Banished! 🏰🪓🐍

The Traitors smells like mayhem, moss, and murder.

Feb 10, 2026

As Bravoheads who love mind games, we obvi adore The Traitors, a show where a random hodgepodge of Bravolebrities and other reality stars lie to each other in a Scottish castle. The premise is simple but not easy: some contestants are secretly designated Traitors and “murder” the Faithfuls each night, while the Faithfuls attempt to banish the Traitors during the day. It’s Mafia for adults with personality disorders, hosted by Alan Cumming in the most unhinged capes imaginable. The show has everything: psychological warfare, backstabbing, high camp, dark-academia outfits that go absurdly hard, and Real Housewives well past their prime. And it all unfolds at a genuinely stunning 19th-century castle in the Scottish Highlands. Oh, and this season, Lisa Fucking Rinna is a Traitor (sorry, spoiler, I guess, but this is really old news). What more could you possibly want?

Rose Highland by Jorum Studio

Much like Traitors, the Scottish Highlands are defined by drama: treacherous waterfalls, granite crags, cold sea air traveling inland to meet mineral-rich rock and ancient oak forests. Rose Highland, from Scottish brand Jorum Studio’s “Scottish Odyssey” collection, explicitly captures landscape—rose absolute and jasmine battered by saline air, grounded by vetiver, iris, and Atlantic oak. Pink pepper and clove bud add bite, while the ambergris and mineral accord make it smell like wet stone after rain. It’s inspired by Buachaille Etive Mòr in Glencoe—one of those dramatic Highland peaks on Scotland’s western coast—and it smells exactly like that: beautiful, harsh, and utterly indifferent to whether you’re on television. This is what the rugged Scottish landscape smells like before, during, and after the show airs: wild, mineral, and completely unforgiving.

Hot or cold? Cool mist rolling off the Atlantic.
Who wears it? Women who hike with a pack of dogs off leash.
Place? Cliff overlooking the ocean.
Animal? Seal hauled out on a rock.
Song? “Cico Buff” by the Cocteau Twins.
Texture? Saltwater on skin.
Signature drink? Ice water from a metal bottle.
Favorite word? “Haar.”
Vampire or angel? Angel, but the Old Testament kind.

—Anna

Revolution by Trudon

Every season of Traitors requires a good mutiny. The traitors must turn on each other to throw the faithfuls off their trail, and the faithfuls must turn on each other to decide who to banish (and because former Survivor players hate real housewives, and everyone wants fewer people around so that there’s more smoked salmon at breakfast). I can’t quite nail down a scent that smells like a knife stabbing you in the back, so we’ll have to go with gunpowder instead. Revolution by Trudon (Trvdon if you’re nasty) is described as being inspired by “the streets of Paris during the French Revolution.” It doesn’t smell like the guillotine, but it does smell like angry hordes of villagers, houses on fire, and horseback riders in leather robes. You’ll definitely get gasoline too—which the Traitors need to fuel their Land Rovers, obviously. It’s the smell of long arguments at a roundtable, executions discussed over opulent breakfasts, and being burned at the stake emotionally, physically, and spiritually. It’s what Lisa Rinna would smell like as she faced the (proverbial) firing squad, which is incidentally her favorite pastime and profession.

Hot or cold? Burning castle.
Who wears it? Traitors with lip filler.
Place? The castle’s turret at midnight.
Animal? Ominous vulture.
Song? “Silent Shout” by the Knife.
Texture? Gunpowder.
Signature drink? The Gentleman’s Curse by Tom Sandoval.
Favorite word? “Liberté!”
Vampire or angel? Rich vampire living off the blood of townspeople.

—Crissy

Relique d’Amour by Oriza L. Legrand

Traitors is shot at Ardross Castle, a 19th-century Scottish Baronial estate—the kind of Gothic revival architecture that makes you understand why people used to fear God. The decor is perhaps a bit maximalist cartoonish, very much designed to read regal on camera, but underneath the camp is cold stone and the faint inkling that something unholy happened here a hundred years ago. I imagine its bones smell exactly like Relique d’Amour, which is designed to evoke a forgotten chapel with damp moss creeping up stone walls. It’s all waxed wood pews carved by long-dead craftsmen, incense and myrrh still lingering from centuries ago. And then—plot twist—a shockingly fresh white lily cuts through all that ecclesiastical gloom, blooming through a crack in the stone. The result is aromatic, a little eerie, and deeply atmospheric. Basically, it’s what you’d wear if you were an early-1800s ghost haunting Ardross instead of just a reality star pretending to be murdered there. Divine, unsettling, and way too sophisticated for anyone on Peacock (Crissy accordingly paired it with an Italian TV show about Sicilian nobility).

Hot or cold? Cold like wet stone.
Who wears it? Nun with a naughty past.
Place? Abandoned chapel.
Animal? White owl.
Song? “Thor’s Stone” by Forest Swords.
Texture? Marble altar.
Signature drink? Vodka in a chalice.
Favorite word? “Blasphemy.”
Vampire or angel? Vampire in white.

—Anna

Dear Polly by Vilhelm Parfumerie

Part of Traitors’ allure is its coziness. The challenges are often silly (cue Sandoval singing in haunted baby doll noises) and effectively meaningless: in almost every franchise, the cast ends up having banked nearly the exact amount of “possible” prize money by the season finale, regardless of their performance. The daily breakfast table is a comforting ritual filled with piles of stodgy desserts, reality stars styled in tartan, and piping hot tea. Dear Polly is Earl Grey tea with a hefty pour of honey: it’s fresh, green, a bit smoky, and definitely sweet. It smells like inhaling the hot steam off your teacup while gazing out at rolling hills of green. Not everything at the castle has to be gloomy and treacherous! After a long day of rigged games and endless nights of murders, sometimes you just need to unwind while you daydream about getting Rob Rausch out of his overalls, you know?

Hot or cold? Boiling.
Who wears it? British MILF on a mission.
Place? A sunny bay window at precisely 1PM.
Animal? Lala the dog.
Song? “Afternoon Tea” by the Kinks.
Texture? Hot steam hitting your lips.
Signature drink? A pot of Earl Grey with a side of brandy.
Favorite word? “Biscuit.”
Vampire or angel? Angel whose portrait was shattered at breakfast.