ABOUT

Courtney Rafuse has been making perfume under the name Universal Flowering since 2016.

Each perfume is a romantic extension of the perfumer herself, in dialogue with the liminal, the erotic, and what memory does to it afterward. Her approach is synesthetic, on the theory that our senses are not separate.

She has worked with visual artists, fashion designers, and novelists. Universal Flowering has been featured in Nylon, Airmail, The Globe and Mail, and the BBC. The two most recent perfumes, Étude in Black and Big Night, were introduced at Stele, in New York, on November 20th, 2025.

Rafuse is also half of Gumamina, a house built with her friend Marissa Zappas, and the in-house perfumer for Eleasium, in Paris. She occasionally does freelance work ie private label, candles, scent for a home or a business, etc etc and can be contacted at courtney[@]universalflowering.com.