In a world oversaturated with big drops and flashy launches, Perfumehead founder Daniel Patrick Giles seeks to stand apart by instead reimagining how fragrance can feel. The result is 1272, a new scent that channels architecture and a sense of place, presented in a format the brand is calling the coltrait.
Giles has long championed the extrait de parfum, building an entire house around its richness and staying power. The new scent marries cologne’s immediacy with the soulfulness of an extrait.
“1272 was born from a deep personal space, both literally and creatively," says Giles. “I wanted to translate the spirit of my home, The Wexler House, into scent. At the same time, I was exploring how to evolve the fragrance format itself. That’s when the idea of coltrait emerged."
Giles tells us the coltrait is structurally and sensorially new, and the brand has even filed for a trademark on their invention. During a two-year-long iteration process, Giles and his team leaned into green chemistry, molecular distillation, sustainable extraction, and even AI-assisted formulation, which enabled them to analyze over 3,000 raw materials and their physicochemical properties, to create a new kind of olfactive architecture. “It’s a proprietary technology that redefines how scent can feel—fresh and sheer, yet lasting and emotionally rich," he explains.
Unlike traditional colognes that often dissipate quickly or extraits that can feel heavy, a Coltrait attempts to walk a careful line: it’s translucent, but it lingers, using a higher concentration than your average cologne, but tapping into the method of molecular distillation to “isolate natural ingredients’ purest, most luminous facets."
Technically, it was a challenge. “It’s built on duality: light and shadow, clean and sensual. The science lies in its balance. Technically, it’s challenging to achieve freshness and longevity at once, but our master perfumer, Constance George-Picot, found that intersection."
The scent itself is a love letter—specifically, to Giles’s longtime residence, The Wexler House in Palm Springs. Designed by mid-century modernist Donald Wexler, the glass-and-steel icon has become a wellspring of creative energy for Giles since he acquired it in 2008. “It’s more than a home. It’s a sanctuary," he says. “I bought it hoping to preserve a piece of California history, but I didn’t realize how much it would shape the story of both me and Perfumehead."
Wexler Family Archives
From its rustic terrazzo floors to its 70-year-old olive trees, the house invites the energy of the desert in. The new fragrance was designed to capture that energy. Notes of citrus and verbena (an homage to Verbena Drive, the street the home sits on) mingle with jasmine, resinous pine, and the woody breath of the house’s Japanese beams.
On the skin, the fragrance opens with a burst of lime and bright, spicy pink peppercorn, evoking the feeling of walking through a citrus grove under the desert sun. As 1272 dries down, floral notes come to the fore along with grounding patchouli, leading its wearer from golden hour to twilight and preparing the nose for a base of vetiver, sandalwood, ambery Cistus, and tonka. Even after nearly an hour of wear, though, those initial bright citrus notes are still very much present, making it an easy summer wear.
Translating a physical place into perfume is no small feat. Giles started with emotion: “What does the space evoke? What story do I want to tell?" He and George-Picot walked the property together, absorbing its angles, its plants, its atmosphere. “Every detail—the architecture, the air, the silence—guided the direction of the scent."
Giles lovingly refers to the experience that Perfumehead creates as an “osmocosm," or an all-encompassing universe of scent, and their creation of the Coltrait seemingly expands upon this notion. “People want a fragrance that feels both intimate and expressive," Giles says. “Coltrait was my answer to that."
From the article by Austa Somvichian-Clausen
