This fragrance smells like tripping and falling on the pavement

Close your eyes and picture the experience of a fall. Feel it in your body – the shock and sudden jolt of that first moment when you trip, the quick intake of breath and heart swoop, the adrenaline pumping as you hit the ground. Then the calm stillness as you lie there; taking stock of your limbs and extremities. Now think about what that smells like. It’s probably not something you’ve considered before – how one might represent the act of falling down through scent – but a new fragrance from Australian label Ramp Tramp Tramp Stamp aims to do exactly that.

“As much as tripping can be quite a painful or unpleasant experience, as a clumsy person myself I do really appreciate the sense of being fully in my body,” says Niamh Galea, the founder and designer behind RTTS. “The adrenaline pulsing and the stillness when you land and check yourself; ‘OK nothing’s broken, I’m OK, let me pause for a moment and regroup.’”

Falling huile de parfum is the brand’s first perfume and is designed to take you on an olfactory journey that matches the full-body experience of falling. Created in partnership with Australia-based Kiwi perfumer Samantha Copland, the fragrance brings together notes of native Australian anise myrtle and rose absolute (the zinging jolt of the trip); violet leaf and dill weed (the moment of impact); and tonka bean, native Australian buddawood and vanilla absolute (the calming warmth and stillness felt after the fall).

Collectively, the notes capture the unusual pleasure of shock and the afterglow that can come from falling – not just flat on your face, physically, but romantically as well; the fragrance was initially inspired by a poem Galea wrote about heartbreak, falling in love, losing your path and finding something better. “All my collections begin with a poem I’ve written and I felt that this one would make a really special smell,” she says.

Until now, these collections were centred around clothing. From Pierrot bloomers and reversible Marie Antoinette corsets, to asymmetrical g-strings and see-through horse-girl prints, RTTS champions a kitsch, vulgar aesthetic that pokes fun at the idea of good taste, while offering “fit flexibility” designs that work for all variety of bodies. But for Galea, fashion doesn’t stop at visual expression – it’s about building a whole multi-sensory world around your identity and that’s where the fragrance comes in.

Housed in a glass bottle, the scent is applied with a roller ball, turning the process into a sensual experience designed to heighten the sense of connection with your body. Meanwhile, instead of plastic, each perfume is packaged in a pair of vintage pantyhose (“the kind that really will rip and ruin your day if you fall,” says Galea) in order to introduce as much circularity into the product as possible.

Here Dazed speaks to Galea about the fragrance, taking inspiration from Madonna and her ‘fit flexible’ ethos.

I love the idea of the fragrance smelling like someone tripping and falling over! How did you come up with it?

Niamh Galea: The concept initially came from a poem I wrote back in 2020, about falling in love when I was still recovering from a heartbreak. It was about an ended relationship but more than that I think I was mourning the loss of a path I had been working towards basically my entire life (getting the scholarship and doing my MFA at Parsons in New York) and the future I thought I was going to have as a result.

The poem is about falling in love with a person but also with a place, sort of reacquainting myself with Australia, my home and learning to accept things not going to plan. The first line of the poem is ‘Spring is a time for falling’, which alludes to falling in love, but also to failing, unexpected turns in life and learning not to try to plan the next ten years but rather to be present. Scent has such a powerful way of bringing you to the present; it’s ephemeral and is never as strong as the first spritz or in our case that moment when it first rolls onto your skin.

How did you apply the ethos and philosophy of your brand to a fragrance?

Niamh Galea: A major part of RTTS is exploring fit flexibility, a term I use to describe fashion that fits a range of identities; whether that be age, gender, race, size or sexuality in a flexible way, transforming in meaning and fit across all these bodies comfortably. I don’t see this as a realised solution but rather as a lifelong experiment.

Perfume is the ultimate fit flexible object. It has the really unique quality of changing depending on the wearers’ unique chemical make-up; in a way you are the final ingredient in any scent. This combined with the lack of bodily constraints presented by the physicality of clothing allows it to be truly democratic.

Your philosophy is also about rejecting shame (the brand’s name transforms terms of degradation into sources of pride) and dressing how you feel.

Niamh Galea: It was really important to me that Samantha approach the ‘fit flexible’ constraint from a place that rejects normative ideas of androgyny or unisex, which so often just end up being very masc and woody or smoky – much like unisex clothing ends up masc, boxy and grey. I want to quote Madonna’s ‘What It Feels Like for a Girl’ here: ‘Girls can wear jeans and cut their hair short / Wear shirts and boots ‘cause it’s OK to be a boy / But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading / Cause you think that being a girl is degrading.’

She sums it up perfectly: rejecting shame to me is owning and being proud of things we’ve been taught to hide or minimise (not just in terms of gender but I think it’s a good example) and I really wanted the scent to be unashamedly femme but flexible enough to appeal to anyone, which is very much our approach to clothing design.

Was it important for you to include ingredients native to Australia?

Niamh Galea: It definitely was important to both me and Samantha to have some native ingredients in the fragrance, of course, Australia has such a unique and special flora from being so isolated and we wanted to embrace this. Going back to what I was saying before about the poem, I wanted to really celebrate this place where I am. OK, it’s not a fashion capital, but we really do have such a special culture here and also a really amazing fashion industry that I feel is becoming a place people recognise as very cool globally.

The fragrance is designed to appeal to everyone, from skater boys to corporate baddies. Why was that important to you?

Niamh Galea: I definitely wouldn’t say it’s designed to appeal to everyone, but that it’s designed to give everyone permission to love it and wear it if it does appeal to them. To my point above, I think so often we are held back by our assumed identity or labels, that in some ways tell us what is or isn’t for us. Of course brands and marketing are such a massive part of this absurd idea; and beauty can especially fall victim to it. What is more ridiculous than ‘sunscreen for men’ or ‘conditioner for women’. It’s all just skin and hair.

I imagined the scenario of tripping over in the city, particularly when you’re a busy corporate baddie, rushing around, phone to ear, maybe eating a sandwich simultaneously and bang! You trip, you hit cement, your pantyhose ladder and you have to take a second to breath, stop, be in the now.

Skater boys are also rushing around the city constantly and are very much used to falling, and very good at being in the now, as a ramp tramp it’s one of the things I like best about them. I imagine them falling as they reach into their pocket for their perfume, their board goes flying in the air but they hold on tight to the bottle. Both these visions are represented in the campaign, with the hope being that they represent some kind of spectrum people feel welcome to place themselves along.