Le Labo Another 13: A Minimal Perfume, Nearly One Molecule

A bottle of perfume often contains more than a hundred ingredients. Another 13 contains thirteen. At the center of it is one molecule: Ambroxan.

Another 13 was created in 2010, when Le Labo collaborated with the British magazine AnOther. The original plan was modest: five hundred bottles. When Colette closed in 2017, the fragrance moved into Le Labo’s permanent line. The perfumer was Nathalie Lorson. The thirteen in the name refers to the number of raw materials used.

The center of the perfume is Ambroxan. Ambroxan is a synthetic aroma material used to recreate the effect of ambergris, a waxy substance produced in the digestive system of sperm whales. It emerged in the nineteen-fifties, as natural ambergris became difficult to use for ethical, legal, and practical reasons.

The molecule is warm and skin-close, with a hint of salt and the suggestion of musk. On the skin, it does not vanish quickly. It spreads, slowly.

What makes Another 13 unusual is that it places Ambroxan almost at the center of everything. Pear, apple, and citrus pass through the top, briefly. Jasmine, moss, and ambrette drift through the middle, faintly. But much of what follows is carried by Ambroxan and other modern aroma materials, including Cetalox, Helvetolide, Ambrettolide, and Iso E Super.

It is not a perfume built through ornament. It is a perfume built through reduction.

A single molecule, varied and supported, takes the place of a complex structure. The approach helped shape one strand of minimalist perfumery in the twenty-tens. Escentric Molecules’ Molecule 01 was built from Iso E Super alone. Juliette Has a Gun’s Not a Perfume was built around Cetalox. These were experiments in how much a perfume could leave out.

Reviews of Another 13 tend to converge on the same phrase: like my own skin. The line between perfume and skin grows indistinct. Ambroxan is known for its substantivity. It lingers close to the body and interacts with the wearer’s skin chemistry. The scent does not simply sit on top of the skin. It seems to become part of it.

A perfume can work by not announcing itself. Another 13 is that proposition, in a bottle.