About Sfumato
Who We Are
Dr. Kevin Peterson is the Nose of Sfumato. After a stint in the culinary world, he returned to school to complete degrees in physics and engineering, during which he became enamored with all things fragrant. After amassing a collection of rare scent ingredients and delving into the science of olfaction, he began using culinary principles to build aromatic impressions, creating the botanical fragrances comprising Sfumato’s line.
Jane Larson is the Eyes of Sfumato, defining the brand’s visual aesthetic as informed by her degrees in art and design. Scent is both physical and ethereal, and she ensures a consistent vision across all aspects of engagement, digitally and in the real world.
Sfumato is an entirely natural fragrance brand based in Detroit, Michigan. Founded by Jane Larson and Dr. Kevin Peterson, Sfumato grew from Kevin’s background in culinary, and Jane’s ability to craft visual environments. Sfumato exists to create subtle, nuanced, and complex fragrances using only botanical essences.
Sfumato also curates a variety of unique scent-based experiences and experiments, including scented dinners, scented cinema, event fragrances, business collaborations, and scented musical performances.
With a retail store in Midtown, Detroit, Sfumato is available to visit, and also ships all products within the lower 48 states.
Our Philsophy
The core elements setting Sfumato apart are our insistence on entirely natural ingredients, a use of culinary principles and aesthetics in scent design, and our in-house production, with everything hand made in small batches.
Our preference for naturals is based entirely on the nature of the impression they produce. Botanical scents create warm, round, radiant olfactory experiences, dramatically contrasting with the synthetic aromatics available from department stores and international design houses. Plants have coevolved with people since time immemorial, and the stories of the plants behind our fragrances are older than recorded language. Linking this deep history to the neural connections between emotion, memory is the perfumer’s art. Creating subtle and nuanced impressions with multi-scale harmony is what we aspire to.
Our History
Founded in 2013, Sfumato began as a small side project, offering a small line of natural scents centered around familiar herb and spice essences, but layered with esoteric scent ingredients. After amassing followers through frequent pop-ups and fragrant collaborations with chocolatiers, chefs, and event producers, Sfumato broke ground on a retail space in 2016, opening the doors in 2018.
Celebrating 5 years with a retail location in 2023, Sfumato continues to grow, offering an expanding range of products, a greater breadth of capability, and deeper collaborations with artists intrigued by scent.
Where to Start with Natural Fragrances
The impressions that natural fragrances create are a distinct departure from the often sharp, chemical, and repetitive themes dominating designer and mainstream perfumes.
Regarding technical matters, natural fragrances tend to live close to the skin, creating an individual experience rather than shouting across the room. They evolve distinctly in time, evolving through several stages as they dry down, and are more evanescent than synthetically enhanced fragrances, fading away after 4-6 hours.
Our Storefront
Designed to be a sanctuary for the senses, Sfumato’s retail location is in the lower level of an old Victorian mansion. Our shop offers fragrances, incense, and scent-inspired books, as well as hosting special events and scent consultations.
By night the store transforms into Castalia, an experimental craft cocktail bar serving drinks based on the aromatic profiles of Sfumato’s scents.