Caeleste Parfums
Virtues
The Story
Virtues is Caeleste's fourth fragrance and Michael Nordstrand's first for the Romanian house, named for the Virtues, a choir in the second order of its angelic hierarchy. Its seventeen notes sit under seven virtues, Fortitude to Charity. Nordstrand made it devotional, for a virtue that need not be immaculate or removed from the physical world.
Amber
Resin warmed until it goes sweet
Labdanum, benzoin and vanilla melted together into something sweet but dusky, like tree sap gone soft in the sun with a thread of incense smoke through it. Amber does not sparkle or shout. It sits close to the skin and gives off heat for hours.
Warm Spicy
Glowing embers of the spice drawer
The rounded heat of cinnamon, clove, and nutmeg, dry and slightly resinous, like a baking pantry rather than a sharp kitchen. It creates a flushed, enveloping warmth that feels intimate and cool-weather, hugging the skin from within.
Balsamic
Tree sap gone thick and golden
Tree resins and golden amber, thickened to syrup and touched with vanilla. It does not sparkle or move; it settles, warming the skin the way candlelight warms a room, and it stays there long after the top notes have gone quiet.
Woody
Dry grain of cut timber
The smell of cedar shavings, sandalwood, and dry vetiver roots, a sanded, resinous warmth with a faint pencil-box rasp. It feels grounded and composed, the quiet backbone that makes a scent read as serious and lasting.
Honey
golden sweetness with animal warmth
A thick, waxy sweetness with a faintly animalic, almost leathery undertone beneath the nectar. It hums warm and skin-close, comb-fresh florals on top and something darker and stickier underneath, closer to the hive itself than to anything poured from a jar.
Powdery
Soft hush of dressed skin
A velvety, slightly dry softness of iris root, violet, and fine talc, like face powder or clean linen warmed by skin. It feels intimate, refined, and nostalgic, blurring a fragrance into a gentle, cushioned haze.
Earthy
Damp soil after the rain
The mineral smell of wet ground, and of beets pulled straight from the dirt with the soil still on them. Cool, raw and faintly bitter, it grounds a fragrance with the dark, humid breath of the forest floor.
Cacao Absolute
Roasted cocoa, bitter until the sugar arrives
What it is
Chocolate starts as a bean in a pod, packed in white pulp, on a shade-loving American tree now farmed mostly in West Africa. Ferment it, dry it, roast it, and the absolute smells of chocolate with nothing added.
How it smells
Dry, roasted and dusty, like cocoa powder or dark chocolate shaved thin. Bitter up front, with coffee, nut and damp earth behind it, drying to a powdery brown warmth that stays close to the skin for hours.
In perfumery
Heart to base, the note that makes a gourmand edible without making it sugary. It sits with vanilla, tonka, patchouli, orange and chili. Sweeten it and it drifts toward drinking chocolate; leave it bare and it stays bitter.
Good to know
The Maya and the Aztec drank it bitter, frothed and spiced, and held it sacred. Sugar arrived with Europe, centuries later. The material itself never took it up.
Honey
Beeswax and dried fruit turning faintly feral
What it is
Bees concentrate flower nectar into a syrup that smells of whatever they foraged. Raw honey resists clean extraction, so the note in a bottle is nearly always built from beeswax absolute and aroma chemicals.
How it smells
Thick and golden, sticky with dried fruit and warm wax, and never quite polite. Under the sweetness runs something animal, closer to skin than to a jar. Push the dose and it turns leathery.
In perfumery
A heart-to-base warmth that rounds tobacco, orange blossom, immortelle and leather, softening their edges while smuggling in body heat. Orientals use it to make sweetness feel lived-in rather than confected.
Good to know
Most of that feral edge is one molecule, phenylacetic acid, which smells of honey and stale sweat at once and edges toward civet. Overdose it and the perfume goes barnyard, so perfumers weigh it in fractions.
Mysore Sandalwood
Creamy heartwood, pulled up roots and all
What it is
Harvesting means uprooting: the oil runs richest in the roots, so in Karnataka the whole tree comes out of the ground. Heartwood begins forming at five to ten years, but a heart worth taking is closer to thirty.
How it smells
Cream and warm milk over sawn wood, with a sour-buttery edge that turns almost lactic. Something rosy and balsamic sits underneath. It never sharpens and never smokes, just settles on skin, quiet and close, for hours.
