The Raconteur shares its gourmand Australian perfume collection

WORDS Emily Algar PHOTOGRAPHY Elisabet Davidsottir PUBLISHED Thu, 26 Jun 2025 - 10:32 am

Last week, Perfumer and The Raconteur founder and Craig Andrade launched the first-ever entirely Australian gourmand fragrance collection at Stéle Perfumery in NYC. It's composed of six irreverent personal fragrances: Killr Vanillr, No-tell Motel, Miss Macadamia, Lord Lamington, Pavlova Kassanova and Daintree Rain Tea.

Craig is known for his uniquely Australian approach to perfume — the lawyer-turned-formally-trained-nose heroes a lot of natives and botanicals, but his latest body of work is something completely different. It's Australiana meets indulgence: chocolate-dipped coconut cake, creamy nuts, tangy fruit-topped meringue, late night cocktails, dance floors, even the sweetness of rain in tropical north Queensland.

The exponential growth of the gourmand category is one of the biggest perfume trends in recent years — everyone wants a perfume that smells good enough to eat. Categorically within fragrance, gourmands are known for sweetness and food-forward notes like vanilla, caramel and honey. They're more-ish, fun and a little sexy, but The Raconteur is the first to give the category an Australian edge. The collection is deeply personal to Craig, but also linked by common themes we can all relate to: love, lust, fun, ambition, late nights, solitude and connection. Also, the appeal of smelling really, really good.

In celebration of the mega NYC launch event, RUSSH caught up with Craig to learn more about the new scents, the inspirations and how the brand brought Australia to NYC via fragrance (mini vanilla slices included). The conversation and an exclusive look at the night that was, below.

Craig, congratulations on the NYC launch. Tell us about the event. How was it?

We hosted the event at Stéle Perfumery, an incredible niche perfume house here in New York founded by Matt Belanger and Jake Levy. We had a full house, so many wonderful guests including Carlos Huber of Arquiste, indie perfumer Joey Rosin, leading podcast hosts Emma Vernon and Sable Yong, so I felt very lucky. I’ve worked on some big name celebrity fragrances so it’s humbling to see people turn up for my own perfumes and this collection. I’ve keep it kind of Australian. Chris Yuille, who is the most incredible Melbourne chef, catered. It was unbelievable. He’s a genius. We served sparkling Arras wine from Tasmania. It was great to showcase what we do at home, but in New York. So far people seem to be really enjoying the fragrances as well — I hope it continues.

Okay going back a few steps, tell us about your background and career, because you had a very interesting journey into perfumery...

We need lunch to discuss this… Ha. But essentially I was a lawyer in private practice, working in New York, London, South Africa, and Australia, facilitating large corporate deals. It got to a point where I was working 24/7, and I started to feel as if it wasn’t sustainable for me.

My partner at the time had given me a voucher to attend a candle making class. I sat on it for a year, but finally booked a spot in its final week. I left the office at 4 o’clock and told my team it was for a meeting. Elise Piosch from Maison Balzac turned out to be the teacher. Now she’s a friend of mine, but I found the experience pretty profound. I initially thought of it as a creative mindfulness type activity, but when we started working with the fragrance my entire physiology changed. I went from severely stressed to calm and grounded in minutes. That was the beginning of my fascination with fragrance.

So how did you go from lawyer to perfumer?

I figured if I was going to blow my life up a little and pursue perfumery I had to learn from the best, so I went to the Grasse Institute in France for three years of training while I was simultaneously working as a partner in one of the world's largest law firms. I was trying to build my knowledge and my confidence. In class one day, we were talking about the origins of raw materials. We got to Australia and my teacher mentioned eucalyptus and boronia… Without thinking I put my hand up and listed a few that were missed: fragonia, the myrtle family, buddha wood, the cypress family, kimberly heath, Tasmanian mountain pepper… She called me over after the class — I was worried I’d overstepped — but instead she said that in her 25 years of teaching no one had ever called out those ingredients, and that she thought I should consider telling that story. That was the final push I needed to properly pursue fragrance.

And how did you form your personal style as a perfumer?

One thing I noticed in all of my classes was that I had a level of familiarity with many raw materials. I had a lot of innate knowledge, even in blind testing. I started looking at my childhood and realised I was always in the garden, in the mountains, on a farm… I was always surrounded by nature and natural ingredients. I also loved to cook, so I often worked with aromatics, plus wine… All the dots kind of connected. My Australian upbringing formed the basis for what I wanted to do and the types of scents I wanted to create.

In short, my midlife crisis manifested as The Raconteur — fragrance felt like the creativity and complexity my mind was looking for. I felt this really welcoming sense of community when I got into the industry, too. It’s become my second chapter.

So your new collection is exclusively gourmand, tell us how you arrived at that decision?

The gourmand category is really the biggest thing happening in the fragrance world right now. It started with teenagers and TikTok. Originally the global industry kind of turned up its nose, because gourmands have long been considered unsophisticated or childlike. But it's grown exponentially, both as a category and in terms of consumer interest, and everyone has been forced to pay attention.

What’s your take on it?

I just felt that no one had contributed anything uniquely Australian to the conversation. Our voice was missing…

Tell me about the collection specifically?

There’s six scents in this collection, and I think they all speak to a different time, place or person within Australia, in a way. It’s cheeky, irreverent, it’s very different. I just don’t see the point in replicating anything that’s out there so I wanted to take a leap and put forward something bold and interesting.

It’s ultimately quite a personal collection inspired by vignettes of my life. I thought a lot about connection and encounters generally, too.

Each scent paints such a vivid picture. Can you walk me through each in your own words, and the creative process behind them?

Of course. So Killr Vanillr is a nightclub scent. It's a scent for three in the morning when you have the best conversations, you make the best new friendships and you’re listening to the best music. Often those are the moments that change or inform our lives (trust me, I’ve had them). Australians are no strangers to a good time, I wanted this scent to encapsulate that. It’s a classic vanilla slice but with a mirrorball facet. It’s sweet, it’s smoky and a little bit animalic. It’s how you want to smell in a nightclub, really…

No-tell Motel is a date night; it’s a motel lock-in. I thought it was such a great story because motels are quintessentially Australian. The scent is a little bit dirty martini, a little bit margarita. There’s an olive fruit absolute that’s aromatic and green. There’s Tasmanian mountain pepper which given an unbelievable green spice. There’s sandalwood... It’s sexy and musky and a little ridiculous. I love it.

Miss Macadamia was concepted as a beautiful way to acknowledge the native nut, but also celebrate the women in my life. I should add it’s a unisex fragrance, it’s for anyone who’s drawn to it, really. It’s beautiful macadamia paired with wattle, our native flower, plus orris, which is one of my favourite raw materials. It has a sexy sultry peach note, vetiver... it’s edgy and incredible.

Next we have Lord Lamington, which is a beautiful slice of cake in fine fragrance form. It’s a classic men’s cologne but with a deliciousness to it. It’s hungry and ambitious with clary sage, coconut, coca, amber cream and white cypus.

I also knew I wanted to pay tribute to the pavlova (sorry New Zealand) but there is something so classically Australian about it. It’s what do we do on Christmas Day — we have a swim and we eat some pavlova. Pavlova Kassanova is the perfect gourmand. I wanted to zero in on sweet tangy fruit against the creamy centre: passionfruit, lime, sandalwood, meringue… It’s fruity but in an adult way, and the dry down is unbelievable.

The last scent was more about reflection and a sense of quiet solitude, Daintree Rain Tea. I’m really proud of it It smells like rain, black tea, chamomile, sea salt and blue lotus flower. It’s very calm and tranquil. A meditative fragrance.