Breaking Bread and Spreading Butter at Clue
- Allison Skultety
- Aug 28
- 6 min read
Some perfumes feel like déjà vu. Dandelion Butter, the latest from Chicago’s Clue Perfumery, is one of them: an olfactory whisper that tugs at a half-forgotten childhood memory.
The smell is faint at first.
A delicate green whisper with the tender bite of early summer air. Then it deepens, unfurling into something creamy and salted, like butter pulled from a cool ceramic bell on a kitchen table, soft enough to spread with the back of a knife. The moment is fleeting but disarmingly vivid, as if it’s been waiting in the wings of your mind for decades.
This is Dandelion Butter, the newest creation from Chicago-based Clue Perfumery, a fragrance that smells not only of its ingredients but of a childhood game passed in whispers from playground to playground, generation to generation: hold a dandelion under your friend's chin, and if it casts a yellow glow, you must like butter.
Laura Oberwetter, co-founder and perfumer of Clue, first heard of the game from her business partner and fellow founder, designer Caleb Vanden Boom. She had playfully dismissed it at first, convinced it was some eccentric tradition unique to his school. But then, years later, it resurfaced, as mentioned in passing while filling studio orders and listening toThe Virgin Suicides audiobook. What once seemed like an obscure oddity began to feel like a collective memory. “It was so nonsensical, yet unexpectedly catchy and sticky,” she recalls. “The kind of thing that burrows in your brain.”
Dandelions, as it turns out, don’t have an essential oil. Perfumers can’t simply reach into a kit and pull out “dandelion” the way they might with vanillin or Iso E Super. This made Dandelion Butter both a creative puzzle and an irresistible challenge. Oberwetter began with research, ordering every perfume she could find that listed dandelion as a note, only to discover that most relied on conventional “perfumey” interpretations rather than the real scent of the flower. She needed the raw thing. So, in the depths of a Chicago February, a grower in Atlanta shipped her fresh dandelions overnight so she could study them in person. What she found surprised her: the flower’s greenness was more prominent than its floral character, with a vegetal, yeasty, almost bread-like aroma touched by a watery citrus quality. She layered hay-like notes with subtle powder and earth to construct it from the ground up, blending 42 materials; 16 dedicated solely to building the dandelion accord.
Then came the butter. Inspired by her parents’ kitchen, she sought a note that felt cool or room temperature, not hot; mild, creamy, and faintly salty. Butter in perfume can easily tip into cloying territory when paired with rich vanillas or caramelized notes, so she stripped it back, avoiding anything that might veer rancid.
As the scent of Dandelion Butter fades, it leaves behind a ghost of warmth and green. An echo of that strange, sticky playground game, refracted through artistry, discipline, and a refusal to play by the rules, the final effect is uncannily lifelike, bolstered by a subtle nod to human skin’s own “butyric” warmth under sunlight. It is a scent of impossible familiarity: a game you may or may not have played, a flower no perfumer can bottle, a moment that feels like yours even if it isn’t. In Clue’s world, perfume isn’t just what you wear; it’s a clue to who you are, who you were, and who you might remember being.
That strange blend of nostalgia and surrealism, the slippery space between the familiar and the uncanny, is the essence of Clue Perfumery. Founded in 2023, Clue has quickly become one of the most talked-about names in the indie fragrance scene, not through celebrity endorsements or sleek corporate campaigns, but by crafting scents that read like dream fragments, anchored in precise, tangible detail.
The Clue studio is tucked in Chicago, where Oberwetter and Vanden Boom do nearly everything in-house: formulation, packaging, fulfillment. They are, in their own words, equal parts “perfumer and email person,” “designer and box packer.” This end-to-end approach allows them to maintain the balance of thoughtfulness and playfulness that has become the brand’s signature.
Their bottles — elegantly structured, smooth, with a bold, keyhole-like silhouette — stand out as much as their olfactory compositions. They are objects meant to be handled, displayed, and loved, but never treated as too precious. (And the scents inside are IFRA-certified, built from both naturals and synthetics without a trace of pretension.)
