We have some very sad news: Zoologist Bat, designed by Ellen Covey, is now discontinued. 

If you have always wanted to purchase Bat, or you need to get a backup bottle, we suggest you purchase one from our stockists as soon as possible.

"Bat" is important to us, and we have planned to create a new Bat, but by a different perfumer. We hope to achieve the same greatness of the original Bat with the new one. Thank you for your support and forgiveness.

Sie stehen auf unisex-düfte?

Do you like unisex fragrance?

Dann sind sie reif für nischen-parfums

Then you are ready for niche perfumes

Betreten sie die wunderbare Welt des kleinen Manufakturen, wo Duft radikal-emotional und frei von Zuordnung umgesetzt wird

Enter the wonderful world of small perfume houses, where fragrance is radically emotional and free from association.

1. Banane, Feige und Leder: "Bat von Zoologist

1. Banana, Fig and Leather: Bat by Zoologist

ÇaFleureBon.com, the number one niche and natural perfume blog in the world, has just announced their Best and Worst Fragrances of 2016. Zoologist Perfumes is greatly honoured to be the receiver of Perfume of the Year 2016 for Bat, and also Best Independent House of 2016! Thank you!

What Michelyn of ÇaFleureBon.com says about Bat and Zoologist Perfumes:

"Created by Ellen Covey for Victor Wong of Zoologist, it surprised me that is was so wearable. Not a fragrance for vampires or creatures of the night, Bat is warm and musky with the scent of fruit and fur; I have entered the bat cave and have no intention of leaving."

"2016 was a wonderful year for Zoologist; both Macaque (Sarah McCartney of 4160 Tuesdays) and Nightingale created by Japanese perfumer (and perfume writer) Tomoo Inaba are addictive. Shelley Waddington’s Civet is stunning with its musky coffee scent and vintage style."

Skin Deep

By RACHEL SYME OCT. 25, 2016

FOR FULL ARTICLE, READ HERE

We’re Animals, After All
The clean, minimalist trend in perfumes is giving way to scents that bring out the beast.

In 2012, Victor Wong, a video game designer for a toy company in Toronto, had a tiny midlife crisis in his hotel room while on vacation. He felt burned out on work but was strangely revived by sniffing the hotel toiletries, which came from a niche fragrance line he can no longer recall.

What he does remember is that he swooned over the scents, which were spicy, musky and intense. He knew then and there that he wanted to make perfume.

Returning home, Mr. Wong began haunting the message boards of the cult perfume sites BaseNotes and Fragrantica, feverishly researching the formulas behind his favorite scents. The same notes kept popping up: castoreum, civet, musk, ambergris. He realized that he was drawn, in an instinctual way, to animal-derived scents — or rather (because most perfumery materials that come from animals are now banned or heavily regulated) to their lab-created chemical equivalents.

When Mr. Wong worked up the courage to put out an open call online for a perfumer to help him create his fragrance, he already had a specific, and beastly, concept in his head. He would call his line Zoologist, and he would release a series of scents named for the wild creatures that inspired them.

The British perfumer Chris Bartlett was the first to respond, with a bold idea for the maiden fragrance in the Wong menagerie. He wanted to capture the essence of a beaver. Mr. Bartlett proposed a scent that used no real animal ingredients, but smelled strongly of wet fur, dank musk, felled trees and the sour buttery odor of a beaver’s castor sac secretions.

Mr. Wong said yes immediately. When Beaver hit the market in 2014, it immediately became a polarizing sensation in the niche perfume world. CaFleureBon, which reviews cult perfumes, named it one of the best of the year, and fans flocked to its peppery, sweaty funk. But, as Mr. Wong now admits, “it was ultimately too challenging for a lot of people.”

“A lot of people thought it was interesting but said that they would never wear it,” he said. The smell of damp pelt (and the not-so-subtle bodily connotations of the name) made some customers feel uncomfortable rather than swaddled in the dense odor.

So Mr. Wong asked Mr. Bartlett to revisit his formula, and this fall they released Beaver 2016, a riff on the original idea but with more “fresh air and river top notes to make it more attractive.”

Mr. Wong has released six other perfumes, including Bat, a pungent reverie on banana, cave dirt, musk and overripe figs from the perfumer Dr. Ellen Covey that won the top prize at the 2016 Art and Olfaction Awards. The venerable fragrance critic Luca Turin gave Bat a rave, writing that “the fragrance seems lit from within by the earth note all the way to drydown.”

It turns out that Mr. Wong’s animal instincts were right along: In 2016, the demand for fauna-inspired scents is cresting.

