Toskovat Perfumes The Great Beauty for Beautik in Romania

Toskovat Perfumes The Great Beauty special edition 

“No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody or something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.” – Vladimir Nabokov

Toska lives somewhere between sadness and melancholia, between desire and absence, between nostalgia and anticipation, its roots tangled in longing, restlessness, love, homesickness, and the peculiar ache of wanting something we cannot name. And perhaps it takes a particular Eastern European sensibility – to immerse fully in the emotional geography of this place, having learned, historically and culturally, to live along its borders. And when I say borders, I mean them in the most literal sense, too: with borders drawn and redrawn across a single century, provinces that changed countries overnight, towns and streets that changed names twice within a lifetime, homes and whole communities relocated (in the best of cases) or outright erased. Even the promise of a luminous future could be dimmed, deferred, or redirected elsewhere, leaving behind that particular sense of waiting for the miracle, passed down through generations until the waiting itself became a form of inherited nostalgia. There is a particular fragility to the word homesick, when home used to be more of an abstract idea than a physical place, and what we inherit is not only our ancestors’ projections, but their survival patterns too, absorbed unconsciously and settled so seamlessly into our inner architecture. We grow accustomed to living in a multiverse of possible selves, all of them flickering just out of reach, in a timeline hemmed by threads left forever unwoven – aware of the stories that never came to pass, grieved as if they were memories, always shadowed by the what-ifs of possibility.

 via the brand

I have pondered on all of the above, trying to make sense of something I have often wondered about, especially here in Romania: why the public is so relentlessly critical of the things made close to home. It is not only about perfume; it extends to fashion, to art, to design, to music, to gaming – almost everything that carries the label of made locally,  an almost automated severity we reserve for the homegrown, and a higher (almost impossible) bar we hold it to. And perhaps the explanation is more sociological than psychological. For generations, the foreign object – the exotic one – has carried within it a promise of escape. It arrives already wrapped in another geography, another mythology, another idealized version of ourselves. To desire it is also, sometimes, to imagine ourselves participating in the world that produced it, with all the sophistication and legitimacy we have learned to place there. We will always have the idea of Paris, provided Paris remains far enough away to accommodate it. A local brand has the far harder task, because it takes away the comfort of distance, and distance is damn useful when we are trying to dream. An object from our own cultural landscape hits uncomfortably close; it turns intimate, and it holds up a mirror we may or may not be willing to recognize ourselves in. It asks for self-reflection, for self-analysis, and finally for that most complicated exercise of all – staying true to who we are, which takes time, and effort, and constant work. And that difficulty multiplies exponentially when the thing in question is as intimate, as personal, as bound up with self-identity as perfume. Which is exactly why a foreign label that speaks of luxury seduces so easily: it lets us skip the reckoning altogether, handing us something pre-romanticized, pre-idealized, a perfect, oh-so-comfortable vessel to pour our projections into…and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that escapism – on the contrary, I am very trigger-happy when it comes to pushing those internal buttons myself.

artwork via the brand

A local brand here, by contrast, asks local consumers to turn inward and find reasons to love what they see, and familiarity does not always make affection easier, especially when it becomes successful, and they find themselves more willing to question the recognition it receives than their own reluctance to give it. There is work involved, a degree of honesty and discomfort that people grow all too skilled at brushing off as they age. This might also help explain why these consumer patterns, seemingly so entrenched among older Millennials and Gen Xers, appear far less pronounced among the new wave of Gen Z consumers, and perhaps offer another perspective on the local market’s niche renaissance, which I previously explored in my Enhala report.

David-Lev Jipa-Slivinschi perfumer and creative director of Toskovat

One of Romania’s most famous exports in the world of niche perfumery is Toskovat, a brand now stocked in boutiques across more than twenty countries and four continents. Everywhere, that is, except Romania – until quite recently. And the absence was never for lack of a market, since we have, compared even to other European capitals, a remarkable number of local perfumeries; nor was it for lack of effort, as I know few brand owners who have knocked on as many doors, with as much optimistic persistence, as David has. But there is a reality that even the most passionate independent perfumeries must confront – that is, niche shops cannot survive as art galleries and exhibit a brand simply because it is culturally interesting, conceptually ambitious, or artistically significant. There has to be a big enough audience ready to understand it, to wear it, and eventually to buy it, for the ecosystem to sustain itself. That audience is arriving now – growing fast, and claiming a real share of the market and the conversation.

Beautik boutique, images via official Instagram

This spring, Beautik – a pioneer of niche perfumery in Romania- placed its bet firmly on the home team, bringing Toskovat onto its shelves alongside other names from the new Romanian niche wave: Caeleste, Adi Ale Van, and Necalli. And the synergy makes perfect sense.

Beautik opened its doors twenty years ago, back in 2006, when niche boutiques were still scarce even across the biggest cities in the U.S .and Western Europe, and has been championing the craft ever since, extending that commitment to the country’s only Perfume Museum (that has more than six thousand bottles on display and over 15.000 in the archives – that I will be exploring in one of my future articles). Beyond its seven stores, retail spaces awarded for their architectural design, and portfolio of more than sixty brands, Beautik pulls off the rarest trick of all: keeping its finger firmly on the pulse of contemporary perfumery, with an instinct for the brands moving it forward and the confidence and courage to give them a place within the world it has spent two decades building.

