Lost Tribe: The House That Made Freddy Krueger Smell Like Apple Pie

Near the holidays the sidewalks of New York City fill with vendors selling Christmas trees, and the smell as you walk past them is the part of the season the maker of Lost Tribe wanted to keep. So he built a perfume out of it, pines and firs from all over the world, to have the feeling in June as well as December. Something in his life smells good to him, and he builds it.

He makes them by hand there, writes his own product pages in the first person and puts no name on them, so here he is simply the maker. The pages read like notes from a workbench: which gardenia went in and why, how long a blend has been sitting.

The first perfume became the logo

His first was Hope You Like It, a blend of the three flowers he loved most, red champaca, frangipani and osmanthus, and what came out of it was a dark leathery fruit. The Lost Tribe logo came out of the same bottle: a deer with those three flowers growing from its antlers. The house has worn its first perfume ever since.

The rule underneath everything is one line long: natural, sustainably harvested materials, no synthetic compounds, a movement back to the natural world through the sense of smell. Four materials do the base work, sandalwood, deer musk, black ambergris and oud, and he once put all four into a single maceration and shook it every day so the sandalwood would take on the rest.

Two gardenias in one blend

White Out began as a blend he wanted for his own wear at the tail end of a year, something easy and crowd-pleasing, which he knows naturals and animal materials can make hard. Gardenia was his answer, and he built it out of two gardenias, Colombian for its sharpness and Chinese for its fruity sweetness. Siberian musk went underneath because he wanted the raw tartness of the flower to come forward.

That gentler side of him is in Lost Lotus too, blue lotus and osmanthus like an afternoon by a lotus pond. When his first child was born he made a perfume to mark it, and keeps his own bottle of that one for special occasions.

The apple pie he had to build from other things

Squeeze an apple and you get juice, so the apple in a perfume is always assembled out of other things. Working in naturals only, the maker had to build a whole pie that way, cooked fruit and spice and crust, for a perfume the house made as a tribute to Freddy Krueger. Woodsmoke over dark pine trunks, one lit window low in the ground mist: that is where it puts you. It opens on crisp pear and freshly sliced apple, a crackling burst of clove cuts through the fruit, and fir needle wraps around all of it. The pie arrives after that, and it is not dessert exactly, but the warmth of something cooked and spiced.

In every 15 ml bottle there are 1.3 grams of Aceh oud, a buried oud from the humid forests of northern Sumatra, earthy and slightly mossy with a soft dark leather tone. It hums under the fir and the pie and only shows itself fully as the perfume settles. Wear it on a cold night and the fir keeps coming back over oakmoss and Siberian musk, closer to a forest floor than to a bakery.

Musk grains in a mesh pouch

A brown fur coat hangs on a chipped panelled door, its gold lining catching the candlelight. French vanilla leads, deep and custardy from cured pods, with balsam of Peru behind it and a cinnamon that reminds him exactly of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. It is a childhood treat grown up, made entirely from naturals. Benzoin and tonka soften the heart into something powdery, and then oud, aged Mysore sandalwood and a sweet Mongolian musk take the whole thing over.

Natural musk arrives as small dark grains that steep in alcohol for months before a drop of it is worth using. In the extra musk edition more of those grains go into the bottle itself, sealed in an ultra fine mesh pouch, so the perfume keeps picking up musk as it sits while the mesh keeps the grains out of the sprayer. The pouch stays in his bottle; a decant is the finished liquid drawn off it, musk already in. On skin that musk turns to a gentle, fuzzy sweetness and leaves a trail still going hours later.

An oud that behaves like a sea breeze

A grey-shingled cottage in dune grass that does not move, under a sky bleached to white. He built The Hamptons around late afternoon on the East End, the hour when everything slows down, the glass of wine held a little longer, the laugh that lingers. Yuzu opens it, fizzing, and a drop of civet, from the civet, warm and deeply musky at that dose, sits under the brightness and never takes over. Raspberry comes in dewy and tart, and gardenia gives it a sourness that sharpens the fruit.

Freddy's oud is buried Sumatran and hums in the dark under everything. This one is Sri Lankan, and instead of weight it brings an aquatic breeze, lifting the fruit and the white flowers, "an acoustic reverb for the entire fragrance", as he puts it. He makes every bottle of it small on purpose, meant to be carried and kept close, and it wears that way too, near the skin.

The one with almost no flowers

Black pepper, jack pine and bergamot open it, and then smoke, the note he likes best of any and the one the whole thing is built around, a surreal smell of burning wood. It puts you in a forest after a fire, charred trunks and pale ash and a figure in a long coat walking through it. Among the woods of the heart, Nootka gives off a freshly sharpened pencil that stays from the first minute to the last, and vetiver and frankincense finish it, a forest fire of a composition with virtually no flowers in it.

Then the odd one. In the base sits a tincture of bakhoor, which is wood chips soaked in oud oil and smouldered on a charcoal disc, and tinctured it lifts ASH v3 and adds a freshness to the whole blend. Reactions to it divide sharply.

Gouttes Rares carries ten of his perfumes as Lost Tribe decants, in sizes from 1 ml to 10 ml.

Frequently asked questions

Who makes Lost Tribe perfumes?

One maker, working by hand in New York City, who writes every product page himself in the first person and puts no name on them. His first perfume, Hope You Like It, was a blend of his three favourite flowers, and the deer in the Lost Tribe logo carries those flowers, champaca, frangipani and osmanthus, in its antlers.

Why is Lost Tribe Freddy called Freddy?

The house made it as a tribute to Freddy Krueger, the dark pressed against the sweet. On skin that means crisp pear and apple, a crackling burst of clove and fir needle, then a warm apple pie accord over an earthy, slightly mossy oud from northern Sumatra. The pie is assembled from other natural materials, since there is no apple oil to use.

Is Lost Tribe perfume all natural?

Yes. The rule is natural, sustainably harvested materials and no synthetic compounds, and the bases lean on real oud, sandalwood, ambergris and deer musk. Fruit notes such as apple, apple pie and pineapple are accords built from other materials, since none of those fruits gives an oil of its own. Polaris is the one made without deer musk or oud.

How long does Lost Tribe last on skin?

Vanilla Waves V2 Extra Musk is the long one, 10 to 12 hours with enormous sillage. Most of the others hold a full evening and project strongly, and Neon Palms and Polaris are the lighter pair.

Where can I try Lost Tribe perfumes?

Gouttes Rares carries all ten Lost Tribe perfumes as decants in 1 ml, 2 ml, 5 ml and 10 ml. The four this article follows are Freddy (sold out at this writing), Vanilla Waves V2 Extra Musk, The Hamptons and ASH v3, and the other six sit in the same collection.