“Animalic” is a buzzword floating around the industry, now that the minimalist, clean trend has given way (at least in high-fashion niche circles) to more feral fragrance clouds. Maybe it’s the desire of millennials to reclaim their beastly odors in an age of technological detachment, but fragrance buyers are newly excited to smell as if they come from an elegant zoo.

Lone Rangers

Victor Wong of Toronto-based Zoologist Perfumes is so inspired by the animal kingdom that his entire perfume collection celebrates it. In 2013, Wong was just a lover of scent with a day job. He took to the internet to seek out a perfumer who could help him actualize his dream to start his own fragrance brand. He found two via a fragrance forum and started out on his journey. Each Zoologist scent is named for an animal, its formulation designed to conjure the essence and idiosyncrasies of each species. For fall, the natural choice is Bat, an earthy, mineral fragrance layered with dark plum, leather and musk.

Awards

Winner of Art and Olfactive 2016 Independent Category

CaFluerebon.com
Perfume of the Year 2016

Notable Reviews

Luca Turin
**** 4 stars, "…a strikingly original combination of an elegant, masculine, green-woody-floral"

Fragrantica.com
“This is everything that I ask for a fragrance as work of art”, “Bat is so interesting, since it captures different aspects of the animal, but it's not a realistic depiction of the animal… It can be the best fruity fragrance I have smelled until now. And I absolutely love it.”

Now Smell This Magazine
“Favorite Niche / Indie Perfume 2015”

Dirge Magazine
“Designed by award-winning perfumer Dr. Ellen Covey, Bat is undeniably, the strangest, most wonderfully unique perfume you will ever smell. Opening with a nearly overwhelming note of damp, primordial earth both vegetal and mineral in execution, this immediately conjures inky caverns and pitch-black, damp limestone caves. The scent then morphs into something I can only describe as “night air and velvet darkness”; I cannot say how she has done this, I only know that it is the very essence of the vast, temperate midnight sky, the glowing moon high overhead. At this point it becomes something quite different, and quite possibly even more beautiful.”

The Blog Really Stinks Magazine
“There's dense vegetal earth and rich plant life, and that sweet smell of fruit. A mineral tang from home – a cluster of rocks or a cave – cling to the air…This scent is not dark, rather it is dusk toned. As the moon sets and the bats return to roost, we're left with a faint but beautiful sandalwood and tonka sunrise. I’ve never quite experienced a nuanced, two-step beauty of a base quite like this one!”

Azar, Australian Perfume Junkies
“There is something about this combination of fruit, dirt, wet stone and vetiver that evokes not only the damp darkness of a cave but the magical lore surrounding the creature itself.”

Scent and Chemistry
“Bat is pretty unprecedented, very novel... the earthiness of Bat is unbeaten, and likely unbeatable!” – 

Indie Perfumes
“There is a night-ly quality here, one with the excitement and energy of a night out, as the opposite of sleepiness; fueled by the clean mineral and nectar notes. The woods are subtle and the perfume grows dimensionally as it dries down, getting softer all the way there.” –

Youtube Reviews

FragBoy Stewie
Youtube First Impression of Bat

FragBoy Stewie
Youtube Review of Bat ("9/10")

Redolesscence
Youtube First Impression of Bat

Redolesscence
Youtube Review of Bat ("9/10")

RyzFrag34
Youtube Review of Bat

Brooklyn Fragrance Lover
Youtube Review of Bat

Fragrance Reviews by Ouch110
Youtube Review of Bat

Fragrancy Blog
Youtube Impression Review of Bat & Hummingbird

Fragrance Blog Reviews

Now Smell This
Zoologist's Bat Fragrance Review, 2016/7/20. "Bat is very wearable, if unconventional, and it lasts all day."

Colognoisseur
When Victor Met Ellen- How Zoologist Bat Took Flight, 2016/2/11. "a look behind the curtain at the work it took to create Zoologist Perfumes Bat."

Colognoisseur
New Perfume Review Zoologist Perfumes Bat – Cave of Creativity, 2016/2/15. "Definitely one of the standout new fragrances of 2016."

Dirge Magazine
Zoologist: Perfumes for Sexy Beasts

Cafleurbon (Review #1) 
2016/1/5.  "The drydown is wonderfully done here – the swing from damp, damp, wriggly earth to dry belt leather is disarming and fun."

Cafleurbon (Review #2)
Zoologist Bat Perfume Review + He Said, She Said Draw, 2016/1/22.  "I stood in awe and took in the moment, I was in no rush- I was fully awakened."