In perfumery
Perfumers use it to hold a blend together: it rounds sharp edges and makes everything above it last longer. Rose, jasmine, violet and oud all soften against it. The great vintage milky-woody orientals are built on it.
Good to know
India cut its own supply almost to collapse. Standing trees and sales now fall under government licence and auction, and genuine Mysore oil has grown scarce, so most sandalwood you meet is Australian plantation wood or synthetic Javanol.
Patchouli
Damp earth and dark wood after rain
What it is
Nobody guesses mint, but that is the family: a leafy bush whose leaves are dried and left to cure, close to fermenting, before distillation pulls out an oil thick and dark as syrup.
How it smells
Wet soil, forest floor, an old cellar, with a winey sweetness underneath. Young oil can come at you sharp and green, almost camphorous. Aged oil goes the other way, into chocolate and leather, and stays put for hours.
In perfumery
Almost nothing holds a composition down like it. Chypres and orientals are built on that anchor, and a few drops under rose, vetiver or labdanum will hold the whole thing on skin for hours.
Good to know
Nineteenth-century Kashmiri shawls travelled packed in dried patchouli leaves to keep moths off, and Europeans learned to tell a real one by smell alone. The oil improves with age, which almost no essential oil does, mellowing like wine.
Vetiver
Cool damp earth pulled from tangled roots
What it is
Everything worth having is underground. Vetiver grows as a tall tropical grass, but the perfume lives in its roots, a dense fibrous mat that gets dug up, washed, dried and steam-distilled into a thick amber-brown oil.
How it smells
Cool damp soil and cut grass over dry wood. Haitian oil runs smoother and faintly hazelnut-sweet; Java is darker, smokier, more leathery. Underneath both, a bitter grapefruit edge and a green mineral streak that holds for hours.
In perfumery
Perfumers use it to hold a formula down, which is why fougères and chypres reach for it. Citrus, leather and tobacco sit well on top. Push its ashier side forward and it turns severe beside cypress and cedar.
Good to know
The same roots that end up in a bottle get planted on hillsides to hold the soil, gripping ground where nothing else will. Haiti supplies about half the world's vetiver oil, most of it grown on smallholder farms.
Orris
Violet powder from a root dried for years
What it is
Iris grown for its roots, not its flowers, in the hills of Tuscany. The rhizomes are dug, dried, then left three to five years before anyone grinds and steam-distils them into a waxy ivory butter.
How it smells
Cool and powdery, a violet with no sweetness in it, closer to face powder and soft suede than to a flower. Raw carrot and flour, damp soil underneath, a faint metallic shine over all of it.
In perfumery
Perfumers use it for body: a little in the heart or base rounds off sharp florals and raw woods and leaves powder behind. Violet, rose and ambrette are its company, and it underpins every great iris fragrance.
Good to know
Dig the root up and it smells green and acrid, nothing like a violet. The irones form as the dried rhizome oxidises, so the years make the violet, not the plant. A tonne gives two kilos of butter.
Cypriol
Dark smoky root from an Indian riverbed
What it is
Nagarmotha, a sedge that grows wild in the marshy riverbeds of Madhya Pradesh. The roots are dug up, dried, crushed and steam-distilled, and the yield is under a tenth of one percent: a thick, dark oil.
How it smells
Woody and earthy with a cold smoky underbelly, drier than patchouli and rootier than vetiver. A peppery sharpness first, then leather, dry amber and a little tar. It ends dark, mineral and ashy, close to burnt agarwood.
In perfumery
Base note and natural fixative, the affordable stand-in when a formula wants oud. It works with patchouli, saffron, cedar and incense, and holds up most of the smoky woody blends that lean agarwood.
Good to know
The same rhizome is motha, a workhorse base of Indian perfumery, and it has flavored Ayurvedic tonics for centuries. Its sister sedge, meanwhile, is a stubborn farm weed cursed by growers worldwide.
Bergamot
Sparkling citrus light with a bitter edge
What it is
Nobody eats bergamot. It is sour, seedy and disappointing, and almost the whole world's supply grows on one strip of Calabrian coast, farmed purely for the oil pressed cold from its green rind.
How it smells
Zest and green light in the first second, then something rounder than lemon: a floral, tea-like smoothness sitting on a faintly bitter warmth. It burns off fast. What stays behind is a quiet, slightly spiced hum.
