I’ll admit that I’m a bit woo-woo when it comes to fragrance. (If we’re being completely honest, I’m woo-woo about most things, but fragrance is definitely high on the list.) A perfume’s scent, name, and inspiration have to strike the perfect balance to feel “right” in my psyche, because, to me, each spritz is a ritual—a physical setting of intentions; a silent prayer wrapped around each atom.

It’s for this reason that I stockpile sleek, clean-smelling scents for intense workdays—those fine tendrils of musky sophistication offering soft confidence when my pulse starts to rise. It’s why I adorn my neck and hair with warm florals for drinks under dim lighting, inviting my scent to say words my lips can’t quite form as I stoke a new flame. According to neuroscientists, fragrance is beyond a vain beauty category: it has the power to influence how you feel about yourself and others, and can even alter your memories. So when I found one that felt like the little black dress of scent—the kind that hugs your skin sinfully, offers a brush of bold confidence, and invites all kinds of will-they-won’t-theys—I became a woman possessed. Enter Noyz’s most luxurious and hypnotizing eau de parfum yet: Loose Ends.

If you’re currently unfamiliar with the Los Angeles-born perfumery, allow me to give you the SparkNotes. Noyz came into the world in 2024 with the sole intention of bottling emotions rather than selling the fantasies of fancy fragrance ads, all while offering refined scents at a reasonable price. You won’t find anything over $100 here, though their newest addition to the lineup, Loose Ends, smells like it should be upwards of $250.

But before we get into the base, middle, and top notes that make this androgynous perfume utterly addictive, it’s important to understand just where Loose Ends gets its legs. “Everything NOYZ and I have made together starts from a feeling people already recognize,” says master perfumer Jérôme Epinette. He states that 12:00, a sugar-spun sophisticated scent, is meant to embody nostalgia, whereas Unmute, an amber-y vanilla, is brazen confidence. “Those fragrances are, in a sense, resolved, and that’s the point of them. Loose Ends doesn’t get resolved—it’s open-ended, and that’s what makes it different,” he explains. “It’s the first fragrance I built for nighttime, and it holds on much longer. It’s the most grown-up thing we’ve done together.”

This seductive sophistication is evident from the first whiff lovers and friends catch as they lean in for a hug; crystals of caramelized vanilla giving way to woodsy amber the longer you stay perched on a cocktail barstool. It’s the belly-warming cognac in Kilian’s Angels Share and the hearth-warmed sophistication of Baccarat Rouge, shaken and stirred into one. (For $85, mind you.) The more storied your night, the more complex and alluring your scent becomes—the warm, resinous profile glowing as the night grows darker.

For Epinette, the idea behind this scent was that “the night that could go anywhere.” How thrilling, when you think about it, to have zero expectations. Loose Ends “touches gourmand, but it doesn’t live there,” he states, dissecting this new-age amber. Each spritz appeals to the senses: black sugar and smoked vanilla for approachable sweetness, then cinnamon-spiked cognac for that intoxicating element that makes prospective lovers’ heads swim. Indulgent cocoa and warm cashmere wood round out the scent, balancing the resinous profile without treading into saccharine territory. “This fragrance story stays open on purpose,” he adds. “[It’s] nocturnal, luxurious, and built to keep going.”

When I say fragrance is a mode of manifestation, this is what I mean. Eyes squeezed shut, a hopeful plea to the New York spontaneity gods, and a finger on the nozzle, I ask the world to show me a good time as I adorn my skin with this scent. It’s no wonder that everyone who smelled this smoky amber on me over the past week has leaned in a bit closer.