Pierre de Nishapur
Dark fruity, cute animalistic: Bay by Zoologist, 2016/2/19. "The fragrance initiates with an uncertain romanticist pleasure."

The Silver Fox
Glimmerfur: Pungency & Shimmer – ‘Bat’ & ‘Hummingbird’ by Zoologist Perfumes, 2016/4/2. "This perfume is an ode to dense atmospheric road trips and locations, temperatures, weather, fauna, flora, habitat and odiferous experience. It is the most divine expression of sensual scientific endeavour."

PerfumeNiche.com
Bat, Fruity and Elegant and Original, 2016/4/11. "There is nothing ‘weird’ about the way Bat smells. It’s natural yet refined and is stunning on the skin and a pleasure to wear."

The Fragrant Journey
Zoologist Bat is certainly representative of that realm of creativity but it is also a very wearable scent. The initial opening may surprise you for a moment but it is not unpleasant, merely unexpected. Picture yourself standing at the mouth of a cavern, hesitating for a moment before you push onward to explore the mystery inside. What will you find? Once you submit  you find there is nothing to fear, just a different world than you are accustomed to and beautiful in its own unique way.

A Bottled Rose
"The damp earth accord coupled with the tropical fruit is completely unique. Consider me hooked."

Sophisticated Obsession
The amount of images that are instantly conjured up when going through this very unique scent is incredible. From stepping into a damp and dingy cave right over to flying through the night sky on a forage for food. This is a fragrance Count Dracula can truly rely on.

Wonderzine (Russian)
7 Best Punk Scents

First, I would like to congratulate you on receiving the Art & Olfaction 2015 Award in the Artisan Category for your perfume “Woodcut”. It’s been a few months since then, how do you feel now and how does it affect your future perfumery work?

It still feels a little unreal, although I have finally gotten used to seeing the golden pear displayed on my shelf! It’s a big honor to live up to, knowing that whatever I create in future will be compared with Woodcut.

In the fragrance community you are well respected for your perfume brand “Olympic Orchids”, but not many people know that you are a university professor and a professional orchid grower. Would you share with us some tidbits about your two other professions? And when and how did perfumery come into the picture?

Tidbits? I don’t have any good gossip that would interest anyone.

I started out in graduate school at Duke University studying the chemical senses, specifically focusing on how information about chemosensory quality is represented in spatiotemporal patterns of neural activity, but later became interested in hearing, especially echolocation in bats. I currently teach undergrad courses on sensation & perception, scientific writing, and psychology of music.

Oddly enough, it was my academic career that got me into orchids because an elderly colleague who grew orchids in his office retired, and those of us in the department divided up his plants. I got four Cattleyas, which thrived and bloomed in my office. They were the only “house plants” I has ever been able to grow successfully. Then another colleague took me to an orchid show, and I got hooked. After growing orchids for over 10 years as a hobby and subsequently growing them commercially for 10 years, I’ve smelled a lot of different orchid flowers. I got fascinated by their scents, and decided to try to recreate some of them as perfumes. The resulting intensive self-study of perfumery started well before I officially launched my perfume business 5-plus years ago.

You have always been studying and fascinated about bats. Was it the reason why you chose bat to create for Zoologist Perfumes? Did you want the perfume to smell like a bat, literally, or a creative interpretation of what a bat would smell like? And in what way do you think you have succeeded?

My research on bats has focused on how information is represented in temporal patterns of neural activity (bats can recognize a species of insect from any angle based on the time-varying pattern of acoustic “glints” reflected in echoes from the insect’s body), mechanisms for selective attention in a noisy environment (our brains and those of bats adapt to high-probability sounds, but are extremely sensitive to novel sounds), vocal learning in mammals (bats are some of the only mammals known to learn their vocalizations), seasonal changes in the auditory system (properties of the auditory system change depending on bats’ hormonal and metabolic states), and other related topics. I’ve published a large number of scientific journal articles and book chapters on all of these topics, and have an extensive knowledge of bats’ physiology, behaviour, and ecology.

I have personally trekked through the jungles of Jamaica in search of bat caves, experienced an earthquake while inside one of those caves, and crawled through filthy insulation in 130+ degree F hot attics in North Carolina in search of bat colonies. (These observations are “for whatever it’s worth”).

Of course I did not want to make a perfume that literally smells like a bat, although some species do have pleasant smells (most do not). What I wanted to do was represent the cool, earthy, damp limestone cave where the bats live, the fruit that they eat, and the clean, musky smell of their fur. I wanted it to be light enough to be like the delicate, elusive flight of a bat. However, when I was working on it I also found that it had the property of coming back at times when I didn’t expect it. I would intentionally or unintentionally wear a little bit of it to bed, and days later I would suddenly smell… Bat! This is appropriate because although it is light, it is also insistent enough to keep circling around the wearer and come back at surprising, odd times on clothing or other things that the wearer had touched. Knowing bats, I think it succeeds pretty well in doing what I envisioned.

