A perfume house from the south.
Casa Calixto is a pioneering perfume house founded in 2026 by artist Carlos Perez, with its headquarters in London, England.
The land is the note.
Casa Calixto was born on a Saturday morning in Pinheiros, São Paulo; in the shadow of a colonial church, on the hard grey brutalist concrete of Praça Benedito Calixto, where the city gathers each week to trade, to play, to remember.
Named for the square, and for the painter who gave it his name, Casa Calixto looks differently at the landscape he once rendered. Where he painted indigenous communities as backdrop, we come forward to stand beside it and embrace ethnobotanical perfumery. We learn from communities whose knowledge of this land runs deeper than any archive, whose relationship with scent, root and resin is a living inheritance.
Sentimental Geometry.
Growing up between Caracas and São Paulo, the cities I loved most were never smooth. They were layered. Brutalist towers wrapped in bougainvillea. Grey plazas alive with the sound and smell of people. The roughness of the architecture made the softness of the natural world feel more vivid, more precious.
That contrast is what I try to capture. Casa Calixto fragrances are not delicate. They have structure, weight, intention. But inside that structure, something living breathes.
Beyond the tropes.
For too long, South America has been filtered through someone else's idea of what it should smell like. Casa Calixto was founded to change that. We build our fragrances from the ground up, drawing on rare botanicals and thoughtfully chosen ingredients that honour the full complexity of this land. Damp red earth and petrichor on hot pavement. The metallic clarity of oxygen-rich Andean air. Priprioca, an Amazonian root more layered and more ancient than vetiver. Breu Branco, a luminous Amazonian resin carrying the scent of sacred smoke and deep forest stillness. Copaiba balsam for resinous, peppery depth. Tonka bean, soft and warm, rounding out the edges like last light on an open plain.
This is what South America actually smells like. We want you to live inside it.
Eco-brutalism, in a bottle.
There is a particular beauty in the places where concrete yields to root. Where brutalist plazas crack open and green things push through. Where colonial stone is softened by centuries of canopy. This tension, hard material and living world in quiet negotiation, is at the heart of everything Casa Calixto makes.
We call it eco-brutalism. Not a style, but a feeling. The sensation of standing in a city that has not forgotten its land. You find it in São Paulo, in Caracas, across the cities of South America that built upward without ever fully letting go of what grew beneath. These are the places that made us.
Our fragrances live in that same in-between. Structured, grounded, and alive.
Regenerative luxury.
Sustainability is not a selling point. It is the only way this work makes sense.
Casa Calixto was built on a deep respect for the communities and landscapes that inspire every fragrance we make. We source from small-scale farmers and indigenous growers across Brasil, Venezuela and Colombia, people whose knowledge of this land runs generations deep, ensuring that the harvest of ingredients like Tonka bean and Breu Branco provides a dignified, stable income and a reason to protect the forest rather than clear it.
Our materials carry the same intention. The concrete of our caps is a quiet nod to the eco-brutalist cities that shaped us, made with low-carbon binders so that even the hard edges of our work tread lightly. Our glass is fully recyclable, but we hope you never recycle it. Each bottle is designed to remain, a sculptural object on your shelf long after the last drop of essence is gone.
4 commitments.
@casacalixtoperfumery
Write to us.
We answer every note. Reach us by email, or follow the house on Instagram.
Return home →For too long, South American scents have been translated for a Western palate, diluted into summer or vacation fragrances. Casa Calixto refuses to translate. It is for the locals who recognise the smell of the first rain on a São Paulo street, and for the discerning traveller who seeks a souvenir that is an honest piece of a country's soul, not a postcard.