March 2024 • Treading Water Perfume

Fumerie is proud to host Treading Water Perfume as our third Maker’s Residency artist and brand! Treading Water is a Portland-based perfume brand focused on subversive, affordable, and unique perfumes.

Treading Water Perfume is owned and run by its perfumer Hayden Grossman. A visual artist as well as perfumer, he started the business in his in-laws basement when he became fascinated with perfumes’ innate connection to memory and imagination. Hayden’s focus in perfumery is mixing traditional perfumery techniques and concepts with an artsy-punk outlook to create complex scents that tell a story. 

Hayden is a formally trained visual artist and a self-taught perfumer. He pulls from a wide net of inspirations, from art history to old MTV cartoons. Smashing lowbrow and highbrow ideas into a melting pot that is as smart as it is stupid is the overall ethos of Treading Water. 

“Good perfume is more than a nice smell, it is like a glamour you put on. Today are you the dangerous flapper sitting at the corner cafe with her cigarette? Or are you a rich fur coat clad heiress that leaves the air of expensive flowers in her wake? Fragrance offers the opportunity to indulge little fantasies that can change how you carry yourself throughout your day. Perfume at its very core is exclusively about pleasure.” - Hayden Grossman

Featured Fragrances

DECHETS • Trash doesn’t always smell bad; sometimes it smells like white florals and is wearing a designer fur coat. Déchets (Pronounced Dey-shey) is an opulent white floral fragrance. Jasmine and tuberose swirl together creating a disgustingly rich scent. Paired those with saffron, cardamom, and spicy angelica root you have an extravagant summer scent that almost hides all the emotional baggage you carry around.

DYSTOPIA • Slip into a leather catsuit and become an enigma of sexual desire. The powers that be are corrupt and there are games to be played. Are you here to help people or are you simply following your own agenda? It’s hard to say; you slip so seamlessly between the two. Either way this city is your playground, but be careful. It’s easy to lose your footing and fall to your death. Again, and again.

JUDITH • Judith is a story from catholic holy texts about the original femme fatale. After hearing of surrender she creeps to the Assyrian camp and seduces the enemy general Holofernes. Once he is passed out in a drunken stupor she cuts off his head and brings it back to her countrymen.

MOROSEXUAL • The sexual attraction to stupid people. Treat yourself and read your partner at the same time with a scent that is as classy as it is stupid. The earthy combo of vanilla, fresh tobacco and star anise combine with spicy nutmeg to create a warm soft blanket to dull the mind.

MYCELIUM • Rounding the corner it came into view, the being that had terrorized the village for decades. It sat terrifyingly still on top of natural rock formation that resembled some strange amalgamation of an altar. An altar not made by human hands but as if created by the forest itself to honor this being. The being was here long before the village and it will continue to be here long after we are gone.

UTOPIA • A small commune sits resting on the edge of a pristine lake, the land rising from it with rolling green hills. Smooth stone buildings dot the hills housing the residence of this alien world. At the center sits an immense tree dwarfing the surroundings in its majesty. A source of life for the flourishing land and a place of spiritual reverence for the inhabitants. A balance of technology and nature creating a utopia.

Explore Treading Water’s full website here

Explore Hayden Grossman’s parfumeur page here

Submissions for our 2025 Calendar will close on Dec. 8 2024. All applications and samples must be received by this date for this calendar, but submissions can be made any time for future consideration.

Here at Fumerie Parfumerie, we are first and foremost perfume lovers. The goal of this venture has always been twofold: to bring the finest niche and independent fragrances to the Portland area and to engage the fragrance community and create a space for people to come together. In an effort to serve the greater community of enthusiasts and up-and-coming makers, we are excited to announce that starting January 2024 we will be featuring a month-long spotlight on an independent perfumer who will be exhibited in our shop for the duration of said month.

We believe the growing community of self-taught and newer perfumers deserve access to spaces wherein their art can be shown and appreciated without fully committing to the rather rigorous systems of wholesale. We also believe our community of fragrance lovers want and deserve a chance to enjoy these very hard-to-find pieces of art. Often, local and micro-perfume brands are limited to working with stockists in their immediate area or are forced to compete with the algorithmic competition of social media. We are proud to offer our curative services to find these makers and to make available a public form for brands to apply to participate in this exciting new program.

If you are a perfumer or brand owner interested in obtaining a month-long Maker’s Residency here in our shop simply fill out the form below and we will follow up shortly with an introduction, any questions we may have, and next steps. If you have questions you would like answered before applying, please feel free to email info@fumerie.com.

Please complete the form below to apply to be featured in our Maker’s Residency Program