Ideas

Yusy Silvia walking a dappled garden path
Yusy
Interview 49. A marketing manager in Jakarta on rose, honey and powder, her mother's dressing table, and carrying one bottle into a colder country. Read more...
The Sovereign and the Stolen Time
The source room · Behind Padishah Rubato The Sovereignand the Stolen TimeTwo movements: a title that outranks kings, and a freedom that only exists inside a strict beat The perfume is named twice, and the two halves of the name want opposite things. One is a Persian title invented to sit above every other title. The other is a musician's word for taking liberties with the beat. This essay follows each of them separately, and then to the place where they meet. Harum Oleh Memori · The source room ·... Read more...
Paramita in a Sumba ikat, in front of a village of peaked thatch roofs
Paramita
Interview 48. A civil servant and a gamer from Bekasi, living in Kupang, between the incense of the Keraton Solo and the sopi of Nusa Tenggara Timur. Read more...
Rafhael
Rafhael · A bound volumeInterviews · No. 47 HoM Haute · Interviews Rafhael A business owner from Bekasi, read in seven layers. He hid in wardrobes as a boy because they smelled like the people who owned them. He wears frankincense after the gym and refuses to read a book by its cover. This is the volume, cloth‑bound, with the fold‑outs left in. Edition 47Bekasi, West Java2026 Plate 1 · One lamp, one wall Layer 1 of 7 · The person The man who likes the unfamiliar He came looking... Read more...
Between Prayer and Passion
The source room · Behind Amor Hosanna Between Prayerand PassionWhy devotion borrows the words of love Every tradition that tried to describe the love of God ran into the same problem: the only vocabulary strong enough already belonged to lovers. So they took it. This is what happened next, in three places. Harum Oleh Memori · The source room · 2026 One The holy of holies is a love poem with no God in it The Song of Songs sits in the Writings, among the five scrolls, and it is... Read more...
Anthony at a Halloween party in Pontianak
Anthony
HoM Haute · InterviewsEdition 46 · Pontianak · 2026 Edition XLVI · MMXXVI Plate I · Flash, a borrowed robe, PontianakAnthony Songwriter and rapper · Pontianak, West Borneo “How you... Read more...
Dekito holding a fan of blotters
Dekito
IIIIIIDekito HoM Haute · InterviewsIssue 45 · Bogor · 2026 A portrait in three chapters Dekito SolivagantandEcofragrantica Perfumer · Fragrance developer · Founder of Solivagant · Co-founder of Ecofragrantica ·... Read more...
Halim Widyawardhana in blangkon and batik, holding a keris
Halim
Interviews · Issue 44 · 2026 Halim The man who lit the fire for Rahwana’s death. Civil servant and student · Bengkulu He went looking for a perfume that would... Read more...
Kartanegara, on the Mahakam
The source room · Behind Kartanegara Jazz KartanegaraSixteen centuries on one river The perfume borrows a name that has been in use, on the same stretch of water, since before Java had temples. This is where the name comes from, and what the river carried. Harum Oleh Memori · History · 2026 One The oldest writing in the archipelago is a receipt for cattle Around the end of the fourth century, on the middle Mahakam near Muara Kaman, brahmins cut seven stone posts and covered them in Sanskrit. They are... Read more...
Gaharu from Kalimantan
Material study · Kalimantan Gaharu and the fire we pretend is an accident Every drop of Bornean oud begins as an injury. A tree is wounded, something gets into the wound, and the tree answers with resin. It takes twenty years. The forest that grows it is being cleared in an afternoon, with a match, on land that mostly belongs to licence holders, in a country whose government has understood exactly how this works for thirty years. Harum Oleh Memori · Ideas · August 2026 IThe wound A tree that... Read more...
Nieky Arga, Jakarta
Nieky
Issue forty-three. A professional photographer who has never owned a camera, on tuberoses at Eid, a censer at a funeral, and the long way round to a chypre. Read more...