In perfumery
It defines eau de cologne, and sits on top of nearly every fougère alongside lavender and oakmoss. Perfumers want the first bright second it gives, and the oil is also what makes Earl Grey smell like Earl Grey.
Good to know
The thing that makes it sparkle can also burn. Bergamot carries bergapten, which leaves skin hypersensitive to sunlight, so perfumers either keep the dose low or reach for a grade with the molecule stripped out.
Musk
One word for two entirely different materials
What it is
Two things answer to the name. A family of synthetic musks, built to carry warmth and softness, does most of the work in perfumery today. Deer musk is the older road, and traditional attar work still runs on it.
How it smells
Deer musk is animalic and heavy up close, and turns warm, sweet and radiantly skin-like the moment it is diluted to a whisper. The synthetics run cleaner: hot-ironed linen, warm cotton, skin rather than fur.
In perfumery
Musk is the floor a composition stands on: it fixes what sits above, stretches the wear and adds that second-skin glow. A lychee or a rose often has one underneath, holding the fruit in place long after it should have faded.
Good to know
One bottle can smell radiant on you and like almost nothing on the next person. A large number of people cannot smell certain synthetic musks at all, a quirk called specific anosmia.
Jasmine
The heady white flower at perfumery's beating heart
What it is
Picking runs by hand in the dark, from before first light into the morning. The blossoms are too fragile to distill, so solvent lifts their oil into a waxy concrete, and alcohol washes the absolute out of that.
How it smells
Sweet, heavy and honeyed, with something faintly animal underneath. Sambac reads green, tea-like and luminous; grandiflorum is fruitier, creamier, heavier on the skin. Both dry down warm and soft, with a mushroomy musk you notice only up close.
In perfumery
Put it in the heart and it ties a citrus opening to the woods underneath, adding volume to both. Rose, tuberose, sandalwood and musk all take it well. Plenty of perfumes are built on jasmine and nothing else.
Good to know
Roughly five thousand hand-picked blossoms go into one gram of absolute, among the costliest materials in perfumery. Part of its depth is indole, which smells like decay when concentrated and turns radiant at the trace the flower carries.
Frankincense
Golden tears hardened on a cut trunk
What it is
A scored Boswellia bleeds a milky sap that hardens over weeks into golden tears. The sacra trees of Oman and Somalia give the most prized resin. Steam or solvent turns the tears into oil.
How it smells
Brighter than you expect from something called incense: cool, lemony, almost pine-fresh, with a peppery lift. Underneath it is dry and balsamic, and it ends in the warm dusty smoke you already know.
In perfumery
It does something odd for a resin: it makes heavy things lighter. Sitting in the heart and base, it opens up oud, labdanum and thick oriental accords, and gives rose a cool, quiet space to stand in.
Good to know
The trees are in trouble. Wild Boswellia stands are thinning under over-tapping, drought and grazing, and the long-term supply of a resin the world has burned for thousands of years is now a real question.
Benzoin
Warm vanilla balsam wept from a tapped tree
What it is
Benzoin does not flow on its own. Someone cuts the bark of a styrax tree in Laos, Vietnam or Sumatra, and the wound weeps a gum that hardens over months into reddish tears.
How it smells
Sweet, warm, unmistakably vanillic, with a powdery amber softness underneath. Siam benzoin is rounder and creamier; Sumatra runs smokier, with a cinnamon bite. Left on skin it turns almost caramelized.
In perfumery
A base note that behaves like a fixative and a sweetener at once, giving amber accords their glow and holding the rest of the composition still. It softens sharp edges beside labdanum, tonka and incense.
Good to know
The word benzene comes from here. Chemists named benzoic acid after this resin, and benzene took its name from the acid. The resin's own name is a worn-down Arabic phrase, luban jawi, frankincense of Java.
Star Anise
The sweet licorice that clouds pastis
What it is
Not a seed: aniseed is a dried fruit. Steam-distil it and you get an oil that is almost entirely anethole, and anethole is the whole licorice idea. Star anise, from an unrelated tree, makes the same molecule.
How it smells
Sweet, warm, unmistakably licorice, with a cooling lift somewhere between menthol and fennel and a peppery herbal floor. It starts bright and aromatic, then rounds into something powdery and candied. Softer and sweeter than caraway or dill.
In perfumery
A top-to-heart flicker of sweetness that lifts a blend without weighing it. It works over lavender, almond, vanilla, fennel and tobacco, and it carries licorice-forward gourmands and the star-anise facet that sits so well on almond.
