Mark Buxton

Paris, the 1990s. A new house in Tokyo wants a scent with no precedent, and an English perfumer is handed the job.

Mark Buxton did the work for Comme des Garçons, including its first fragrance, and helped define avant-garde scent for the decade. His own line, under his name, is spare and unconventional: woods, spices, incense and green notes with a dry, mineral edge. The bottles are plain. The compositions do the talking.

Keep them on a stone bathroom ledge or a walnut dresser, in a room of quiet, considered things.

An Englishman, a fragrance, and no small talk.