In conversation with Ashley Santiago from French Cowboy

Please introduce yourself in 3 sentences:

My name is Ashley Santiago, I’m a perfumer from California. I have been working at Givaudan in Paris for the past seven years. I work on Fine Fragrances for many different brands, as well as owning my own niche fragrance brand, French Cowboy.

How did you start out in the fragrance industry and what is the story behind French Cowboy?

I’ve been in the fragrance industry for over ten years. I started working in the industry in university as a sales associate at Ministry of Scent, a niche perfumery in San Francisco. While there I met two independent perfumers, Ineke Ruhland and Yosh Han, who were kind enough to train me in some fragrance basics. I worked there throughout my university years and over the summers when I visited back home. The team there is amazing. I was the second person to ever join the team, and the owner, Antonia Kohl, is now a dear friend and mentor. I don’t think I would be a perfumer today if it wasn’t for her.

From there I went to ISIPCA in 2016, then the Givaudan Perfumery School, and integrated into the Givaudan Fine Fragrance team in Paris about three years ago.

I always had a dream to launch a niche brand. I wanted to create something completely new, bringing together my experience and understanding of both the US and French fragrance cultures and markets.

During my training in France, I discovered the deep, almost obsessive passion the French have for fragrance. There is a true savoir-faire here that is so embedded in the culture and even the language. What I see in the US fragrance industry, on the other hand, is a greater willingness to take risks, whereas French perfumery tends to be more traditional. And that was it: the idea came to blend both sides, to merge my own two cultures—hence the name: French Cowboy. The “Cowboy” part is also an homage to my roots: my grandpa (as well as many others in my family) was a vaquero in Mexico.

Price point was also a key consideration for us. I have seen many brands with high price points, yet not necessarily much fragrance expertise behind them. On the other hand, you have interesting and cool brands with great fragrances at a price point under $100—maybe just presented in ‘simpler’ bottles. We wanted to democratise niche fragrance and haute parfumerie so it is accessible to everyone, especially younger audiences.

How do you create your fragrances?

I envision my fragrances by starting with specific notes that inspire me and my co-creators. Take Mezcal Chocolat created with Mathis Molinié. I had been wanting to create a mezcal fragrance forever. My family has agave plantations in Jalisco, where we’re from, and I had this mezcal accord inspired by that which I was sitting on for a while—one I loved but didn’t yet know how to use.

When I met with chef Mathis Molinié, he had this amazing mousse au chocolat. I created an accord inspired by it, and then showed him how it worked in combination with my mezcal accord. He was on board, and the fragrance came together very naturally.

Same with Pear Pavlova, which came together just as naturally—and quite quickly as well. I was working with professional dancer Allie Goodbun on that fragrance; she wanted fresh notes with longevity, but tended to shy away from gourmands. So instead of enveloping the fruity pear note with something sweet like vanilla, we went for a pavlova accord—which is my favourite dessert—creating a whipped, airy, not-too-sweet, fluffy musk accord, kind of symbolising the pavlova rather than interpreting it too literally.

I also love thinking of fragrances as stories—“who is going to wear them?”.

Any perfumer / artist / person you’d like to collaborate with on a fragrance?

Without a doubt, fashion designer Willy Chavarria. As a fellow Mexican-American, I find him so inspiring. I own a couple pieces of his, and just love the authenticity. I would be so honoured to create a fragrance for his brand if he ever decides to do one.

Favourite ingredient / aroma?

Always vanilla. I am obsessed with vanilla. I did my thesis on it. I love that it’s actually indigenous to Mexico, yet has travelled so widely. The reason we have this association with French vanilla is because it was the French who figured out how to hand-pollinate vanilla (rather than bee pollination).

Our next fragrance is vanilla, and I’m so excited by it, because I have gone on the hunt for the perfect vanilla since I got into perfume so to have finally been able to create my own accord is amazing.

Any favourite perfume or one that has a particular memory you’d like to share?

Lalique Encre Noire. I have loved it forever, even speaking about it in my first YouTube video ever as my favourite perfume of all time. It actually happened to be the fragrance my husband was wearing on our first date—a sign!

What’s your first olfactory memory?

Probably the angel’s trumpets in my aunt’s garden. They grow all over in San Francisco and they smell so heady. The reason it also imprinted on me is because especially as a kid, they tell you not to play around them because they have toxic effects. The beauty of them, as well as the forbidden part of it, made it stick with me.