A perfumer's reading table with an open book, formula notebook, blotters, raw materials, and a brass balance
The Alchemy of Scent: A House Reading
Jean-Claude Ellena's book, read cover to cover: the doctrine of illusion, the discipline of fewer than two hundred materials, the desk, the drills, the trade, and the law. Read more...
A museum archive table carrying anonymous objects from successive perfume eras
The Century
A hundred years of perfume, hall by hall: the house museum of what perfume meant, decade by decade, from the first synthetics to the door of niche. Read more...
A perfumer's study table with blotters, notebook, raw materials, and a vintage balance
The Nose School
Five roads into perfumery, drawn to no rank: real lessons, real books, real odds. Exploration and experience are the real school. Read more...
Nopal
Hom Haute · Interviews · Issue 42 · 2026 Now playing · Nopal, in three movements Nopal Let me experience everything. Finance intern · Solo He listens to his days the way he wears them: an opening full of weight, a glimmer in the middle, and something lighter waiting at the end. NOPAL · SOLO · BETWEEN TWO OPENING BELLS Interviews · No. 42Harum Oleh Memori The Three Movements · Solo Some phrases are marked. Tap them for the liner notes. Naufal, called Nopal by everyone who knows him, is... Read more...
Bagus
HARUM OLEH MEMORI · PRIVATE LEDGER · ACCOUNT 041 · MMXXVI Hom Haute · Interviews · Issue 41 · 2026 ACCOUNT No. 041 · SETIAWAN, BAGUS Bagus A fragrance is a memory waiting to happen. Finance · Jakarta A finance man who keeps two sets of books: one for the money, and one for the memories. SETIAWAN, B. · PHOTOGRAPHED FAR FROM THE DESK Interviews · No. 41Harum Oleh Memori The Ledger Issue · Jakarta Some phrases carry a red pencil mark. Tap them for the notes in the margin.... Read more...
Jelang
Issue 40. Jelang Fajar Ramadhan on why a scent takes you to a second rather than a place, how he picks a bottle by the mood he woke up in, and the first ten minutes of his day. Read more...
A sacred pink lotus opening in a dark pond before dawn
Lotus
The most reproduced flower in human history, and almost nobody alive knows what it smells like. A study of three gaps: the word that names three different plants, the note... Read more...
Aliffazrie
HOM Haute Interviews · Issue thirty-nine · Survey 39 Aliffazrie Wahyutama Yosto An invisible signature. Entrepreneur, vlogger & content creator · Balikpapan Engineering, then banking, then a perfume house of his own. It reads as three careers and behaves like one road: a road that gains height by refusing to go straight. Issue thirty-nine is a survey of that climb, and of the five times a day he stops the car to look. Fig. 39.1Bearing 000° · still climbing Aliffazrie W. YostoBalikpapan · 2026 Plate one · the switchbackElevation gained... Read more...
Harvey
HoM Haute Interviews · Issue Thirty-Eight · Frame 00 Fragrance is the witness to my life. Interviews · Issue 38 · 2026 · ISO 400 Harvey Ad Maiora Natus Sum. Live stream consultant & content creator · Jakarta He trained to take photographs and ended up keeping a different kind of record. Issue thirty-eight is about a lost wooden spoon, a vial handed over by way of apology, and a shelf that turned out to be an album. 38A · 12KODAK 400TX The subject He studied journalism in order to... Read more...
Classical marble statues in profile
The Despised Sense
How philosophy spent twenty-five centuries insulting the nose, why the present decade keeps apologising to it, and what is still unsettled. A reading in four parts, ending in five arguments... Read more...
Lulu
HoM Haute Interviews · Issue Thirty-Seven There is a moment just after midnight when the city finally exhales. Interviews · Issue 37 · 2026 Lulu Ar Teacher. Dreamer. Brand owner. Filosophia · Cimahi, Indonesia He spends his days teaching people how to grow and his nights trying to stop a feeling from leaving. Part one is Lulu. Part two is Filosophia, the house he built to hold what he could not say out loud. The subject Every scent begins with a story before it becomes a formula. He says this... Read more...