From the beginning, Clue positioned itself not in the crowded space of luxury exclusivity, but in a rarer, riskier territory: conceptual scents that spark joy and curiosity while refusing to cater to trends. “We’re not chasing the rarest rose oil or glorifying the materials for their price tag,” Oberwetter says. “We’re chasing an idea, a feeling, a moment you can’t quite name.”
When Clue launched its debut trio in 2023, the reaction was instant and effusive. Morel Map conjured the deep earthiness of a forest floor after rain, mushrooms threaded with balsam fir and oakmoss, a fragrance that radiated like a living thing. Warm Bulb was a cozy vignette of dust-dappled light and yellowed paper, sweetened with vanilla and sandalwood (my favorite scent, by the way). With the Candlestick leaned into ritual incense and melted wax, cherry wine over labdanum and musk, evoking candlelit mystery without descending into gloom. The scents were cerebral yet wearable, drawing a devoted following that Oberwetter affectionately refers to as “the club”. Both she and Vanden Boom resisted the temptation to ride their momentum to rapid expansion, choosing to instead preserve their control and integrity. “It takes dedication not to sell out,” she says. “But for us, it’s not even a question.”
Clue’s work occupies an unusual emotional register; mysterious but never joyless, nostalgic but never syrupy. “We’re drawn to concepts that are a little surreal, but always playful,” Oberwetter explains. Even With the Candlestick, arguably the most shadowed of their creations, approaches darkness from the perspective of childhood fear, tinged with innocence rather than menace. This ethos extends to their limited-run “Slipper Series,” which allows them to release experimental “sketch” fragrances that don’t fit the mold of a full Clue launch. The first, Like Mesh, was literally composed in a dream — an unbalanced but beguiling neroli-heavy formula that sold out quickly despite minimal fanfare. The series, Oberwetter says, is like uncovering an artist’s demo recording: imperfect, ephemeral, and treasured by those who seek it out.
Clue’s audience is geographically diverse but concentrated in Brooklyn, Chicago, and, unexpectedly, Minnesota. They’ve resisted international shipping so far, instead partnering selectively with independent retailers who share their ethos. A Greenwich, Connecticut boutique, also frequented by Hamptons clientele, was one of the more surprising stockists, and Oberwetter still delighted in the juxtaposition of her surreal vignettes sitting on the same shelves that attract reality-TV stars. Pop-up events have become a way to connect directly with customers, though demand has sometimes outstripped their expectations. “We thought, Who’s going to come? And then it sells out before we’ve even caught our breath,” she says.
For someone who spent her teenage years scouring Fragrantica, Oberwetter has, in recent years, stepped away from the churn of perfume content and online trends. “I don’t read our reviews anymore. I don’t go on TikTok. I don’t want to know what the trend is, I’m waiting for it to be over,” she says. This isn’t contrarianism for its own sake; it’s self-preservation for the brand’s creative core. “I don’t want to be tainted by it. I want to find inspiration somewhere else.” Still, Clue often finds itself inadvertently aligned with trends (lactonic “rice” notes, for example), only to pare them back to avoid being lumped in. In an industry that can sometimes feel like an echo chamber, this kind of selective isolation is both rare and, for Clue, essential.
Looking ahead, Oberwetter hints at materials she’s eager to use: Peru balsam, for one, "because it smells like a cinnamon roll,” and even a sweaty “B.O. accord” inspired by hot yoga studios. They're just awaiting the right context. The possibilities, she says, are less about keeping pace with the market and more about finding the right story to tell. For now, thrice sold-out Dandelion Butter feels like the purest distillation that bypasses the intellect and lands directly in the body, like the way certain songs can make you feel something you can’t quite articulate.🌀
Allison Skultety is a PR Coordinator, writer, baker, and occasional funny girl.