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Journal · House · 1 min

Puredistance, the house of very few words

Founded in Vienna, and in more than twenty years it has released only a handful of fragrances. Each is an extrait, each is composed by a single perfumer without a deadline, and each is finished when it is right.

4 September 2026

Puredistance was founded by Jan Ewoud Vos with an idea that sounds simple and is almost never practised: release a fragrance only when it is finished, and never because the calendar says so. In more than twenty years the house has put out a small, numbered family of perfumes, and it has never rushed one of them.

Every Puredistance is an extrait, composed at concentrations far above what the industry considers normal, so that the fragrance is experienced in full rather than in outline. Every one is the work of a single perfumer given the brief and the time. The house's first, Puredistance I, was composed by Annie Buzantian. M, one of the most admired leather fragrances of its generation, was composed by Roja Dove. Antonia, Black, White and Warszawa followed at the house's own pace, which is to say slowly.

What to smell first

M, if you want to understand what the house means by luxury: a dark, warm leather with nothing loud in it, which lasts from morning to the following morning. Antonia, if you want to understand what it means by beauty. Either one, worn for a day, tells you more about the house than any description.

Why Stacey admires it

Restraint is the rarest quality in perfumery, and Puredistance has built an entire house on it. A small catalogue, a single perfumer per fragrance, and the patience to wait. It is the kind of house Scented Emotions was made to introduce.

Houses and perfumers in the journal are written about as subjects of admiration. The houses carried in Double Bay will be announced when the boutique opens.


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