Lost Tribe
ASH v3
The Story
ASH v3 is the third version of Ash from Lost Tribe, the New York house. It is a rare release for the house, with virtually no florals, and its base carries a tincture of bakhoor from Sultan Qaboos.
Smoky
Charred wood and rising embers
The dry, charred scent of burning wood, smoldering incense, and lingering ash, sometimes tarry, sometimes wispy and gray. It feels brooding and atmospheric, conjuring a dying fire and a cool current of air carrying its last breath.
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.
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.
Fresh Spicy
Cool bite of cracked pepper
Pink pepper, cardamom and ginger, spice that prickles rather than warms. It fizzes near the top of a fragrance, dry and faceted, closer to crushed peppercorns and a split cardamom pod than to anything simmering in a kitchen. Bright, never comforting.
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.
Oud
What a tree makes when it is wounded
A dense, resinous wood that smells warm and slightly medicinal, with a leathery, animal-tinged smokiness and a sweet, almost barnyard funk underneath. It feels ancient and brooding, wrapping the skin in something thick and quietly powerful.
Choya Ral
Sal resin roasted to smoke in a clay pot
What it is
One of the Indian choyas, made by destructive distillation rather than steam: the resin of the sal tree, Shorea robusta, is roasted inside a sealed clay pot until it chars and the smoke itself is captured and condensed. The result is a dark brown oil. Its siblings are made the same way from other materials, choya loban from Indian frankincense and choya nakh from roasted seashells.
How it smells
Smoky and leathery first, then dry-woody and sweetly resinous underneath, with a tarry, burnt-earth edge that comes from the charring rather than from the resin. It is not the pale, sweet, balsamic air of the raw sal resin; it is what that resin smells like after the fire has had it.
In perfumery
A base material used for smoke and leather where a distilled resin would read too clean. It gives depth and a burnt-mineral shadow to attars and orientals, pairs naturally with oud, rose and sandalwood, and is a traditional component of the complex Indian attars.
Good to know
Choya is a method, not a plant, and the three choyas smell quite different from one another. Because the material is made by burning, a little goes a very long way and too much will flatten a composition into ash. It is not plain incense.
Jack Pine
Cold forest air with a turpentine bite
What it is
Snap a needle and you have most of it. Pine needle oil is steam-distilled from needles and young twigs across the northern forests; the absolute, pulled with solvent instead, comes out darker, greener and heavier.
How it smells
Cold, dry and resinous, with a green balsamic edge and a turpentine bite that turns medicinal. Sappy up top, like standing in a wood in January. It softens as it goes, ending sweeter and warmer than it began.
In perfumery
A top note for anything that has to smell like outdoors: woody-forest accords, fougeres, the bracing open air of an alpine theme. Lavender, cedar, fir and clean musks all hold it in place.
Good to know
Twentieth-century cleaning products ran on pine oil for its disinfectant power, and that is why a forest note also reads as a mopped floor. The nose gets both at once: wild woodland and household hygiene.
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.
Black Pepper
Dry heat that prickles and sharpens
What it is
Peppercorns start out green; drying is what turns them black and wrinkled. They grow on a climbing vine, and the scent is drawn out by steam or by CO2.
How it smells
Sharp and dry, a bite that tingles the inside of your nose. Underneath, woody and resinous with a lift of citrus. The distilled oil is airy; the CO2 extract smells like a peppercorn cracked a second ago.
In perfumery
It snaps a fragrance awake from the top, then works lower down as a foil for rose, vetiver and amber. Some are built on nothing but that dry crackle over cedar, which turns out to be enough.
Good to know
Pepper was once used as currency and accepted as rent. And the heat you taste is piperine, which is too heavy to travel in a distillation, so the oil smells peppery without burning anything at all.
Brown Ambergris
Real ambergris from the darker, warmer end of the scale
What it is
A waxy mass formed in the gut of a sperm whale, expelled, then cured for years by sun and salt as it drifts. Ambergris is graded largely by colour, from black through brown and grey to white, and brown sits toward the darker, less weathered end.
How it smells
Deeper and more animalic than the pale grades, with less of the raw edge that black still carries. Salt, tobacco, dry seaweed and old wood sit over a soft sweetness, and like all ambergris it reads less as a smell than as warmth, diffusion and a skin-like glow.
In perfumery
Real ambergris is usually worked into a tincture and dosed in small amounts. It slows the evaporation of everything around it, throws the composition outward and leaves a warm, salty glow on skin, the effect Ambroxan was later made to echo.
Good to know
In an interview, Lost Tribe says every animalic it uses is natural, ambergris included, and that the colour is chosen to suit the scent: white or light brown for lighter, brighter blends, brown or black for darker ones. ASH, all smoke, pepper and dry wood, takes brown.
