Ikiryo
Scent as a wandering ghost.
Ikiryo takes its name from a concept in Japanese folklore: the ghost of a still-living person, an apparition that wanders independently of the body it originated from. Vincent, a Berkeley-based artist working under the collective name Dreamhouse, chose the word because it described how scent actually behaves — an invisible presence that persists around a person long after their departure, the olfactory equivalent of a trail. Vincent came to perfumery through years of collecting designer fragrances and work in costume design for opera companies, and is self-taught. The inaugural project, launched in 2016 under the title "When a Sleepwalker Dreams," presented six fragrances as a unified series, each one paired with original graphic novel imagery that extended the scent's narrative into a visual register. That pairing of olfactory and illustrated storytelling remains central to the house's identity. Ikiryo is one of Dreamhouse's several creative hats — alongside the photography studio Otto Phokus — and the fragrances are produced in small quantities. They sit in the American artisan niche tradition: handmade, concept-driven, and distributed through a small number of independent fragrance retailers rather than mainstream channels.
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.
