Neandertal

Neandertal is a conceptual fragrance house run from London and founded in 2017 by the artist Kentaro Yamada. It describes itself as an artistic response to humanity's view of its own place in the universe, and uses perfume to explore the echoes of the past. The name refers to the extinct human species, a lost civilisation whose DNA lives on in ours. Trade press calls it more a creative collective than a commercial brand.

The objects are part of the idea. The shape of the 90ml bottles comes from flint hand axes found in Norfolk, cast in stoneware and fired in a kiln at over 1400 degrees, and each bottle carries an NFC chip that proves where it came from. Each bottle is handmade by the artist, and the smaller glass bottles are made with laser 3D scanning and printing.

Neandertal began with a pair, Dark and Light, created with perfumer Euan McCall, and added Us and Them in 2020 and Is and Was in 2025, with Chris Maurice also named as a perfumer. The style is experimental and free of perfumery convention. Dark is smoky and resinous, with tomato leaf, pine, incense, oud and leather. Light is cooler, with violet leaf, hinoki and iris over ambergris. Us carries cade, hyraceum and incense, and Them sets seaweed, lavender and neroli over ambergris and styrax.

Neandertal sits at the art end of British niche perfume, in small numbers and at a premium. It suits wearers who like conceptual, unusual fragrance and want an object as well as a scent.