Toskovat, packaging details, image via official website

Like many Eastern European creators in perfumery, David comes from an artistic background, with fragrance offering another medium for self-expression and another way of giving his stories a form. Having explored painting in his youth, then screenwriting and filmmaking in college, he turned to scent during the pandemic, when the film industry had largely come to a standstill, and he returned home to Bucharest from the UK. Perfume offered a different kind of narrative possibility, a way of conjuring places, emotions, and memories at a time when so much of the outside world had become inaccessible. His education in the craft began on YouTube, with a handful of oils and the discovery that making perfume was something he could actually attempt himself, then grew through books, publicly available formulas, DIY forums, and conversations with perfumers and chemists willing to share their knowledge. Self-taught, he learned, he tried, he failed, then he failed better, acquiring the scented vocabulary to give his concepts an olfactory flesh. He still prefers to call himself a perfume maker rather than a perfumer, although the industry has made a rather persuasive case for the latter: Principalities, which he composed for Ștefan Răduț’s Caeleste, won the 2025 Art and Olfaction Newcomer Award. And, like many indie founders, David wears just about every hat in the business: storyteller, copywriter, perfume maker, packaging designer, sketching the ideas that become the illustrations inside the boxes, then filling the bottles and sticking on the labels. He calls his fragrances extraits de mémoire, memory extracts, little drawers where memories have been stored.

David with the founders of  Beautik Val and Isabelle Iacob

Created with Beautik to celebrate its twentieth anniversary, The Great Beauty returns to a childhood memory: David visiting the store, a little boy discovering a world of very grown-up smells. There is something inherently toska about the concept alone – a circle closing, with the fascinated child returning years later to compose the house’s anniversary perfume, his own memory as a foundation of, once again, a universal tale.

Putting it on my skin, the first time, summoned my inner starry-eyed Jep Gambardella. In Paolo Sorrentino’s La grande bellezza, he recalls how, when asked what they loved most in life, his friends’ answers invariably revolved around sex, while his own was “L’odore delle case dei vecchi”- the smell of old people’s houses. Destined to sensibility, right?

Jep Gambardella from Paolo Sorrentino’s 2013 La grande bellezza (The Great Beauty) IMDb

Toskovat The Great Beauty smells atmospheric, and quite fittingly, of the perception that a young kid would have of a place filled with stories that still seem foreign and exotic. I found myself thinking back to Beautik’s portfolio some ten-ish years ago, around the time David would have visited as a boy, rummaging through my own scent memories of those days, with the old bottles of Lubin, État Libre d’Orange, Piguet, or Rancé coming back to me. David was given a loose brief, with the Beautik customer in mind: someone who is a connoisseur, probably owns quite a collection, and still wants to find something worth making room for – even a possible signature scent. The fragrance needed to bring together different olfactory families, retain a little trademark Toskovat oddness, and feel approachable enough to invite that customer closer. To my nose, this is the most rounded, classically constructed of his fragrances I have tried, an ambery, woody, spicy composition that feels enveloping, nostalgic, and comfortable. There is a suggestion of paint, of a place freshly renovated, waiting for life to happen inside it, which makes an interesting companion to all that familiarity: the grown-up smells are reassuring, but to the child taking them in, everything is new and pulse-raisingly exciting.

David-Lev Jipa-Slivinschi perfumer and creative director of Toskovat 

The note that pulls hardest at my own memories, though, is the balsam fir, so immediately familiar  that I am back among Christmas trees, with sticky sap on my hands, my nose red from the frost, and my father’s laughter as he tried to squeeze the tree I’d chosen at the market through our front door. I struggled to wear the perfume in summer, when those associations felt  hazy, like old photographs held up against bright sunlight, but as the days grow darker, I find myself opening my own memory box, especially the drawers I don’t dare look inside too often, with echos of Tori Amos’s Winter playing in the background.

Atmospheric from the first suggestion of that strangely addictive, not-quite-fresh paint note (closer to the persistent acetone-ish lacquer used on doors and window frames, to be precise), it draws us into a world of old books and tobacco, those old-world- smells that once felt so foreign and fascinating, while burnt sugar, vanilla, honey, and benzoin weave a soft, fuzzy blanket to keep safe and snug. There is room to breathe inside, though, with a draught of Iso E Super, soft musk, and the white lightness of peony and lily of the valley keeping the composition airy, as if a window had been left open somewhere in this room full of memories.

Both triggering and comforting, The Great Beauty brings David’s growing artistic maturity together with Beautik’s two decades of following their own instincts, a shared reminder of the courage it takes to stay true to your path.  Coming full circle, and I can almost hear Neil Gaiman clearing his throat outside the door, ready to remind us of those Instructions once more:

“Trust dreams.

Trust your heart, and trust your story.

When you come back, return the way you came.

When you reach the little house, the place your journey started, you will recognize it, although it will seem much smaller than you remember.

And then go home. Or make a home.

Or rest.”- Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders

P.S.1: Initially released in a red anniversary box, with all 150 numbered bottles selling out immediately, The Great Beauty is now available in Toskovat’s signature white packaging through Beautik’s online store, which ships throughout Europe.

PS 2: Loved finding one of my favourite songs of all time, Like a Stone, opening the perfume’s accompanying playlist, available on Spotify here

Top notes: saffron, burnt sugar, white lacquer, atlas cedar; Middle notes: books, balkan peony, geranium, lily of the valley, fir balm absolute, tobacco; Base notes: vanilla, musk, Iso E Super, honey, benzoin

Nicoleta Tomsa, Senior Editor

Disclosure: Perfume kindly gifted by the brand, as always, opinions are my own.

The Great Beauty image via the brand

Thanks to the generosity of Beautik and Toskovat we have a 60 ml bottle of The Great Beauty in the white packaging for one registered reader from the European Union ONLY. You must register or your entry will not count. To be eligible, please leave a meaningful comment saying what sparks your interest based on Nicoleta’s review and where you live. Draw closes 9/23/2026

Read Nicoleta’s Enhala report on the Romanian niche brands, here.

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