Ylem Parfums NGC 6302 collage Nicoleta 

My personal weakness for a good sci-fi story is thoroughly self-documented (and self-diagnosed) by now, so a perfume house with its eyes fixed on the cosmos was always going to be something I would happily chase after, and keep coming back to.

A year after I first wrote about Ylem Parfums and their Soap Bubble, I’m back for another chapter of their olfactory universe, and I have to admit that the prospect of a little more cosmic daydreaming with my nose in a perfume blotter remains very much my idea of a good-ol’-time, especially with Andreas Wilhelm at the helm, a perfumer whose work I already knew and loved through Perfume. Sucks and would happily follow into any strange smelling corner of the galaxy.

Moritz Sulz, founder and creative director of Ylem Parfums, image via the brand

Drawing inspiration from nebulae, the vast clouds of gas and dust in which stars can take shape, Ylem Parfums brings together science, mysticism, and imagination into its approach to fragrance. The name, ylem,  refers to the primordial matter once proposed as the substance from which the universe emerged, and it is such a fitting frame of reference, still leaving plenty of room for interpretation when translated into something as subjective as scent.

Perfumer Andreas Wilhelm, image via the brand

This time, the inspiration behind the perfume is NGC 6302, also known as the Butterfly Nebula, and it’s a cosmic monument to extremes, however dainty its name might sound. What looks, from our comfortable distance, like something impossibly soft and weightless is a vast structure of fiercely hot, rapidly moving gas and the butterfly is taking shape around a star that has shed its outer layers towards the end of its life, leaving its exposed core surrounded by the material it once contained.  Hidden within that dusty center is the extraordinarily hot stellar core, with an estimated temperature of roughly 220,000°C, placing it among the hottest known central stars of planetary nebulae in our galaxy.

 

NGC 6302, via Wikipedia

That surviving core is evolving towards a white dwarf, the small, extraordinarily dense remnant left behind when a star like our Sun finishes the main stages of its life. To get a sense of the proportions, a typical white dwarf can hold around half the Sun’s mass in a body only slightly larger than Earth, packing an astonishing amount of matter into a remarkably small space. Once nuclear fusion has ceased, it continues to shine by releasing its stored heat, slowly cooling over billions of years. Even now, in the midst of this stellar turmoil, crystals of water ice survive in the colder depths of the nebula’s dense dust belt, making this delicate-looking butterfly a true monster of fire and ice, lurking in our own little corner of the observable universe. The thought of what such a bipolar winged-out-hot-and-cold-creature might become in Ylem’s capable hands was enough to make my nostrils flutter with anticipation.

Shaking off the unsettling feeling that I’d just watched a spoiler-filled trailer for our own Sun’s demise (so distant, yet taking up more space in my thoughts than I would like to admit),I finally got around to wearing Ylem Parfums NGC 6302, already looking forward to the hour-long explanation I would inflict on anyone who made the innocent mistake of asking what my perfume was. A nebula, what else!

Screen shot from Nicoleta’s indie game called 2nd EVE

And, to be honest, I can’t think of a better perfume to wear to the office these days, between conversations about my recently launched game project, where dying worlds and the unseen horrors of interstellar travel abound. I’d happily scent my avatar, Sister Zola, with it, while battling nightmares spawned from cybersleep dreams. Ylem Parfums NGC 6302  opens and takes me into the ship’s botanical bay, where an AI with questionable intentions seems to have tampered with the temperature controls, allowing the tropical fruits to grow slightly overripe before abruptly flash-freezing the whole crop. The scene is all minty-sulphureous kinetics, all blackcurrant bud and minty  – courtesy of buchu, while the iridescent orange-ness of the fruit is quickly streaked with a green edge that makes the whole thing feel eerily unsafe to touch. There’s a chill running through it, like an electric zap, as though biting into a piece of fruit might have trigger the after-taste of the metal claw that picked it. Lemon zest, and cardamom give the juicy opening an extra layer of mouthwatering tangy, high-pitched bite, with crushed aromatic leaves and an apple blossom that offers a little fragile, petal-soft prettiness that feels almost suspicious in these surroundings. Green stained glass, cold freezer air, and a camphoraceous haze render this first level in unnerving detail, right down to the specks of frost on the fruit skins.

 from the movie Sunshine,2007,directed by Danny Boyle IMDb

We crawl through an aluminum airlock into the next level, where the crew are waking from their icy cybersleep nightmares into the rapidly heating white haze of a pandemonium. Outside, the outline of a white sun grows larger, its heat finding a way into corridors ribbed with hot metal wiring, while inside, a floral core gathers such density that it begins to feel solid. Tuberose and jasmine sambac bring a thick, almost fleshy fullness, with narcissus threading a deep green, animalic suggestion of sun-scorched hay through the white flowers, as though something alien, growing in the walls, has begun to overheat and is brought back to life little by little.

 via Ylem Parfums Instagram

In the next frame, incense and smoke drift through a vast, candlelit cathedral, losing their outlines as they spread, while the patchouli holds on to a little dark, familiar weight, a trace of earth carried all this way as a last, stubborn hope. The atmosphere turns flame-orange with ambery facets, and the incense smoke curls back in, shifting from hot to cold in a cinematic zoom in-out-in. A metallic thread finds its way through again, an ozonic undercurrent of the immensity of space, closing the circle.

 via brand Instagram

I still get giddy and starry-eyed over a scent being able to send me on such epic role-playing journeys, and Moritz and Andreas are precisely the kind of space punks who keep that excitement alive. Yes, NGC 6302 is highly conceptual and artistic, but Andreas’s genius lies in making the whole arrangement strangely… pretty. The fruits are a tad metallic and atmospheric, yet you’d still take a bite. The florals hide sharp little fangs between their petals, but they’re still beautiful. Like a painting you can coax into spinning the other way if you focus hard enough, this abstract mix of warm, cold, airy, then hot again feels like a dial you can turn at will, pulling the whole cosmic trip back down to skin whenever you don’t feel like drifting through the stars. They remind me how much room there is in this art for out-of-the-box ideas, impossible landscapes, and explorations of the full spectrum of human emotion. Chapeau!

Notes: Phase I: Buchu leaves, lemon zest, apple blossom, tropical fruits, cardamom; Phase II: Tubereuse, narcisse, jasmin sambac, osmanthus; Phase III: Patchouly, ambrostar, space accord, incense, wormwood

Nicoleta Tomsa, Senior Editor

Disclosure: A sample of Ylem Parfums NGC 6302 was offered by the brand; opinions are always my own.

Also read the J’s review for Eastern Veil here and  Nicoleta’s review of Soap Bubble here.

If you are in the USA, Luckyscent carries a selection

Pack shot of Ylem Parfums NGC6302 via the brand, collage by Nicoleta

Thanks to the generosity of Ylem Parfums, we have a 50 ml bottle of NGC 6302 for one registered reader from EU or US. You must register or your entry will not count. To be eligible, please leave a comment saying what sparks your interest based on Nicoleta’s review and where you live. Draw closes9/21/2026

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