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Los Angeles-based fragrance house Heretic Parfum has launched Werwulf, a limited-edition collection made with Focus Features and director Robert Eggers to accompany his mediaeval werewolf film of the same name.
VIP and waitlist customers got first access on Monday, 26 October 2026; general release lands on Saturday, 31 October, which happens to be Halloween, and everything sells exclusively through HereticParfum.com while supplies last. The film opens in US theatres on 25 December.
Founder and perfumer Douglas Little spent nearly two years on the collection, his second with Eggers and Focus. The first was the Nosferatu fragrance, which Heretic says sold out within two weeks and built an 80,000-person waitlist, with 72.8% of its buyers over two years new to the brand. Glossy reported that company revenue grew 150% in 2025, driven by collaborations.
Nosferatu came with glimpses of early footage. Werwulf stayed under lock and key, so Little’s first contact with the film was the screenplay, which he describes as “one of the darkest landscapes that I’ve ever explored.” Aaron Taylor-Johnson plays a cursed farmer in 13th-century England opposite Lily-Rose Depp, with Willem Dafoe as a hunter, and every line of dialogue is in Middle English.
Heretic’s release says the brief began with the question of what a werewolf smells like. Little answered with three fragrances, each conceived as a separate witness to the same event. For Nosferatu he avoided the red wine and candle wax that people expect from a vampire, and here he steered clear of body odour.
Each Eau de Macabre is 30 ml and costs $125, and a Discovery Set of three 5 ml bottles is $55. Heretic writes its pyramids in Middle English spellings, with First Ayre for the top, Herte for the middle and Lasting Wyrde for the base. Vetiver runs through all three bottles. Osmanthus turns up in two of them, as do patchouli and benzoin.
Þe Wode Hath Teth, Middle English for the woods have teeth, opens on mineral spark, frosten ayre and pyne terpenes. Snapt cypres, blak peper, osmanthus and carrot seed form the heart, over frozen vetiver, primal musk and patchouli. Little wanted the forest as it was before the fairytale, so he added a sharp char note to bring out the teeth.
Werwulf took the longest. It opens on bitter pomel, Turkey rose and osmanthus, with ireos, violette leef and vanylle bene at the heart and labdanum, vetiver, benzoin and beest-fur underneath. The accord began with costus root, a critically endangered Himalayan plant with a wet-dog smell that can no longer be used in perfumery. On skin, Little says, it feels feral without being unpleasant, and he describes it as both masculine and feminine.
‘Blodwode’ means ‘blood wood’. Cynamon bark, lentisque and yren-blod open it, jasmin and rose of Turkye form the heart, and patchouli, vetiver, benzoin and flesh musk close it. Little expects it to be the most polarising of the three.
The interior of each box carries wax seals stamped with sigils Little designed after researching the protective talismans of mediaeval daily life. The designs draw on folklore that predates Hollywood and leave silver bullets out. The Werwulf box holds nine seals, each naming a note in Middle English, and the bottles and printed matter carry period wording too, including the instruction to BREKE ÞE SEAL.
When Little sent the sigils to Eggers, the director put him in touch with an Oxford scholar of pagan studies who had been consulted on the film. The scholar helped fine-tune them against historical documentation.
The Werwulf Candle, at $75, comes in an 8 oz glass jar with a brass lid and takes its look from objects in the film. Beside it sits The Invocation of the Wolf ($125), a sculptural burner paired with incense and a printed invocation. The burner nods to an altar in the film bearing a crucifixion and a memento mori. Heretic had never made incense before, so Little worked it up in-house and produced small batches in Los Angeles over the full moons from July to September.
Home fragrance is a growing side of Heretic. The Nosferatu collection included two candles, and five Edward Gorey room sprays followed for holiday 2025 after Little sent the Gorey estate a cold email.
Heretic x From the Silver Screen adds two sterling silver pendants. The Sigil Pendant costs $385. The Scented Pomander Pendant costs $950, and the release describes the silver collaboration as an object depicting the dual nature of man and beast.
The collection’s most expensive fragrance is the Heretic x Parts of Four parfum extrait at $450, due in December. Little worked with artist and designer Evan Sugarman of Parts of Four on a handmade reliquary of steel and hand-carved wood with custom hardware. Inside sits a French ground-glass flacon with a stopper, holding a concentrated Werwulf made without alcohol. Heretic will make only 250.
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