Scent Circle Discovery Set · Available now
We preserve stories by turning them into conscious, artisan fragrance. Scent is both a witness and a language — and in a house where history has guardians, it is how a story gets carried forward.
Two artisan scents · Unisex · Full sizes in composition
“I never believed I was creative until grief made me a storyteller.” Kotinetta began there, in 2022 — with a family history that deserved a keeper, not a keepsake.
Azama Kakota, founder. The name is a childhood nickname her parents made — an italicised turn on the family surname, honouring Rome, where they raised their first child. In Luba tradition, history has guardians. This house is one of them.
How an artefact is made
01
A memory, a person, a place worth keeping. The brief is never a trend.
02
Materials chosen on research, not on hype. What goes in is a decision, not a default.
03
The finished object carries the story forward — worn, shared, remembered.
01Scent Circle
For the story that begins again.
The scent of starting over without erasing what came before. Renewing is for the chapter you choose to open — a move, a name reclaimed, a grief that has finally made room for something else. Unisex, artisan, made in small batches.
02Scent Circle
For the story that refuses to be quiet.
Some histories were kept by people who would not be talked over. Rebellious is for them, and for anyone still holding that line — the relative who left, the one who stayed and argued, the version of you that stopped apologising. Unisex, artisan, made in small batches.
03Available now
What story do you want to tell?
Both scents, at the size where you can live with them for a while before you decide. Wear each one through a full day, on your own skin, and see which history it wakes up. The set is how most people meet the house.
Scent Circle · Discovery
TwoArtisan scents, one set
See the scentsFull-size bottles are still in composition. Discovery sets ship first.
First word, and first claim, on the full-size compositions when they leave the bench.
The Scent Circle
Two scents, not twenty. A circle grows one artefact at a time, and each one has to earn its place by carrying something real.
01
For the chapter you
choose to open
Unisex · artisan
Starting over without erasing what came before. Green, quiet, and stubbornly alive — the smell of a house being aired out after a long winter.
02
For the ones who
would not be talked over
Unisex · artisan
Warm, dark and unbothered. Made for the relatives who argued, left, returned, and are still the reason the story survived at all.
03
The next artefact
Not yet named
Not yet promised
A scent is only released when the story behind it is finished. The third is being worked on — the archive hears about it first.
Join the archive for first word
A day on skin
Fragrance is bought in a shop in ninety seconds and lived with for a day. Move through the hours and watch the composition hand itself over — opening to heart to base, and then to the part that is no longer scent at all.
An illustration of how a composition unfolds · not a measurement
00 Hours on skin
Applied to warm skin. Everything is still ahead of it.
This is how a composition is built to move, drawn as a general arc rather than a measurement of any one bottle. Skin, weather and the person wearing it change everything — which is the point of a discovery set.
Who this is for
Modern fragrance is fluent in seduction and almost silent about where anyone comes from. Kotinetta is built for the other conversation: for people carrying a story that no one else is going to keep, and who would rather wear it than explain it.
You do not need a fragrance vocabulary. You need something worth preserving — and the willingness to say what it is.
Conscious
01
Materials that may interact with or interfere with hormones in humans or animals. Several are still legally used in EU and UK perfumery. We do not use them.
Refused
02
Some materials build up in living organisms over time. We select ingredients that do not, and we accept the narrower palette that comes with that choice.
Refused
03
We choose materials that degrade more easily rather than linger. Our compositions combine natural and safe synthetics — which also keeps pressure off the forests that natural extraction depends on — with organic sugarcane alcohol and ethical sourcing.
Refused
04
Our formulas and suppliers are certified through the Soil Association Organic Standard and the International Fragrance Association.
Certified
We take responsibility for what we choose, not credit for what we avoid.
Join the archive
The archive hears first: new artefacts, the journal, and the day the full sizes are ready.