Raer Scents

is exhibiting at . Here is Ted’s roundup from the show.

At Raer, everything begins with our matières premières. Each Raer perfume formulation starts with one extraordinary plant extraction: our muse. We build around it with a constellation of natural elements that amplify its beauty. We don’t try to tame the wildness of natural scent. We let it unfold. The result is an exciting, unconventional perfume that lingers, surprises, and evolves.

At Raer, we make modern natural perfumes the old fashioned way. Our entire process is done by hand, from picking flowers, compounding perfumes, to bottling and labelling. Preserving these traditional techniques is important to us.

What is Frankincense? Frankincense is an aromatic resin from desert Boswellia trees. For Raer, ours is harvested in Somalia, where it is collected by nomadic communities using traditional methods on their ancestral lands.

The gum of Boswellia is obtained by making incisions in the bark of the tree, allowing the resin to ooze out and harden into tears. These tears are collected by gemmers (harvesters) then transported hundreds of km across the desert by donkey and camel, to regional frankincense markets.

Due to rising demand, much of the perfume industry’s frankincense is overharvested, which weakens trees, reduces resin quality, and threatens long-term populations, directly affecting the livelihoods of collectors. Our frankincense is sourced through a programme focused on preservation: a single harvest per year, tapping only mature, healthy trees, and allowing younger trees to reach full maturity. We’re proud to support these communities and their traditional techniques.

Frankincense is a noble material. It can read as solemn and church-like, or surprisingly fresh, with citrus and pine facets. There is often a distinct petrol note within its balsamic depth, which gives the ingredient its complexity and soul.

For our Raer 02 Cade + Frankincense, we use a special Frankincense that has been extracted while burning (called a dry heat distillation), which gives a particularly churchy profile to our perfume.