Good to know
Pour water into pastis and it turns milky white. That is the anethole coming out of solution, and the same trick works in ouzo, sambuca and absinthe: a smell you can watch happen.
Cinnamon
Sweet bark heat, glowing rather than stinging
What it is
Only the inner bark is worth anything. Strips are peeled from the tree, curled into quills, then steam-distilled. Sri Lanka's true cinnamon is the delicate one; the coarser, lower-priced cassia is what fills most kitchen jars.
How it smells
Warm, dry and sweet, with a red glow from cinnamaldehyde and a clove-like edge behind it. True cinnamon smells rounder and faintly floral; cassia bites. The dry-down goes woody and balsamic, with a whisper of leather.
In perfumery
A heart note, and the reason gourmands and orientals feel like a warm room. It works with vanilla, amber, rose, apple and tobacco, and the whole trick is restraint: a touch gives glow, a fraction more gives sting.
Good to know
The Dutch once burned their own stockpiles to keep the price up, back when this bark outvalued gold and Ceylon was worth conquering for it. Modern caution is duller: cinnamaldehyde sensitizes skin, so the dose is capped.
Clove
Warm spice with a numbing, dentist-chair bite
What it is
The clove you know is a flower stopped before it opened. Buds come off the tree as they flush pink, dry to small brown nails, and go to the still as clove bud oil.
How it smells
Hot and dry, with a tingle that turns numb: eugenol, the same compound a dentist uses. Under the burn sits a woody, fruity sweetness and a slow balsamic trail of pomanders and mulled wine.
In perfumery
Perfumers use it in the heart for heat and old-world richness, beside carnation, rose and vanilla. Caron's Poivre opens on clove and pepper over a carnation heart, and the same spice warms a shelf of chypres and fougeres.
Good to know
Clove once outvalued its weight in gold, and the Dutch razed whole groves in the Spice Islands to control supply. Eugenol can turn skin allergic, so its dose is capped in every material that carries it.
Vanilla
Cured orchid pods, custard and faint smoke
What it is
Green pods come off the orchid vine smelling of almost nothing. The scent is made, not found: months of blanching, sweating in the sun and slow drying before the vanillin appears. Mexico first, Madagascar now.
How it smells
Custard and caramel up front, then something darker underneath: dried fruit and a thread of tobacco smoke. It turns powdery as it dries and sits close to the skin. Real cured vanilla reads deeper than vanillin alone.
In perfumery
Perfumers use it to round off edges. Anything too sharp, too green, too austere gets warmth and body from a vanilla base, which is why it anchors many oriental and gourmand builds alongside tonka, amber, sandalwood and spice.
Good to know
Every flower opens for one day. Miss it and there is no pod, so all of it is pollinated by hand, a trick devised by Edmond Albius, a twelve-year-old enslaved boy on Réunion. Most vanilla flavour today is synthetic.
Labdanum
Sticky amber resin scraped from sun-baked rockrose
What it is
A Mediterranean rockrose sweats gum through its leaves in summer, dark and sticky enough to glue your fingers together. Harvesters boil or scrape the branches to get it off, then extract that crude gum into absolute and resinoid.
How it smells
Balsamic warmth, then leather, dried fruit, honey and a curl of smoke. There is something almost ambergris-like in the opening. Hours later it has settled into brown tobacco and worn skin, still going.
In perfumery
Take labdanum out and most amber accords collapse; it is what vanilla and benzoin get built on. It fixes a formula in place, gives chypres and leathers their depth, and sits well with rose, oakmoss and incense.
Good to know
Before there was distillation, there were goats. Herds browsed through cistus scrub all summer, the gum matted into their beards and thighs, and shepherds combed it out. Labdanum is one of the oldest aromatic materials still in use.
Fragrance Character
It opens bright and spiced, bergamot lifting star anise, cinnamon and clove, with frankincense already rising behind them. Honey and cacao absolute follow, bittersweet rather than sugary, while jasmine and orris add a soft floral powder. Then it settles deep and balsamic: benzoin, labdanum and vanilla over Mysore sandalwood, with patchouli, vetiver and cypriol giving it an earthy, smoky edge.
Longevity
how long it stays on skin
The hourglass reads wear time: how many hours the fragrance keeps speaking before it fades. A bar that barely leaves the start means a few fleeting hours. One that runs the full length carries from morning into evening. Treat it as typical, not promised. Oily skin holds scent far longer than dry.