Siam Wood
Creamy mountain cypress, often mistaken for guaiac
What it is
Perfumers file it next to guaiac wood and the two get muddled, but they share nothing beyond a shelf. This one is a mountain conifer from Vietnam, Laos and southern China, the last living species in its genus.
How it smells
Warm, sweet and unmistakably creamy. There is cedar in it and a balsamic weight underneath, and the drydown turns soft and rosewood-like on skin. What you will not find is smoke, which is exactly where guaiac lives.
In perfumery
Its job is mostly structural: a fixative, the quiet floor a base accord gets built on. It sits easily with frankincense, vetiver and patchouli, and blended with amyris it can stand in for sandalwood.
Good to know
The best of it is underground. Distillers take the stumps and roots that loggers left behind as worthless, which is where the oil runs richest. The same dense, slow-rotting timber above ground was once cut for coffins.
Cedar Wood
Dry pencil shavings and sun-warmed timber
What it is
The cedar in your closet or cedar chest is usually a juniper. Virginia and Texas cedar both are; among the cedars of perfumery, only Atlas and Himalayan are true Cedrus. The oil is steam-distilled from heartwood chips and sawmill dust.
How it smells
Freshly sharpened pencils, and the inside of a cedar chest. Virginia leans pencil-dry and balsamic; Atlas is sweeter, almost honeyed. Both carry a clean, faintly camphor-cool smoke that settles into sappy warmth.
In perfumery
A heart-to-base workhorse: dry structure other materials can lean on. It sits well with vetiver, rose, citrus and incense, and it is the smoke in the drydown of countless modern woody-ambers.
Good to know
Cedar rarely appears alone. Its molecules, reworked in the lab, form the backbone of a great many contemporary woody fragrances, which is why so much of the modern woody shelf smells faintly of a sharpened pencil.
Yakusugi Wood
Rain, granite and a thousand years of resin
What it is
Rain barely lets up on Yakushima, and the island's granite gives a cedar almost nothing to feed on, so it grows at a crawl and packs its grain with resin. Living trees are not cut.
How it smells
Forget the pencil-sharpener snap of cedar. This comes in sweet and resinous, damp wood in warm air, with a balsamic depth nearer to old temple beams and worn sandalwood than to anything sharp.
In perfumery
Distillers work stumps and roots left by crews who felled the trees for roof shingles in the 1600s, wood still sound after three centuries. Production stays small and mostly Japanese, topped up by what storms bring down.
Good to know
A cedar under a thousand years old does not get the name; islanders call it kosugi, small cedar. Plenty of pyramid woods are one molecule with no tree behind them. This one has a stump.
Lavender
Cool herbal blue from a sunlit hillside
What it is
The flowering tops are cut at peak bloom and go straight to the still, the purple spikes giving up a pale oil. Solvent extraction yields a darker absolute instead. Provence and Bulgaria supply most of it.
How it smells
Sharp and green at first, almost minty, with a cool camphor lift over soft floral sweetness. The dry-down warms into hay, faint vanilla and a powdery calm. True lavender is rounder and sweeter than the lavandin hybrid.
In perfumery
Set it against oakmoss, coumarin and tonka and you have a fougere, the barbershop structure behind countless aromatic masculines. Lavender runs from the top into the heart, cooling bright florals and softening citrus colognes.
Good to know
Those Provence fields the tourists photograph are mostly lavandin, a sterile hybrid that yields far more oil per hectare. True lavender is retreating uphill: a bacterial disease carried by sap-sucking insects has pushed plantings to cooler altitudes.
Nootka
Pacific coast wood with grapefruit hidden inside
What it is
Not the Mediterranean cypress, despite the name. It grows in the temperate rainforest of the North Pacific coast, takes its name from Nootka Sound, and yields oil from the wood rather than from fresh needles.
How it smells
Dark pencil wood arrives first, dry and a little bitter, staying at the back of your nose. Then something unexpected lifts off it: a flicker of grapefruit peel. It dries down powdery and resinous.
In perfumery
Where the Mediterranean cypress lifts an opening and leaves, this one sinks. Perfumers keep the dose low and let it hold the base, a dry wood that can carry citrus and cedar in the same breath.
Good to know
A signature grapefruit molecule was found in this wood first. Chemists pulled nootkatone from the heartwood and named it for the tree, then met the same thing soon after in citrus peel.
Merauke Oud
Papua's deep earth, cocoa and wet forest
What it is
Oud from Merauke in the far south-east of Indonesian Papua, distilled chiefly from Aquilaria filaria, with Gyrinops wood turning up alongside it. Its dense, resinous wood usually needs a long soak and a long, hard distillation before it gives up any oil at all.
How it smells
Balsamic and dark, opening with citrus and a sour plum edge over the wet-jungle petrichor the region is named for in oud circles. Beneath sits rich cocoa-like oleoresin and a deep earthy base. Oils from Aquilaria filaria run especially dark and heavy, while the Gyrinops wood of the same forests turns cooler, greener and more piney.
