Let us look at a true spring perfume today. “Ber Cavok” is aviation language with the meaning that the sky over Berlin is clear, without clouds, and the visibility is perfect. The fragrance captures the spirit of a fresh and sunny spring day in Germany’s trendy capital very well.
The opening of the perfume comes with citric honey notes so typical for the linden tree blossoms. Those linden tree blossoms, or more specific their yellow green flower seeds, cover everything with a light green-yellow blanket during late spring. In nature, the trees seem to blossom later than in towns. The linden tree blossom in a city is a clear sign of spring having arrived around April and May and not summer around June and July.
The linden tree blossoms fill the air with a scent combination of lemon-marzipan, all-over more sweet than citric. The smell of “Ber Cavok” changes after the initial impression rather fast to a generally warm scent that stays for a long time. This description is not easy to fathom, but a warm lemon-marzipan smell that becomes less citric over time, like a spring day with an already warm sun shining on the skin, transports the feeling of the perfume as good as it goes.
The official scent notes of the perfume according to the Urban Scents website are linden blossom and Calone with mineral, ozonic, aldehydic, and musky notes.
The colour of the perfume is a warm yellow.
The couple behind Urban Scents are Paris-born Marie Urban Le Febvre and her Austrian-born husband Alexander Urban. Both are hobby aviators and had a fulfilled career in the perfume world before they decided to found their own perfume label “Urban Scents” in Berlin in 2014. Marie Urban Le Febvre is the nose behind all their scents. Alexander Urban manages the business.
Their branding is elegant and classic, the bottles are dark blue with silver caps. The silver Urban Scents logo with the propeller stands out very well. Come to think of it, their perfume bottles are elegantly understated and different from the many other forms and colours outside there. They feel heavy and expensive.
The Urban Scents laboratory had been in Berlin for 10 years, but now moved end of 2024 to Trieste. The reasons are unknown to me, the company website has not been updated yet to the new storyline. The scents are and were produced in Grasse, France. Their partner for the raw materials supply is the company Accords&Parfums, founded 70 years ago by Edmond Roudnitska, Dior’s former master perfumer and a legend in the trade.
Urban Scents is very transparent about where they source and with whom they work. One can find many more details on their website. This transparency gives a good confirmation to their efforts to make the perfume world more sustainable.
The brand seems to be especially loved in Europe, spanning the continent from Germany to Russia with official stockists. Italy, the new home of the laboratory and the main shop, certainly will give its own touch to the brand.
After the initial establishment of the brand and its success, Marie Urban Le Febvre started collaborations with other perfume artists and developed perfumes according to an underlying art concept.
There is not much more to say – Urban Scents is by now an established niche brand in Europe. Let us see how much the move to Italy changes the brand. To be honest, Urban Scents had been for me very much a German, or better, a Berlin brand. It captured the special spirit of the German capital very well. No perfume more so than “Ber Cavok”, with its linden flower blossom smell so typical for some German cities in springtime.