We launch with shower oil, not shower gel. The reason is simple: perfume clings to oil the way memory clings to skin — slowly, intimately, with staying power. If you care about fragrance that lasts, your scent layering should always begin with oil.

Fragrance is chemistry as much as artistry. Most perfumes are made of essential oils and aromatic compounds suspended in alcohol. These molecules are lipophilic, meaning they dissolve more easily in fat (oil) than in water.

When applied to oil-rich skin, scent molecules bind, releasing slowly over time. On dry skin or in water alone, they dissipate quickly, carried off by evaporation before they can settle. Oil slows that evaporation. It anchors fragrance at the surface, diffusing it in waves rather than all at once. The result is not just scent — it is presence.

This is not new knowledge. In ancient Egypt, amphorae filled with perfumed oils — myrrh, labdanum, cinnamon in olive or almond oil — were placed in tombs and temples. In Rome, bathhouses ended not with soap, but with oil. Bodies were doused in perfumed blends, then scraped clean with a strigil, leaving behind skin softened, scented, ready.

Oils marked transition. They were used in cleansing, in seduction, and in death rites. Because they did more than clean. They held.

At 39BC, we follow the same principle. Our Cleansing Shower Oils are designed to cleanse without erasure, and to anchor fragrance where it belongs — on the skin. They transform with water into a light emulsion, leaving the body supple, perfumed, and touched with memory.

Each oil is part of Vol. I: Alexandria, our debut collection inspired by Cleopatra and Mark Antony — figures who understood that scent, like power, is never just surface.

Step into Sage Water, a luxury shower oil built on the clarity of stillness and release. Notes of petrichor, rose, birch tar, and moss stay with you long after the bath has ended.

Why oil, not gel? Because gel is routine. It foams, it vanishes, it leaves the body bare. Oil is ritual. It nourishes, it lingers, it carries fragrance the way skin carries touch — gently, gradually, without rush.

So when the water fades, the scent remains. On you. With you. Where it belongs.