In 2000, botanical perfumer Alexandra Balahoutis founded Strange Invisible Perfumes in her native California. The bohemian-chic culture of Venice’s Abbot Kinney Boulevard embraced Balahoutis’ stunning boutique and purist philosophies. The first natural fragrance house to distinguish luxury perfume from aromatherapy, Strange Invisible Perfumes marked a new era of avant-garde botanical perfumery.
Perfecting the chemistry between botanical distillates and exciting narratives, each Strange Invisible perfume courts the senses and illuminates the imagination. To complement a spectrum of exquisite natural fragrances, the company also offers a truly pure collection of bath and body products. These botanical delights offer uncompromising excellence in appeal, purity, and performance.
“Our perfumes are melded in the fires of three essential components: pure aromatic plants, reverent distillation, and evocative composition."
- Alexandra Balahoutis
- Alexandra Balahoutis
Plants are live creatures, intricate in both evolution and chemistry. A premium botanical distillate is the soul of a plant or flower and vital to authentic perfumery. This is why Strange Invisible Perfumes demands that a rose be a rose and that jasmine flowers be pulled from a vine at dawn, not counterfeited in the buzzing fluorescent light of a laboratory.
An essence must do more than trace back to botany. Every ingredient and process is subjected to Alexandra’s ever-evolving standards of excellence and her very discerning nose. To secure exceptional quality and authenticity, Strange Invisible Perfumes both custom extracts with an in-house master distiller, and acquires essential oils from talented distillers all over the world. Unlike mere suppliers, these distillers are artists capturing the radiance of plants with precise and reverent skill. They are the avant-gardes of alchemy.
Along with a premium palette of botanical essences, another vital palette Alexandra draws from is her own imagination. She designs aromatic synergies that capture the elusive essence of a moment, story or muse. Alexandra is an olfactory poet using distillates like words. Translating raw, concentrated extracts into refined, visceral narratives entails diligence, skill, and fine-tuning.
The Strange Invisible Perfumes boutique is the perfect library to house these fragrant
stories. An elegant interior of walnut wood, white marble, and rose-tinted glass evokes old world romance in a forward setting. Available in the boutique are twenty-three pure perfumes, eleven eaux de parfum, and a collection of life-changing bath and body products, all exquisitely designed for the natural luxury connoisseur.
Strange Invisible Perfumes is committed to respecting and preserving the earth. Its practices as a company, boutique, and manufacturer are vibrantly green without even trace amounts of indifference or hypocrisy.
Each fragrance is designed, hand blended, and bottled at the Strange Invisible Perfumes alchemical laboratory which is currently undergoing organic certification. While sincerely recognizing the value of organic certification, Strange Invisible Perfumes adheres to its own standards of purity and authenticity, which are arguably far more rigorous. The company embraces wildcrafted plants and organic essences cultivated by small pioneering farmers who cannot afford organic certification.
Additionally, by sourcing ingredients directly from distillers as well as producing essences
in-house, Strange Invisible Perfumes relies on first-hand knowledge, not paperwork, in matters of quality control. The only way to know essences is to know those who distill them. A shipment of essence from a third party with enclosed paperwork verifying its purity will not be enough. Strange Invisible Perfumes is an ever-evolving vanguard in the field of authentic, organic perfumery. Its vision of purity and artistry continue to propel the movement of botanical perfumery into a bright and redolent future.
in-house, Strange Invisible Perfumes relies on first-hand knowledge, not paperwork, in matters of quality control. The only way to know essences is to know those who distill them. A shipment of essence from a third party with enclosed paperwork verifying its purity will not be enough. Strange Invisible Perfumes is an ever-evolving vanguard in the field of authentic, organic perfumery. Its vision of purity and artistry continue to propel the movement of botanical perfumery into a bright and redolent future.
