Nosu

Nosu is an independent perfume house in North London, a collaboration between the artist Lucy Webster and the self-taught perfumer Jacob Grainger. The company was set up in 2022 and the first three perfumes arrived in 2025. The name is an old English word for nose. Each perfume is designed and handmade in small batches in the founders' lab, and each comes with an original artwork by Webster, made with techniques such as photography, inkjet printing and chemigrams. The mirrored lid, made with the French artist Clémence Frot, is shaped around an abstract nose.

The debut trio shows the range. Been Trying To Meet You is an homage to wildflower meadows and hay, with elderflower, immortelle, honey and bran over hay and ambrette. Hides imagines watching wild animals from a wooden shack, with violet leaf, moss, patchouli, musk and an animalic accord, and it is described as curious, untamed and not for the faint of heart. Sain No More takes the Scottish New Year tradition of saining, in which a home is purified with juniper smoke: incense, juniper and bergamot over cistus, sage, cedarwood and vetiver. A limited edition of 100 small bottles, made with the music producer Jeigo, followed in 2026.

The perfumes are genderless and built on high doses of unusual natural materials, with synthetic molecules to amplify them. The house publishes the share of natural and neo-natural material in each formula, and it accepts that a batch may differ slightly from the last because the naturals follow the seasons. Reviewers describe the work as abstract and bold rather than literal.

Nosu sits in independent, perfumer-owned niche perfumery. It is sold through its own website and a few stockists in London, Glasgow, New York and Croatia, and it suits wearers who like textured, art-led perfume with an unusual idea behind it.