Scents of Wood
“I just have this amazing connection to the mountains, through the forest and the trees. I just love trees.” That connection has shaped nearly every chapter of Fabrice Croisé’s life, and today it is at the heart of Scents of Wood, the distinctive fragrance brand and storefront he has built with elegance, imagination, and extraordinary care. In a city full of small businesses, this one feels like something else entirely. It is rooted in a vision that reaches from the forests of his childhood in the south of France to a refined studio in Salt Lake City, where scent, craftsmanship, and storytelling all come together under one roof.
Fabrice was born in Provence and describes his early years as idyllic. He was the son of two teachers, and his childhood was both intellectually stimulating and closely tied to the natural world. His family spent a great deal of time in the country. He grew up skiing, sailing, and building treehouses with his brother, pursuits that say much about the person he would become. Even then, there was something in him drawn to beauty, structure, freedom, and the outdoors. He still remembers every one of those treehouses. Some were round, and some were more elaborate. He kept building them into adulthood, later sharing that joy with his own children.
At eighteen, Fabrice left the south of France and began what would become a remarkably international life. He studied marketing, and spent time in Paris, Oxford, and Berlin. After college, he entered the fragrance world. He was hired by L’Oréal and worked on Lancôme, one of its major luxury brands. Those early years took him to Amsterdam and Paris, and he stayed with the company for seven years before leaving to travel around the world for a year and a half.
That journey led Fabrice to New York where his career took another major turn. He moved into advertising, joining an agency called Select that specialized entirely in perfume. For sixteen years, he worked in strategy, communication, television commercials, and print advertising for fragrance brands. Along the way, he opened their agency in Geneva, later took over the agency in Paris, then opened an agency in Los Angeles. He lived in Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, New York, Los Angeles, and the French Alps. He built a life that moved across countries and cultures, but fragrance remained the constant thread through it all.
The mountains were another constant. Fabrice’s love of skiing and nature helped guide many of his moves, first to the Alps and eventually to Utah. Park City, for Fabrice, was a natural fit. It brought together what had always mattered to him: mountains, beauty, and a closeness to the natural world that had first shaped him as a child.
By the time he landed in Park City, Fabrice had spent years helping other brands tell their stories, but eventually he wanted to create something of his own. In 2014, he launched his first fragrance brand, EB Florals, in collaboration with a celebrity florist. It was a focused exploration of floral notes. After building the company and selling it in 2018, he was ready to begin again with a new idea. “I wanted this one to be an exploration of woody notes.”
That idea became Scents of Wood, which Fabrice launched in 2020, a difficult year to begin any business, let alone one so conceptually rich and ambitious. Yet the brand was clear from the beginning - centered on wood, trees, forests, and the full range of woody notes in perfumery. He began experimenting with the idea of aging fragrance in wooden barrels. That did not work. Then he tried aging the alcohol in wooden barrels instead, and that did work, beautifully. “The brand was born that way,” he explained. “It is all an homage to scent, to trees and forests, and an exploration of the beauty of woody notes.”
That reverence for wood extends through the entire line. There are fragrances based on cedar, sandalwood, or oak, while others rely on ingredients that evoke woodiness without coming directly from trees themselves, such as patchouli and vetiver - plant-based essential oils widely used in perfumery and often sourced in parts of Asia. Still others are built around lab-created woody molecules. Together, they form a complete world of scent, one that explores the idea of wood from every possible angle. At present, the brand offers roughly two dozen fragrances, and Fabrice continues to create more, usually four each year. His favorite, he says, is always the one he is working on now.
Creation is clearly where Fabrice feels most alive. Every aspect of the brand begins with him: the design, the storytelling, the mood, the textures, the names, the visual identity, and the olfactory direction. He collaborates with some of the world’s leading perfumers, primarily in New York and Paris, briefing them and guiding the process, but the ideas come from him. He works in the same way as a curator or artistic director might work with painters or sculptors. “I see fragrance as an art form,” he said. “I see myself as a gallerist.”
Instead of hanging art on a wall, Fabrice places it on men and women's skin. That philosophy also shapes his rejection of gendered fragrance. Every scent in the collection is gender-neutral, something he feels strongly about. “You would not say that a building is masculine or a painting is feminine,” he said. “A piece of art is gender neutral by nature. It is a gift of beauty to mankind.” It is a thoughtful, expansive way of understanding fragrance, and one that feels especially fitting for a brand so rooted in artistry.
