Entrance through an alleyway to the Voo concept store in Berlin. Like Soho in the 90s.
We walked in expecting to see organic cotton clothes, but were surprised to smell a universe of alternative fragrances you won’t find at La Labo. There is a La Labo in Berlin. But we suggest you head to the hipper part of town, to Kreutzberg and stop at Voo. Not an easy price point on anything there –– Voo shirts for $800 my daughter noticed, but for a worthwhile $250 you can have a non-commercial scent that isn’t exactly bespoke, but pretty close to it. We’ve loved using natural perfumes like Ayala Moriel, but they tend to wear off quickly.
The concept shop carries clothing, a cafe, ceramics that look they fell off a flea market truck and were left behind (the kind we like best) but we couldn’t have known that Voo would be selling the smells of your autobiography. Welcome to Berlin! Voo’s selection offers something between sustainable and a commercial option although we can’t vouch for the ingredients in each bottle. A scent in their showroom called Chinese Tobacco caught our eye and nose.
Since the wall came down between East and West, Berlin has been a city of soft chaos and graffiti, attracting misfits from all over the world. The Voo perfumes, found in an alley by Green Fuzz and a great wool shop on Oranienstrasse feel like emotional codes. Here are some of the brands that are curated to be far from mainstream perfumes and scents sponsored by big money and full of artificial enhancements.
Ephemeral Dyadic – a range of perfumes made in Turkey and for those who walk home alone at night by choice. Ephemeral Dyadic is a perfume project founded in 2023 by artist Sinan Saul in a small art studio in Istanbul’s industrial district. The name ‘Ephemeral’ means ‘temporary’, while ‘Dyadic’ stands for ‘the relationship between two subjects’. Drawing inspiration from the concept that scents are fleeting but emotions are eternal, each fragrance creates a unique bond between the wearer and memory.
Ephemeral Dyadic, a brand from Istanbul
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Dark Dreams — Smells like a club bathroom mirror at 3:47 AM, where you meet your own eyes and briefly believe you could start over.
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Ozymandias — All the fallen empires of your past relationships bottled with quiet dignity.
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Bodhi & Utah — Desert sage drifting through urban glass — a spiritual prank.
Notes de Bas de Paje is a French parfumerie d’auteur — less a fragrance brand and more a keeper of personal archives. Each extrait de parfum is treated like a fragment of memory, a page torn from a life story, meant to be worn close and shared with no one unless invited. Crafted in small volumes, deeply intimate, Notes de Bas de Paje makes perfume for people who treat scent as narrative, not accessory.
Notes de Bas de Paje
The niche perfume house founded in 2023 by Alice Gensse and Pierre‑Jr Menana. The name plays on the French term for footnote, note de bas de page. Committed to ethical, gender-neutral, and fully French production, the brand approaches fragrance as a literary gesture. Each scent is a subtle, personal, and meaningful sensory footnote that tells a story.
Some of their scents:
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Towédé — Amber fruit drying in the sun, violet smoke rising like memory.
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Olatua — Saltwater soul retrieval.
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Prolégomènes — Smells like the unfinished introduction to a revolution.
19-69: Founded by Swedish artist and product developer Johan Bergelin, 19-69 takes its name from 1969, a year marked by Woodstock, the Stonewall riots, the moon landing, radical art movements, and the death of the Summer of Love. But we didn’t smell patchouli. Bergelin treats perfume like a cinematic road trip — each scent born from a place where youth culture collided with counterculture, where something ended and something more dangerous began.
19-69 perfume
Influenced by Helmut Newton flash photography, biker films, cheap motel carpets, and the romantic dirt of subculture, the brand doesn’t decorate life — it documents it. These aren’t polite fragrances; they smell like movement, migration, rebellion, and sweat drying in the sun on unfamiliar skin.
Fragrances:
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MIAMI BLUE — Chlorine, sweat, careless decisions.
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Chinese Tobacco — The scent of a hidden backroom where someone rolls a cigarette with ritual precision. Tobacco leaf, tea smoke, and the holy pause between inhale and exhale. Maybe it was your dad’s wine cigar in the 70s. Be transported in this scent of a time machine that can take you back and transport you into the future.
::Voo
Author: Karin Kloosterman
Karin Kloosterman is an award-winning journalist, innovation strategist, and founder of Green Prophet, one of the Middle East’s pioneering sustainability platforms. She has ranked in the Top 10 of Verizon innovation competitions, participated in NASA-linked challenges, and spoken worldwide on climate, food security, and future resilience. With an IoT technology patent, features in Canada’s National Post, and leadership inside teams building next-generation agricultural and planetary systems — including Mars-farming concepts — Karin operates at the intersection of storytelling, science, and systems change. She doesn’t report on the future – she helps design it. Reach out directly to [email protected]
