Clue Perfumery

Discover Clue Perfumery, an independent American niche fragrance house founded in 2023 by childhood friends, perfumer Laura Oberwetter and designer Caleb Vanden Boom. Formulated, designed, and produced in their Chicago studio and laboratory, Clue creates imaginative perfumes that find beauty and fascination in unexpected, overlooked, and wonderfully ordinary places.

Clue began when Oberwetter started experimenting with perfumery in her apartment, initially trying to recreate places as accurately as possible through scent, from the damp floor of a forest to the atmosphere of an old church. During the pandemic, she shared her experiments with childhood friend and designer Caleb Vanden Boom, and those conceptual fragrance studies gradually developed into Clue Perfumery.

The name Clue originally grew from the founders' affection for the cult-classic mystery film, but has taken on a deeper meaning as a reference to what Oberwetter calls the fundamental mystery of perfumery. That sense of discovery runs throughout the brand: familiar smells become clues to places, memories, objects, and experiences.

Clue Perfumery — Brand FAQ

What is Clue Perfumery?
Clue Perfumery is an independent American niche fragrance house established in 2023. Based in Chicago, the brand creates imaginative perfumes inspired by unexpected objects, places, sensations, and memories. Its fragrances balance unconventional concepts with the familiar pleasure and wearability of fine perfume.

Who founded Clue Perfumery?
Clue Perfumery was founded by childhood friends Laura Oberwetter and Caleb Vanden Boom. Oberwetter is the house’s perfumer, while Vanden Boom brings a design perspective to the brand. Together with a small group of friends and collaborators, they formulate and design Clue’s work in-house at the company’s Chicago studio and laboratory.

Where is Clue Perfumery from?
Clue Perfumery is based in Chicago, Illinois. Its fragrances are formulated, designed, and produced in Chicago, making Clue part of a growing generation of independent American fragrance houses developing distinctive perfumes outside the traditional European centers of perfumery.

What makes Clue Perfumery unique?
Clue finds fragrance inspiration in places most perfumers would overlook. A dusty light bulb warming old pages, morel mushrooms emerging from a damp Wisconsin forest, jasmine tea brewed with ocean water, and melting church candles have all become starting points for Clue fragrances. These surreal references are translated into sophisticated compositions designed to remain intriguing while still being genuinely wearable.

What are the most popular Clue Perfumery fragrances?
Clue’s collection includes Warm Bulb, Morel Map, The Point, With the Candlestick, and Dandelion Butter. Warm Bulb has received particular recognition and was nominated for an Art and Olfaction Award in the Artisan category in 2024. Each fragrance represents a different side of Clue’s unusual approach to contemporary perfumery.

What does Clue Warm Bulb smell like?
Warm Bulb recreates the comforting scent of heat radiating from a lamp onto old paper. Notes and accords of burning dust, hot air, black pepper, immortelle, paper, sparked tobacco, sandalwood, and amber-preserved vanilla create a warm, cozy, dry fragrance with an unmistakably nostalgic quality.

What does Clue Morel Map smell like?
Morel Map is a damp, green, earthy fragrance inspired by hunting for morel mushrooms in Wisconsin during spring. Fir needle, birch leaf, violet, galbanum, morel mushroom, oakmoss, dead elm, and forest-floor accords create the impression of vegetation, damp soil, trees, and mushrooms rather than a conventional woody perfume.

Are Clue Perfumery fragrances unisex?
Yes. Clue’s fragrances are not dependent on traditional masculine or feminine fragrance categories. Instead, each perfume is constructed around a particular scene, material, memory, or sensory idea, making the collection suitable for anyone attracted to its individual scent profiles.

Is Clue Perfumery a niche fragrance brand?
Yes. Clue is an independent niche perfumery that formulates and designs its work in-house in Chicago. Its small collection, unusual artistic concepts, independent production, and focus on olfactory creativity place it firmly within contemporary artistic and niche perfumery.

Are Clue Perfumery fragrances vegan and cruelty-free?
Clue states that its fragrances are vegan with the exception of Dandelion Butter, which contains butter CO2 extract. The brand also states that none of its products are tested on animals.

Does Clue Perfumery use natural ingredients?
Clue uses both natural and synthetic fragrance materials. Rather than choosing ingredients based on whether they are natural, rare, or expensive, the perfumers select materials according to how effectively they communicate the concept behind each fragrance. The brand also states that its fragrances comply with International Fragrance Association (IFRA) standards.

Can I sample Clue Perfumery fragrances before buying a bottle?
Yes. Clue offers a Sample Set containing 2 ml vials of its complete fragrance collection, making it an excellent way to explore the house before selecting a full-size Eau de Parfum. Sampling is particularly useful with Clue because many of its fragrances use unusual notes and conceptual references that can smell quite different from traditional fragrance categories.

