Rock Salt

Maksim Perfume is a young house working out of Thailand, founded by Maksim Bortnikov after training and working alongside his father Dmitry at Bortnikoff — so this is the second generation of that name composing under its own label. The house claims 95 to 100 percent natural materials in every composition, which is worth holding against a pyramid built on mastic resin, ambergris, beeswax absolute, orris butter and labdanum absolute.

The house tells it as the end of a road through the Byzantine world: first light on warm limestone, then bare feet on the white terraces near Hierapolis, mineral water running over the stone and salt drying slowly on skin. It is just as clear about what the fragrance is not — no ocean, no blue aquatic, no sporty citrus, and nothing ambroxan-heavy — which is a sharper line than houses usually draw around their own release. Rock Salt sits in the Signature Line, and both sizes still add to the cart.

Buyable on maksimperfume.com ($52 / 9 ml, $190 / 50 ml).

Luca Turin gave the house a write-up in October 2025 — not for Rock Salt, which did not exist yet, but for its Cologne d'Agar, which he rated highly and singled out for fading lighter as it wears.