Laboratory Perfumes

Laboratory Perfumes is an independent British fragrance house based in London. It makes gender-free eau de toilette alongside scented candles and a small skincare range, built around essential oils and botanicals drawn from Britain and further afield. The company describes itself as "a sustainable beauty company for all genders," made by a small, female-led team working with local suppliers.

Accounts of when it began differ by a year. The company's own origin page dates its establishment to 2012 [2], while editorial coverage places the launch in 2011 [5]. From a handful of scents it has grown into a multi-category range, and it remains in active trade.

Editorial sources credit Aaron Firth as the founder, describing a deliberately "unconventional course" that set aside existing industry norms [5]. Firth has said he does not accept the idea that tastes or fragrances are more suited to one gender than another — a stance that shaped the brand's gender-free identity from the start [6]. His stated aim was to strip away the "noise" often attached to mainstream fragrance and draw inspiration directly from the flowers, herbs and aromatic botanicals native to Britain and beyond [5]. The brand's own origin page does not name individual founders, attributing the launch to a small London team [2].

The house is known for single-word scents in minimalist, beaker-like bottles: Amber, Gorse, Samphire, Tonka, Helios and Atlas. Amber leans warm, spicy and woody; Samphire is fresh and herbal; Atlas is a darker, North African–inspired blend of tobacco, spice and cognac notes. The scents are built mostly from essential and skin-kind fragrant oils. Over time the range has widened to include candles, skincare such as creams and soaps, and gift sets. Full-size bottles retail at around £65 for 100ml, with a smaller discovery set offered for sampling [6]. The Perfume Society has described the house as among the best-selling fragrance names at London's Liberty, with shelves needing constant restocking [5].

Gender-free positioning sits at the centre of the brand, which rejects the traditional split between masculine and feminine fragrance. The company frames its work around a principle it borrows from medical ethics — "First, do no harm" — which it applies to environmental impact as much as to formulation [2]. Simplicity is part of the presentation, from the one-word names to the pared-back packaging.

Local sourcing has been a consistent theme; the company says its supply began within roughly a 130-mile radius of London and that this remains core to how it operates [2]. Manufacturing is split between the United Kingdom, where scents and candles are made, and Portugal, where soaps are produced in small batches [3]. Products are described as vegetarian, cruelty-free and paraben-free, with packaging said to be sustainably sourced and widely recyclable [3].

On carbon, the brand's claims are presented at two levels. Its homepage badges the products as "Carbon Neutral" [1], while its sustainability page frames this more cautiously, saying the company calculated its emissions in 2021, offset them retrospectively back to its founding, and is "actively working on becoming a carbon neutral company" through annual offsetting in UK woodland restoration projects [4]. The company references compliance with International Fragrance Association standards and ISO 9000:2008; no independent third-party certifications are documented.

Laboratory Perfumes is active. It continues to sell directly to consumers and through major stockists, and its range has expanded beyond the original fragrances into candles and skincare, with carbon offsetting reported as ongoing since 2021.