. It usually does.

All brand names and trademarks mentioned in this post are the property of their respective owners. Unravel Perfumery is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to any of these brands in any way. Our perfume oils are original, independent interpretations inspired by the scent profiles of the named fragrances — they are not the original products, nor replicas of them.