Ojil
HoM Haute Interviews · Issue Thirty-Six Curiosity is a small door. Most people look through it and keep walking. He went in. Interviews · Issue 36 · 2026 Ojil “Once I find something I enjoy, I go all in.” Fragrance enthusiast & freelancer · Bekasi He arrived for a trend and stayed for a language. Ojil on florals, on tropicals, and on the hour of the day when nothing at all is required of him. The subject He is not a person who dabbles. He is a person who arrives,... Read more...
Aun
Clean air after the rain is not a place. It is a way of starting again. Interviews · Issue 35 Interviews · Issue 35 · 2026 AunSampura Soppeng · South Sulawesi Civil service HR analyst · Reader · Fragrance writer An introvert who serves the public for a living, and who has spent years learning the exact difference between clean and empty. His whole olfactory world fits inside one weather report: the air just after it has rained. No. 35Aun Sampura · Soppeng · 2026Tap the underlined phrases Aun is... Read more...
Sean
7 Seven is not luck. It is a discipline that has learned to look like luck. Interviews · Issue 34 Interviews · Issue 34 · 2026 SeanRowen @seanrowenn College student & basketball athlete · Yogyakarta A final year, a number that keeps arriving, and a nose that has decided to like the difficult things. Sean reads a fragrance the way he reads a game: from the opening to the base, with no shortcut in between. Rowen 7 YogyakartaFinal year 01 On the floor, mid-season · the number he did not... Read more...
Ajeng photographed in a colorful sculptural mirror
Ajeng
Ajeng on softness, memory, and building Poetica Perfumery as a poetry book written in scent. Read more...
Four anonymous industrial scent laboratories feeding one shared pool of amber concentrate
Who Owns Smell
Four companies you have never heard of create most of the perfume in the world. What they are worth, how they built the moat, and what it means to be... Read more...
A flooded perfumer's worktable covered in scent blotters, laboratory vials, patchouli leaves, and vetiver roots
The Flood
Six thousand perfumes launched last year, and almost none will be remembered. A field study of where fragrance goes next, read from the floor of an Indonesian house, mass and... Read more...
Amir Umara, HoM Haute Interviews Issue 32
Amir Umara
Interviews · Issue 32. A full-stack developer in Tangerang on a paper strip he pocketed and forgot, a gourmand his grandmother liked on him, taste as growth rather than volume,... Read more...
Oakmoss, scent blotters and laboratory glass arranged around an empty space on a dark archive table
What IFRA Took
A complete guide to the IFRA restricted list: what is capped, what is banned, why, how it changed the way perfume smells, twenty six perfumers on the record, the world... Read more...
Kevin Leonard on the train, HoM Haute Interviews Issue 31
Kevin Leonard
Interviews · Issue 31. Kevin Leonard, a white-collar worker in Jakarta, on a terrace at first light, dew and tuberose crossed with smoke and oil, a rotation chosen one morning... Read more...
Felix smelling a scent strip
Felix Prakosa
Felix Prakosa on memory, his father, life in Metro, Lampung, and the imagined worlds and bespoke practice of Lixie. Read more...
David Germando composing fragrance in his laboratory
David Germando
A two chapter conversation with David Germando on wet soil after rain, experimentation without fear, Daevu Fragrance Bar, the Psychedelic Scent Album, and Pilgrim. Read more...
Goura Sundar
Interviews · Issue 28. A spiritual enthusiast and marketer in Bali on training the five senses one at a time, three doorways that open onto a father, a mother and a silence, and the number he keeps returning to: minus one, zero, one. Read more...
Rangga
Interviews · Issue 27. A selenophile in Balikpapan on a year that repeated itself, the novel that asked whether a scent can hold a memory, the two words every reading lands on, and his grandfather's wood shavings at first light. Read more...
Sonia
Interviews · Issue 26. A chemist in Bogor on a childhood spent asking why, jasmine beneath the pillow, two moods worn on alternate days, and knowledge sought with a calm and steady mind. Read more...
