Small-batch on the Mediterranean · Free shipping in Spain · Ships in 48hJoin the letters →
The terrace under Pablo's vine, dappled in afternoon light
Villa S · The Villa

A real place.
A real person.

A scent that smells like both. I'm Silvia — an engineer — I made Alba, Parra and Calma at my kitchen table, and I've been making them by hand ever since.

Who's behind the S

I'm an engineer.
This wasn't the plan.

Training as an engineer mostly means I don't trust a formula I can't repeat. The first Alba was mixed on the kitchen table while the kids were at school — weighed out drop by drop on a scale meant for baking, written down in a notebook I still have.

I'd like to say it was a business plan. It wasn't. I had just walked away from a job that had turned toxic, I wasn't sleeping much, and blending oils was the one part of the day that asked nothing of me and gave something back. The rigour is real — everything measured, logged, repeatable. So is the pleasure, and I've stopped apologising for that.

Alba, Parra and Calma are the morning, afternoon and evening of a day in this house. I made them for me. It turned out other people wanted their houses to smell like this too — so now I make them for you, in the same kitchen, with two cats supervising and contributing nothing.

— Silvia · Montgat, north of Barcelona
Hundreds of hand-filled bottles rinsing in the old stone wash-basin
Every bottle, filled and rinsed by hand in the old stone sink. This is the whole factory.
There's an orange tree in the garden that's grown more fruit than we could ever eat, twenty years running. This year I picked none of it. I let it fall. The smell of oranges going soft on the hot August ground is exactly what I tried to put into Parra — and failed at completely. What I made instead turned out better.
— Silvia · Villa S
Where it actually comes from

Not a mood board.
A real place.

Every scent started as something I could point at. A tree. A vine someone planted. A window I keep meaning to close and never do.

The painted protea tile wall in the courtyard
The protea wall, painted tile by tile
The orange tree at the window, curtain moving in the breeze
The orange tree I gave up picking
The níspero tree heavy with fruit
The níspero, generous three weeks a year
Coco asleep on the blue tiles
Coco, at his life's work
A little gecko held in the warm light on the terrace
The gecko who stayed a full hour
An unmade bed in the morning light
Mornings, more or less made
The people in the photographs

A family, first.

Sonia smiling at the window
Sonia
Silvia's sister

The one smiling in half these photographs — and the one who tells me when a scent is wrong.

What the S stands for →
The vine Pablo planted
Pablo's vine
A gift, planted as a cutting

A stick when it went in. Now it shades every breakfast we've had out there since.

The best seat in the house →
The níspero season
The níspero season
A few weeks each year

Sun-warm fruit the kids carry in like treasure, then leave on the counter to bruise.

Read the story →
The name

What the S stands for.

The S was never a mystery. It's just a letter that was already there — one that belongs to our family. First and foremost, it was Silvia. Everything else came later.

And, over time
Scents & Stories · Summer · Sea · Sur · Sun · Sand · Smile · Spaces — and a thousand things more.
— Silvia, Villa S
The Villa S crest in gold

That's it. That's the villa.

If you've read this far, you already know whether this is for you.

— Silvia

Meet the scents
Letters from the villa · −10% your first order

Get 10% off your first order.

Join the letters for a welcome code, then a note from the villa every so often — a new scent, something the garden did, the odd thing worth passing on. I won't email you for the sake of it.