In perfumery
A base note in the fullest sense, prized by artisanal houses for the sheer floor it puts under a composition. Its cocoa and wet-earth character sits naturally with patchouli, vetiver, dark resin and rose, and it supplies depth where a lighter archipelago oil would simply evaporate.
Good to know
Merauke is one origin within Papua, not a synonym for it, and the two genera growing there smell quite different, so ask which tree an oil came from. Papuan distillation is young and still small in scale, and good resinous wood is uneven, which keeps genuine Merauke oil scarce.
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.
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.
Mitti Attar
Fired clay distilled straight into sandalwood oil
What it is
Kannauj distillers fire discs of river clay in a kiln, break them up, and simmer the shards in copper stills. The steam is caught not in water but in a waiting receiver of sandalwood oil.
How it smells
Hot dust the moment rain lands on it, then something rounder underneath. Give it ten minutes and the sandalwood surfaces, creamy and dry, and the earth settles into it like water into a terracotta cup.
In perfumery
A heart and base material, dosed low, that gives a composition ground to stand on. It sits well under vetiver, rose and amber, and it will pull a bright floral toward dusk and wet stone.
Good to know
Nothing in the still was ever alive, so this attar has no harvest season. As sandalwood grew scarce and costly, some distillers catch the vapour in liquid paraffin instead, and that version smells thinner and flatter.
Bakhoor Sultan
Compounded Arabian incense on the coal
What it is
Bakhoor is not a single material but a compound: wood chips, most often agarwood, macerated in fragrant oils, resins and sometimes honey or sugar, pressed and matured, then burned in small pieces over charcoal. It is the household incense of the Gulf, and Sultan here points to Sultan Qaboos of Oman, not to a botanical designation.
How it smells
Sweet, dense and smoky all at once, quite unlike a single resin. Warm agarwood smoke carries a syrupy, almost candied sweetness from the oils it was soaked in, with rose, amber and spice threading through and a soft powdery finish as the coal cools. It fills a room rather than sitting on skin.
In perfumery
Used as a note to evoke a whole room and a whole ritual rather than one ingredient: the smell of a house being perfumed before guests arrive. It anchors Gulf-facing compositions, pairs with oud, rose and amber, and gives an oriental accord a lived-in, domestic warmth that pure frankincense cannot.
Good to know
Because bakhoor is a recipe, quality varies enormously and the sweetness usually comes from added oils rather than from the wood. It is distinct from bukhoor's neighbours on an ingredient list: frankincense is a single tree resin, choya ral is a burnt distillate, and bakhoor is a blend that includes several such things at once.
Indonesian Sandalwood
Mysore's own species, raised on drier islands
What it is
It cannot grow alone. Sandalwood taps the roots of neighbouring plants for water and nutrients, and on Timor and Sumba it does so slowly, building the fragrant heartwood that gets ground and distilled.
How it smells
Creamy and milky at first, warm and balsamic underneath, with a faint sour-green bite the Indian wood does not have. It runs drier and sharper than Mysore, and it builds on skin rather than fading.
In perfumery
Base note and fixative. It does the smoothing: sharp materials laid over it lose their edges, and rose, jasmine and oud gain a velvety floor that holds them in place for hours.
Good to know
Botanically this is the same plant as Mysore, so the difference comes largely from soil, island and the age of the tree. When India restricted its exports, Indonesian and Australian wood filled the gap.
Fragrance Character
Black pepper and jack pine open sharp and resinous, with smoke arriving almost immediately over a thin thread of bergamot. The woods that follow are dry rather than creamy, cedar and Yakusugi against a cool lavender. It settles slowly onto vetiver, frankincense and damp mitti earth, with sandalwood showing late on warm skin. Reactions to it divide sharply.
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
Cold months and open air suit it best, afternoon into evening, worn casually rather than to close quarters. For people who already know they like smoke, dry wood and pepper.
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The Vibe
The Nose
Mathew Schmuelian
Founder and perfumer
Founder and perfumer of Lost Tribe, who moved from collecting artisanal naturals to macerating his own musks in 2022; his first release was Lost Tribe Hope You Like It. He composed Lost Tribe Sultry Sambac, Lost Tribe Smoky Bear and Lost Tribe Prince of Persia.
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The Maison
Small tribe, real musk, no compromises, poured while stock of the originals lasts.
Lost Tribe makes fragrance that feels lived in and loud, the kind that arrives before you do and lingers after you leave. There is a maximalist streak running through the whole house, from sun drunk tropical fruit to resin thick vanilla to rare oud built on aged Kinam.
- Known for
- Maximalist naturals, aged Kinam
EVERY DECANT
From the original bottle to your door
We buy the original flacon at full retail price, direct from the house.
A medical grade Socorex syringe takes the exact millilitres straight from the flacon.
Packed into the hot foiled box and handed to DHL, every duty already paid. How a decant is made
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