Putri Elsa
Interviews · Issue 25. An officer based in East Jakarta and working in Central Jakarta, on four qualities held in balance, a fragrance club full of ridiculous people, two scent-memories side by side, and a mountain measured in feeling. Read more...
Laboratory glass vessel, scent blotter and copper sheet on a graphite table
Why Some Perfumes Feel Expensive
Price is only one cue. The expensive feeling is built from controlled intensity, readable contrast, tactile texture, shaped evaporation, finishing, and expectation. Read more...
Bayu Adi Prasetyo
Interviews · Issue 24. A mechanic in Balikpapan on the year fragrance arrived, a fruit note that leads back to his father, and the four people who take turns waking up. Read more...
Muhammad Ridhwan Azmi
Issue 23. A barber and content creator in Jakarta on the smell of an old shop, a bottle chosen for its contrast, the exact number of sprays a small room can take, and a conflict best watched with popcorn. Read more...
Sillage
Ideas · Science. Sillage. French for the wake a vessel leaves behind it. Your body is a chimney: a column of warm air rises off you at a fifth of a metre per second, and your perfume travels in it. The physics of the trace you leave in a room, and why you are the last person to smell it. HoM Haute · The Almanac · 2026. Read more...
Parosmia
Ideas · Science. Parosmia. The nose does not go silent. It goes wrong. Coffee becomes burning refuse, a partner's skin becomes unbearable, and the past stops arriving. The miswiring that causes it, the fifteen molecules identified as triggers, and what actually helps. HoM Haute · The Almanac · 2026. Read more...
The Vat and the Hillside
Ideas · Market. The Vat and the Hillside. Engineered yeast now makes a patchouli molecule from sugar, it uses a fraction of the land, it is more consistent, it is cheaper, and the rules let you call it natural. What that does to twenty million farmers, and to the argument this house has spent a month making. HoM Haute · The Almanac · 2026. Read more...
Headspace
Ideas · Science. Headspace. To smell a flower, perfumery had to kill it. Then somebody put a glass bell over a living blossom and took only the air. The instrument that captured scent without harvesting it, the flowers that have never been anything but a reconstruction, and what it means to record a smell rather than extract one. HoM Haute · The Almanac · 2026. Read more...
The Prediction Problem
Ideas · Science. Nobody Can Predict a Smell. Hand a chemist a molecule nobody has smelled and they cannot tell you what it smells like. Take the test yourself, then meet the receptor code, the vibration heresy, and the machine that now predicts better than the median human without anyone understanding why. HoM Haute · The Almanac · 2026. Read more...
Kembang Setaman
Ideas · Culture. Kembang Setaman. Seven flowers in a bowl of water, in fixed proportions, composed for birth, marriage and death. The oldest working perfume formula in the archipelago, owned by nobody, written down by nobody, and never once put in a bottle. HoM Haute · The Almanac · 2026. Read more...
The Formula
Ideas · Craft. What a Formula Actually Looks Like. Not a pyramid of notes. A table of materials and numbers, weighed to a thousandth of a gram. A complete worked formula, the dilution ladder, the forty trials, and the roughly one dollar of oil in a fifty millilitre bottle. HoM Haute · The Almanac · 2026. Read more...
Akar Wangi
Ideas · Materials. Akar Wangi: The Root That Holds the Hill. A grass grown for what is underneath it. Three metres of root, the longest distillation in perfumery, the only great material with no single molecule to name it, and the only one that is also a piece of civil engineering. HoM Haute · The Almanac · 2026. Read more...
Patchouli
Ideas · Materials. Patchouli: The Note Indonesia Owns. Eight bottles in ten of the world's patchouli begin on a Sulawesi hillside. A leaf that must be broken before it will speak, the money the farmer actually receives, and the forest being cleared to grow it. HoM Haute · The Almanac · 2026. Read more...
Hilmy Rio Pratama
Issue 22. A fragrance enthusiast and content creator in Balikpapan who lives between sunshine citrus and midnight music, on a first bottle found in high school, a mother's scent he has never stopped looking for, and the hours when light and darkness are both in the room. Read more...