I think Zoologist’s Bat is a one-of-a-kind perfume. I really have never smelled any perfumes like it. How would you describe the scent of Bat? Does it fit into any typical perfume genre? Who do you think would like to wear this perfume, and on what occasions? Does it matter?

I agree that Bat is a one-of-a kind perfume. I would describe it as moist, airy, earthy, minerally, fruity, resinous, and musky. Those probably seem like they would not go together, but they fuse into a unique whole that just smells like… Bat. I’m not sure you could fit it into any traditional genre. It’s neither masculine nor feminine. It’s just what it is. Even though it doesn’t fit into any known box, it’s a very wearable scent. I think people who aren’t hung up on conventional fragrance classifications would like to wear it. It has enough of a natural feel to appeal to those who like natural scents, but is complex enough to appeal to those who like sophisticated perfumes. I guess the potential wearer is anyone who enjoys it, on any occasion that they see fit. And no, it doesn’t matter.

One thing I notice about Bat is that it does not have any florals in it. Traditionally even the most masculine scents have some floral accords but they are masked by some heavier or stronger wood, herbal and spice notes. Do you think adding florals in Bat would make it more of a “crowd pleaser” perfume but not faithful to concept of the perfume, or do you think a perfume without any florals is actually something particularly interesting?

I see no reason why perfumes have to be floral. A number of my perfumes, including Woodcut, contain no floral notes at all, and they seem to be quite well-liked. I’m not a fan of floral perfumes on myself or on others, although I do like to smell floral fragrances on plants. Regarding Bat, there are nectar-feeding species of bats, but their habits and diet overlap with those of Hummingbird. In fact, some nectar-feeding bats look like hummingbirds as they hover in front of flowers, occupying the same niche at night that hummingbirds do during the day. The Bat I had in mind, though, is a small fruit-feeding species that lives in caves, so they would never encounter flowers except by accident. I think too many perfumes are designed to be “crowd-pleasers”, thereby rendering them bland and very similar to one another.

Do you have a favourite perfume genre and some favourite perfumery materials? Was there a perfume that you particular liked or found influential before you started making perfumes yourself?

I have created perfumes in most traditional European genres as an exercise, and some of these have been quite well-received. However, I consider working within a given genre too restrictive, so I think I end up mostly going outside standard perfume genres. I am partial to Arabian-style perfumes, if you consider that a genre. I use a lot of woody materials, incense, musks, herbs, and spices. I like to play around with offbeat materials that hardly anyone uses in perfume. I just got my hands on some "geosmin" aromachemical before I made Bat, and used it to help create the cave smell. I guess my general dislike for traditional European-style floral perfumes was one thing that inspired me to make my own.

Do you think Bat is quite typical of your perfumery style? Do you think people who enjoy your scents from Olympic Orchids would like it or it’s actually a big surprise in store for them?

I think Bat is typical of my style inasmuch as my style is often strange and unpredictable. People who like scents like Woodcut, Salamanca, Kingston Ferry, Blackbird, and the Devil Scents will probably like Bat. I hope it will be a good surprise for them!

If Zoologist Perfumes asks you to design their next perfumes, which animals will you suggest?

There are so many interesting animals that could inspire perfumes! Some have been done - Snakes, Gorilla, big cats and little cats (Hello Kitty). I’m thinking of weird ones like Platypus, Naked Mole-Rat (did you know they live in colonies with a queen, like bees?) Termite, Raven (too close to Blackbird?), Hyrax, Shark, Hydra, Dodo, Tyrannosaurus rex, Brontosaurus, Woolly Mammoth and other extinct animals, Silkworm, Kangaroo, Koala, Penguin, Parrot, Whale, Bird of Paradise, Komodo Dragon, Chameleon, Sloth, Spider, Scorpion, Armadillo, Hedgehog, Alligator or Crocodile, Cicada, Bullfrog, Treefrog, Woodpecker, Dung Beetle (maybe not!), Opossum, Moth, Octopus, Squid, Slime Mold, … the list could go on and on …. and, of course, Human (what would that smell like? Auto exhaust, laundry musk, tobacco and marijuana smoke, fast food, a plastic phone case …) .

Wow, you have inspired me! Thank you so much for creating Bat for Zoologist and taking the time to do this interview!

Photo by Lucien Knutesen.