Quick answers
History of the house
Imaginary Authors was founded in 2012 in Portland (Oregon, United States) by Josh Meyer, a self-taught perfumer, and Ashod Simonian, creative director. The two founders launched the project as a small independent perfume house, with the explicit ambition of giving each scent a written world of its own, rather than a list of notes plugged into a marketing brief.
Josh Meyer started composing in Portland around 2010. He never enrolled at an institutional perfumery school and built his method through direct experimentation with raw materials. Ashod Simonian, his collaborator on visual identity, designed the bottles, the labels and the now-recognizable book-cover artwork of the catalog from the very first launches in 2012.
The editorial concept of the house was set from day one: each perfume is presented as an imaginary book, signed by a fictional author, with a title, a cover, a written summary and a period. The olfactory composition is treated as the climate of that book, the atmosphere a reader would step into when opening it. This literary device runs through the entire catalog and gives Imaginary Authors a distinct identity within the American niche scene of the 2010s.
The 2012 inaugural lineup already established the tone with seven releases, among them these four. Memoirs of a Trespasser placed a vanilla, guaiac wood and myrrh narrative under the name of a fictional author. Falling Into the Sea framed a citrus and lychee coastal scene. Bull's Blood built a leathery floral story around a bullfighting reference. The Cobra and The Canary evoked an American road-trip in a 1964 Shelby Cobra, with hay, asphalt and tobacco. The catalog grew steadily from there, with Cape Heartache added in 2013 and Saint Julep in 2017; Violet Disguise, now discontinued, belonged to the 2012 lineup.
Across the 2010s, Imaginary Authors moved out of its initial Portland circuit into selective international distribution through a network of specialist niche retailers. The house has remained owned by its founders since 2012, is not part of any industrial group, and continues to operate as a small independent American niche perfume house with Josh Meyer as sole perfumer.
Notable perfumes
The full Imaginary Authors catalog is composed by Josh Meyer, the sole perfumer of the house. The seven compositions below are reference points in the catalog.
| Year | Perfume | Perfumer | Accord |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | Memoirs of a Trespasser | Josh Meyer | Soft amber |
| 2012 | Falling Into the Sea | Josh Meyer | Citrus fruity solar |
| 2012 | Bull's Blood | Josh Meyer | Leather floral |
| 2012 | The Cobra and The Canary | Josh Meyer | Hay tobacco aromatic |
| 2012 | Violet Disguise | Josh Meyer | Violet fruity gourmand |
| 2013 | Cape Heartache | Josh Meyer | Woody resinous coniferous |
| 2017 | Saint Julep | Josh Meyer | Green minty aromatic |
Olfactory signature
Imaginary Authors writes a narrative American niche signature, where each composition functions as the olfactory climate of an imaginary book rather than a fragrance derived from a master accord. The catalog is built perfume by perfume, with a title, a fictional author, a written summary and a setting that frames the wear. This editorial logic has defined the identity of the house since the inaugural 2012 lineup.
Several stylistic axes run through the work. A resinous woody coniferous axis, illustrated by Cape Heartache (2013), anchors the catalog in the Pacific Northwest. A solar and tropical axis appears across Falling Into the Sea (2012) and later compositions playing on citrus, lychee and warm sand. An oriental gourmand axis runs through Memoirs of a Trespasser (2012), with vanilla, guaiac wood and myrrh. A green and aromatic axis carries The Cobra and The Canary (2012) and Saint Julep (2017). A dark fruity axis articulates Bull's Blood (2012) and Violet Disguise (2012) on leather, violet and fruit notes.
Each composition is deliberately figurative: the scent is meant to be read, not decoded. The written brief that accompanies each perfume, on the official site and in press communications, is treated as part of the composition itself, not as a marketing layer added afterward. The artisanal mode of production in Portland, kept at small scale, supports this approach with batch releases and limited expansions to the catalog.
A narrative American niche perfume house where every scent is staged as the climate of an imaginary book signed by a fictional author, on a small Portland workshop scale since 2012.