Where can I buy authentic Clue Perfumery fragrances?
Authentic Clue Perfumery fragrances are available directly from the brand and through a select group of authorized niche fragrance retailers. Purchasing through an authorized retailer helps ensure that you receive authentic, properly stored products from the current collection.

Oak Manor Fragrances is an authorized retailer of Clue Perfumery in Missouri, offering the collection both in-store and online with fast shipping throughout the United States.

Top Products from Clue Perfumery

Warm Bulb Eau de Parfum
Warm Bulb is one of Clue Perfumery’s most recognizable creations, capturing the strangely familiar scent of a lamp warming old paper. Burning dust, hot air, and black pepper give way to immortelle, paper, sparked tobacco, sandalwood, and amber-preserved vanilla. Warm, dry, and quietly nostalgic, it demonstrates Clue’s talent for transforming an unexpected everyday experience into a remarkably wearable fragrance. Warm Bulb was also nominated for an Art and Olfaction Award in the Artisan category in 2024.

Morel Map Eau de Parfum
Inspired by springtime morel hunting in Wisconsin, Morel Map recreates the damp, green atmosphere of a forest floor awakening after winter. Birch leaf, balsam fir needle, red currant, and Wisconsin wood violet lead into violet leaf, galbanum, morel mushroom, oakmoss, dead elm, and forest-floor accords. Earthy without feeling heavy, Morel Map is an especially compelling choice for those who love green, botanical, and unconventional nature-inspired fragrances.

The Point Eau de Parfum
The Point imagines a cup of jasmine tea brewed with ocean water. Jasmine tea and crushed porcelain meet honeyed patchouli, ocean water, ambergris, and wet sand, creating a fragrance that feels mineralic, bright, and distinctly coastal. Rather than a conventional aquatic perfume, The Point balances salt, florals, earth, and mineral notes to create something simultaneously familiar and surreal.

With the Candlestick Eau de Parfum
With the Candlestick explores the sensory atmosphere of church communion through cherry communion wine, cinnamon leaf, labdanum, melted wax, burning church incense, extinguished candle, and hot musk. Smoky, spicy, metallic, and warm, it is one of Clue Perfumery’s most dramatic compositions. The fragrance is an excellent example of the house’s ability to build a complete scene through scent rather than simply arranging traditional fragrance notes.

Dandelion Butter Eau de Parfum
Dandelion Butter is Clue Perfumery’s fifth fragrance and continues the house’s fascination with turning unexpected references into sophisticated perfume. Inspired by the golden glow of dandelions and the rich familiarity suggested by butter, the fragrance explores an unusual intersection of botanical brightness, warmth, and texture. It is a characteristically playful Clue creation: strange enough to inspire curiosity, yet composed with wearability in mind.

What Makes Clue Perfumery Unique?

Clue Perfumery finds fragrance ideas in experiences that traditional perfume houses might overlook, from warm light bulbs and damp forest floors to communion wine, mushrooms, ocean water, and dandelions.

Made in Chicago : Fragrances are formulated, designed, and produced in-house at Clue's Chicago studio and lab.

Independent American Perfumery : Founded by perfumer Laura Oberwetter and designer Caleb Vanden Boom, with fragrance and visual identity developed as parts of the same creative world.

Surreal Yet Wearable : Conceptual ideas are balanced with the familiar pleasures of fine fragrance, resulting in perfumes that are unusual without existing purely for novelty.

Midwestern Influence : The founders grew up near Madison, Wisconsin, and the landscapes, objects, and peculiarities of the Midwest remain an important part of Clue's creative vocabulary.

Fragrance as a Puzzle

Each Clue fragrance begins with a surprisingly specific idea and builds an olfactory world around it.

Morel Map explores the damp, green, loamy atmosphere of a spring mushroom hunt. Warm Bulb captures the peculiar smell of heat, dust, paper, and warm light. With the Candlestick evokes church communion through wine, incense, melting wax, metal, and extinguished candles. The Point imagines jasmine tea brewed with ocean water, while Dandelion Butter explores an unexpectedly rich meeting of floral brightness and buttery warmth.

Together, the collection demonstrates what makes Clue distinctive: these aren't conventional interpretations of woods, florals, or gourmands. They are olfactory scenes, built to make something strange feel strangely familiar.

At Oak Manor Fragrances, Clue represents an exciting new generation of American independent perfumery. Its fragrances are ideal for customers who have moved beyond conventional designer scents and want perfume with a strong concept, unusual materials, and a genuine creative point of view.

Clue is particularly compelling for fragrance enthusiasts who enjoy atmospheric perfumes, unusual fragrance notes, conceptual niche scents, earthy compositions, artistic perfumery, and fragrances inspired by memory and place.  Being midwesterners ourselves (originally from Wisconsin and Kansas), the owners of Oak Manor Fragrances are uniquely proud to present this brand.