How is a fragrance like a melody? According to the cofounders of emerging niche brand Buchart Colbert, the two are eerily similar. Calling their scents “musical memoirs,” Sean Colbert and Sean Cavenaugh have a unique approach to olfaction, and have brought it to life through their new eaux de parfum.
Photo by Wilson Green Photography
Both lifelong lovers of fragrances, the Seans met during the pandemic in Tucson, AZ. Colbert is a classically trained musician, aerospace engineer by day, and the perfume designer. Cavenaugh, who has a background in fine arts and design and has worked in healthcare as well as life coaching, is the brand architect, ensuring quality and a consistent brand voice. They didn’t immediately make the decision to start a brand – it was something that unfolded organically once the initial idea came to be. Cavenaugh likens the process to a dream; their concept of merging fragrance with music made sense to them, but needed to be translated for a larger audience.
“Consider all the parts of a fragrance and how they work together – it’s like a performance,” says Colbert. Intertwining top, middle, and heart notes are not unlike the varying instruments in a symphony, each playing a vital role in the outcome.
Colbert, a violist, compares this instrument to a kind of bridge that often brings a musical piece together. The role of the viola is not to sustain the melody – rather, it might play rhythm or harmony, providing a sense of balance. “It brings a different perspective than if I played the flute,” says Colbert. Like the viola, a fragrance note might be unassuming, yet is what makes the end result come together like magic.
Photo by Skaggs Creative
Buchart Colbert offers a selection of six eaux de parfum in the debut collection, which they call olfactive symphonies. Knife Thrower is a clean aquatic with notes of bright ginger, crisp grapefruit, and musk; this one is inspired by Claude Debussy’s visit to the Paris World Fair, designed to capture the fresh and vibrant energy shared between Debussy and the crowd as he performed.
Another bestseller, Lutin Errant, includes notes of plum, coconut, sage, and amber. Woody and adventurous, this one is inspired by Cecile Chaminade, a 19th-century female composer who lived and worked in a world dominated by men. The name translates to “straying sprite” and is a nod to Chaminade’s L’Ondine (in English, water sprite) a piece Colbert found himself playing one autumn afternoon. Each fragrance in the collection has a robust backstory, intertwining history, music, and scent.
For both Seans, fragrance is personal. “Smell, to me, is one of the strongest ties to memory,” says Cavenaugh. Colbert, too, equates the wafting of a familiar scent on the breeze to an old song that brings emotion and remembrance flooding into the present. He recalls, at 8 years old, being transported to Southern France – a place he had only seen in dreams – at a single sniff of an Hermès fragrance.
Buchart Colbert fragrances are a journey in themselves. The unfolding of notes provides a physical transformation; the lingering aroma hours after application smells different from the initial spritz. Like a memoir or a symphony, these fragrances have a beginning, middle, and end, like an evocative story that is constantly unfurling.
Photo by Skaggs Creative
Discover Buchart Colbert fragrances, including an exclusive Discovery Set, here.
