So, Quoc + Raer Golden Hour perfume just popped up in my email inbox. And of course, my immediate response was, WTF? Did I really just read that right? A cycling shoe company is selling me a signature scent to make me think of riding at sunset?
No, it isn’t the first of April. Yes, Quoc really just did launch a totally expensive, “100% natural botanical parfum scent”.
Quoc & Raer Scent create ltd. Golden Hour perfume
“Golden Hour is that suspended moment, bottled. A QUOC × Raer special edition — a 100% natural fragrance for the hour after the ride, when the effort ends and the rhythm lingers.”
Yes, this is real. And it kinda makes sense. Just bear with me. Those who have been following along will remember that QUOC shoes began about seventeen years ago in London, founded by Quoc Pham to make modern cycling shoes with traditional leather shoemaking methods. At that same time, Ted Rohn Youn-Ing was the creative director at Books, and founded the vintage Tweed Run ride through the city, meant to celebrate classic steel bikes, retro British style, and of course, tweed in the UK capital. They were fast friends.
Since then, Quoc shoes have evolved to be more performance-oriented, more vegan, and a mainstay of the gravel & adventure crowds. Rohn, on the other hand, moved to Berlin and started Raer, a “contemporary perfume house” specializing in natural, small-batch scents made with rare botanicals.
Pham & Rohn reconnected recently in Berlin. They got to talking about cycling, and that time after the ride, before you snap back into everyday life. And that was the spark to work together again.
Limited edition cycling-inspired perfume
The result is a limited edition fragrance, meant to evoke two feelings.
One, that time just before sunset when the light hits perfectly. And along the same lines, that time just after your ride, when all is right with the world, you haven’t come down from the high of pedalling, and before you snap back into reality.
The fragrance itself is a combination of ingredients from both the East – Pham’s homeland in Vietnam, and West – Rohn originally hailing from Canada. The 100% natural botanical scent comes from a combination of Vietnamese Holy basil, green mandarin, French jasmine, Bulgarian rose, smoky Alaskan cedar, and a hint of pepper.
Raer made only 150 of the 30ml bottles of the Quoc Golden Hour perfume in their Berlin studio. Each selling for 150€, directly from Quoc.