The fragrances themselves are named with care. Each follows a formula - one note paired with another material, often linked to the barrel-aging process: Vetiver in Chestnut, Plum in Cognac. Sandalwood in Oak. The naming gives each scent a sense of place and story before the bottle is even opened. Fabrice spoke about the Japanese phrase shinrin-yoku, or forest bathing, as part of the original inspiration. He also referenced the French phrase l’âme du bois, the soul of wood, what is extracted from the barrels. Thus, Scents of Wood becomes the final expression of that full journey from forest to material to fragrance.
The storefront and workshop of Scents of Wood, which opened on Pierpont Avenue in November 2025 after a move from Midway, reflect all of this beautifully. The street itself appealed to Fabrice immediately. With its succession of lofts and growing creative energy, Pierpont felt like a natural home for the brand - what he describes as almost a sensory street, where different kinds of creativity and beauty gather side by side. Within that setting, the space he chose offered exactly what he was looking for. The front is welcoming, intimate, and refined, a retail nook that feels almost like a small gallery, while the back is the working heart of the business, large enough for filling, assembling, boxing, labeling, and shipping every bottle by hand. It was important to Fabrice that the workshop be part of the experience - accessible and real, rather than hidden away. He wanted permanent interaction with customers, room for master classes, and a space where people could understand the craftsmanship behind what they were buying. Nineteenth-century furniture and carefully chosen antique pieces complete the interior, reinforcing the sense that this is not simply a shop, but a world.
The bottles themselves are striking. Inspired by Japanese ceramics, they are glass vessels finished in a way that gives them a matte, almost ceramic quality, with beautiful dual tones. The cap was originally designed as an abstraction of a tree, though once it was placed atop the bottle, people kept saying it looked like a heart. That had not been his intention, but he embraced the accident. Now Fabrice calls it “the heart of the forest,” a phrase that somehow captures both the object and the larger spirit of the brand.
There is just as much care in the making as in the concept. The filled fragrance solutions arrive in large drums, and from there the process continues by hand in Utah. Bottles are filled, fitted with sprays and caps, assembled, boxed, labeled, and shipped from the shop. The bottles themselves are manufactured through long-standing partners in Mexico, artisans Fabrice trusts because of the complexity of what he asks them to do. Nothing about Scents of Wood feels mass-produced. The craftsmanship matters, and it shows.
What is especially interesting is that although the brand now has retailers in fifteen locations across North America and twenty more around the world, this is not how it began. It started as a direct-to-consumer business, built online. For the first two and a half years, digital sales were the focus. Retail partnerships came later, largely because perfumers and boutique retailers were wanting to carry the line. Fabrice was quick to say that he has no interest in the obvious large-scale routes - "no department stores, no Sephora, no airport retail." Instead, he prefers to work with niche perfumeries around the world, places where the product can be understood and presented with care.
One of the most intriguing parts of the business is the subscription model, something Fabrice clearly hopes more people will discover. Subscribers receive a new fragrance every three months, often before it is widely launched, along with the notes and inspiration behind it. He sees it as an affordable introduction to the world of fine fragrance, and also as a way to build a more intimate relationship with customers.
Then there is the in-store experience itself. Visitors are invited to explore the scents beneath glass bells, where fragrance is sprayed onto small sculptures tucked underneath. Staff members walk people through the aging process, the stories behind the scents, and, for subscribers, even into the back of the shop where more of the world of Scents of Wood opens up. If Fabrice is there, he is happy to meet customers himself. It is easy to imagine how memorable that must be. He is not only knowledgeable, but generous with his passion.
The team is much the same. They are local, well-trained, and loyal. Several have been with Fabrice for years, first in Midway and now in the Pierpont space. One began as a subscriber, then attended an event, met Fabrice, started chatting, and eventually joined the company part-time. Today he serves as head of retail. That progression says something meaningful about the kind of business Fabrice has created. People do not simply buy into the product. They buy into the world around it.
Scents of Wood carries a clear indication of the person behind it. The forests, the mountains, the years in fragrance, and the deep respect for craftsmanship all come through in what Fabrice has created. It is not simply about scent, but about translating an idea into something tangible, something people can experience, hold, and return to. For Fabrice, it always comes back to the same sentiment. “I just love being amongst trees.”
