Aedes De Venustas
Temple of beauty, on the Lower East Side.
Aedes de Venustas — Latin for "temple of beauty" — opened in 1995 on Christopher Street in New York's West Village, founded by Karl Bradl and Robert Gerstner after the German shipping firm that employed them folded. The boutique built its reputation by introducing American customers to lines that were difficult to find at the time, including L'Artisan Parfumeur, Czech and Speake, Etro, and the Australian skincare house Aesop, and became one of the early reference points for niche perfumery in the United States. The in-house fragrance line followed in 2012 with an opening composition by Bertrand Duchaufour around rhubarb and tomato leaf; subsequent releases have been entrusted to perfumers including Alberto Morillas and Rodrigo Flores-Roux. The store has moved twice — to Greenwich Avenue in 2016 and to 16A Orchard Street on the Lower East Side in 2018 — but the editorial voice has remained consistent: bookish, slightly austere, attentive to materials. The house suits a wearer who treats perfumery as part of a wider cultivated curiosity.
DNA over time
Each column is an era. Each colored band shows that family’s share of accord weight across every perfume the house released in that window. Bigger band = the house leaned harder on that family.
