Fragrance house

Xyrena

Xyrena originated in Austin in 1988, when leather craftsman Dallas Ryerson created the brand around a sweeter fragrance concept incorporating suede, with Space Cowboy as its debut product. After mainstream brands developed similar concepts in the early 1990s, Xyrena faded and Ryerson returned his focus to leather goods. In 2015, Killian Wells rediscovered Xyrena through a vintage bottle of Space Cowboy and revived it; that year, Ryerson sold the brand’s rights, including its original formulas, to Wells. Wells is Xyrena’s founder and perfumer, formulating fragrances and designing packaging around the atmosphere of their cultural subjects. Since 2016, the brand has used VHS-style packaging inspired by 1980s and 1990s retro-pop-culture aesthetics, an approach recognized with a 2016 Pure Beauty Awards silver award and a Davey Award. Its work combines fragrance, art, nostalgia, and pop culture through projects including the Cinematic Scent Archive, whose fragrances evoke classic films. Dark Ride, Wells’s inaugural fragrance, was nominated for an Art & Olfaction Award in 2016 and evokes theme-park water rides. By 2018, Wells had received Hollywood Tastemaker of the Year recognition and recognition for creative direction of the Aaliyah by Xyrena commercial, an official tribute fragrance to the late singer.