Kiehl'S
Apothecary skincare and quiet musks since 1851.
Kiehl's began in 1851 as Brunswick Apotheke on the corner of Third Avenue and 13th Street in New York's East Village, becoming Kiehl's in 1894 when John Kiehl purchased the pharmacy. For most of its history it operated as a single apothecary with an eccentric, no-frills philosophy: explain the ingredients, let the product speak, resist the hard sell. The fragrance legacy traces to 1921 when a Russian relation known only as Prince Karl formulated a blend called Love Oil. Rediscovered in 1958 and reformulated, it became Original Musk, launched in 1963. The scent — built around orange blossom, ylang-ylang, and a white musk base — remains Kiehl's defining fragrance: clean, unisex, and understated by the standards of prestige perfumery. L'Oréal acquired Kiehl's in 2000, expanding it globally while largely preserving the apothecary aesthetic. The fragrance line remains small and purposefully quiet — musks and botanically-inflected colognes rather than statement pieces. The brand suits wearers who read ingredient labels and distrust marketing.
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.
