In Copenhagen, a Rooftop With a Farm and a Bar

23.08.2024 - 14:20 / nytimes.com

April Gargiulo, the founder of the San Francisco-based beauty brand Vintner’s Daughter, first considered making a fragrance two years ago, when she connected with Loreto Remsing, a perfumer who’s also based in Northern California. Gargiulo and Remsing talked about how they might work together to bottle the landscape they both know well. Gargiulo’s creative prompt was “a magical liminal world between earth and sky, under the redwoods.” Remsing, Gargiulo says, “took this thing that was pretty esoteric and created something that was a perfect reflection of it.” Understory, a perfume oil with notes of violet, jasmine and moss, was released in 2022. This month, Vintner’s Daughter will debut Understory Vol. 2, which Gargiulo describes as a “new vintage” with subtle differences from its predecessor — the violet notes are stronger while the moss is softer in this iteration. The brand will release a limited run of 500 bottles of perfume oil, this time featuring illustrations by the artist MarSha Yi Robinson. “I love the idea of [Understory] being something that comes and goes, almost like scent itself,” Gargiulo says.

A decade ago, three Copenhagen residents converted the roof of a car auction house in the city’s northern Østerbro neighborhood into an urban farm called ØsterGro. Today, their garden blooms with nasturtium, radishes, kale and a bounty of blossoms that are doted on by hives of bees. Many of the vegetables go to a CSA, while the herbs, edible flowers and honey are taken a few feet away to a greenhouse kitchen, called Gro Spiseri, where they’re served at a communal table that frequently books up weeks in advance. To allow more guests in, and to mark their 10th anniversary, this summer ØsterGro started a no-reservations rooftop bar program. Now anyone is welcome to climb the building’s spindly exterior spiral staircase (or take its giant car elevator) to walk among seedbeds and gawk at hens while sipping from a selection of wines ranked by their respective “hippie” levels (organic, biodynamic, Demeter-certified). A house Negroni incorporates on-site herbs and a kombucha is made with unused stalks of fennel and mint. There’s also a seasonal focaccia, which currently features tomatoes from the greenhouse. The bar is open from 4 to 10 p.m. every weekend through September, so visitors can take in Copenhagen’s late sunsets. .

For the Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary artist Derrick Adams, beauty supply stores — particularly those stocked with products specific to the needs of Black women — have long served as a source of both inspiration and facilitation for his work. While browsing for materials that he would eventually use in his collages and sculptures, he developed relationships with the Black