Sillage
the size of its scent trail
Sillage is French for a ship's wake, and that is exactly what this measures: how much of the scent reaches the room instead of staying on you. Low is a whisper only close friends catch. Enormous fills the room, then keeps filling it after you leave.
Experimental
Built to provoke, not to please
Some perfumes are made to be liked. These are made to be argued about: inky tar, hot rubber, fruit on the turn, metal and fur where you expected flowers. The coin glows for a scent that provokes and dims for one that plays it safe, which is sometimes the point.
Office
Polished, and never louder than the room
Scent is manners in a shared room. At this range it should reach the person across the desk and stop there: tidy citrus, soft musk, pale woods, all of it reading competent and considerate. A glowing coin means nobody has to mention it. A dim one means it travels.
Evening
After dark, when it deepens
Dinner, drinks, the night that runs long. Low light is where ambers, resins and smoky woods stop being polite, and where a plush floral finally blooms. A glowing coin means it is waiting for exactly this hour. A dim one means it did its best work in daylight.
Romantic
Close enough to be felt
A fragrance can hum against skin instead of announcing itself across a table. That is the register here: creamy florals, vanilla, soft musk, a thread of spice, warm enough to make someone lean in. The coin glows when a scent sets that mood and dims when it is more practical than seductive.
Formal
Quiet authority in a dressed-up room
A wedding, a ceremony, a room where everyone has thought about their shoes. What works here is structure, not volume: smooth woods, disciplined florals, soft leather. A glowing coin means it holds its posture all evening. A dim one means it is too casual for the room.
Casual
Easy comfort for unhurried days
Errands, coffee, a slow Saturday with nowhere to be. Nothing here has to impress anyone, so the fit is soft and easy: fresh citrus, light woods, a little warmth off the skin. A glowing coin says yes to all that. A dim one means the fragrance is asking for a bigger night.
Day to Night
where its mood naturally falls
A bar running from sun to moon, reading the hour the fragrance was made for. The more of it that stays gold, the more the scent belongs to daylight and open air. The further the blue reaches back toward the sun, the deeper and warmer it turns: evening, candlelight, low rooms.
Winter
Warmth that carries through cold air
Cold air mutes a fragrance and slows it down, which is why winter belongs to the dense and the warm: resin, smoke, vanilla, leather, ambered spice. The bar reads how well this one pushes back, glowing against the chill instead of thinning out in it.
Spring
Fresh blooms in mild, rising warmth
Mild, humid air lifts a light composition, so the season belongs to dewy florals, green stems, soft powder and citrus you can see through. Alive rather than heavy. The further the green runs along the bar, the more comfortably this one wears in that weather.
Summer
Bright and airy in real heat
Heat does the projecting for you, which is why the wrong perfume turns unbearable by noon. What survives is cool and breathable: sharp citrus, salt air, aromatic herbs, water. Things that refresh instead of cloy. A short bar here means save it for cooler months.
Fall
Spiced warmth for cooling days
As the air cools, the rich materials stop smothering and start reading clearly: dry woods, warm spice, tobacco, amber, fruit gone golden. It is the season perfume turns contemplative. The bar fills according to how naturally this one settles into crisp, cooling days.
Best Worn
Autumn and winter, late afternoon into evening, at dinners, concerts or a slow night at home. For someone who likes incense and spice warmed by honey and cacao rather than a sugary gourmand.
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The Vibe
Nos
Michael Nordstrand
Perfumer
Michael Nordstrand studied perfume creation at Givaudan, ISIPCA and the Grasse Institute of Perfumery, and runs Mythologist Studio, his independent atelier in the New York area. His Bad Lily for TALE Parfum won a 2025 Art and Olfaction Award. Caeleste Virtues is his first fragrance for the house.
Maison
Burnt almond cookie, gunpowder and hot metal: an extrait built from what astronauts said space smells like.
Caeleste is a Romanian house naming its fragrances for the ranks of the angelic hierarchy, a different nose for each rank. It opened in 2024 with three extraits conceived together as the third order and has since moved up a sphere with Virtues. Principalities, by David-Lev Jipa-Slivinschi of Toskovat', won the 2025 Art and Olfaction Newcomer Award.
- Origin
- Bucharest, Romania
- Founded
- 2024
- Known for
- Angel-hierarchy extraits
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