If you weren’t in the fragrance industry, which industry would you like to be in?

I think I would be a theatre actress. Or in fashion. I don’t know if I have the drawing skills to be a fashion designer, but an editor at a fashion magazine would be very dreamy as well.

If you could change anything in the industry, what would it be?

We still have ways to go in terms of better explaining to the public how fragrance is made. What I learned in the industry is just how safe it actually is. I think so many consumers are afraid when they see fragrance labels.

I wish there was a way to explain it—like in a documentary—that fragrance is much safer than one might think. To illustrate this with a little anecdote: sometimes I find a material I can no longer use in fragrance, yet it’s still used in food flavourings. It’s to say that if it’s safe enough for you to eat, it’s probably safe enough to be on your skin—at least in certain dosages. In science in general, the dose is very important.

Any upcoming project / launch you want to share?

We are launching two new fragrances for French Cowboy—a vanilla fragrance and a citrussy fig—perfect for summer!

Tune of the day: Mazzy Star - Fade into You

Fragrance of the day: I’m never perfumed when I work! But when I’m not, I usually wear Pear Pavlova

Order French Cowboy’s free samples

Red concrete, Jan 2026

- Flo

In conversation with Agnès and Isabelle from Air France

Please introduce yourselves in 3 sentences:

Isabelle: I was born in Thailand, grew up between Southeast Asia and Argentina, and later settled in France. After a degree in Russian at the Langues’O (Sorbonne nouvelle) and translation at the Sorbonne, my passion for languages led me to Air France, where I spent over thirty years. That journey reflects who I am: curious, open to the world, and inspired by meeting people: qualities I now express through interior design.

Agnès: Born and raised in Paris, I began travelling at a very young age with my parents—always with Air France. This led me to join AF 38 years ago, where I’ve always worked at Charles de Gaulle Airport, in the lounges: Business, Concorde, and La Première. As the wife of a pilot and later the mother of a pilot, I never wanted to be cabin crew, but have traveled extensively.

How do you think smell and scent play a role in the world of aviation—on the ground and in the air?

Isabelle: On airplanes, smells form a world of their own. As soon as you step on board, a familiar blend emerges—that of conditioned air, the closed cabin, passengers’ perfumes, meals being reheated, and that slight lack of outside air typical of long flights. Everyone carries their habits, their customs, sometimes even traces of a cuisine or a culture.

The scents also vary depending on the destination: a flight to Seoul is not the same as one arriving from Los Angeles. Sometimes passengers bring food or spices back in their luggage as reminders of their stay. And then there are individual customs, personal fragrances chosen before departure like small talismans, which, over time and travel, become an essential link.

After years of flying, certain smells have stayed with me. They are not always pleasant—there is that particular cabin smell, or the scent of fuel upon arriving somewhere, as I remember from Argentina especially—yet they are part of the journey. Once you land, you quickly long for a shower, and yet, as soon as you board again, that same scent surrounds you once more. It is the smell of departure, of waiting, of the in-between: that suspended moment between the world you are leaving and the one you are about to join.

Agnès: What I associate with flying is really the smell of kerosene, and a certain “ça sent l’avion”. The smell of kerosene on pilots after a flight.

Is there an airport you have particularly strong olfactory memories of?

Isabelle: It’s a long time ago, so it’s probably not the same anymore, but about 20 years ago: Beijing. The smell of the city, of dust. I liked it. You landed, and you could really smell the city. Also Argentina when landing—the smell of petrol, the smell of cars—about 15 years ago. Now, you fly anywhere in the world, and it mainly smells like a shopping centre.

Agnès: India. When you land, you smell spices and dust. In Delhi and all these big cities, you smell it right away. The cities’ fragrance when you enter the airport. Many of these airports were very open plan and open doors—everything was open—the outside air would come in. This is problably my strongest olfactory memory of my time at AF. Also the smell of landing in NYC in December. To me, it smelled like cinnamon. It’s impossible to not link a place to a fragrance, or smell.

Do different aircraft have different smells?

Agnès: No, I don’t think so—it’s the passengers that make the smells, so it’s more about the destination. A flight to Bombay will have a fully different smell to a flight to Tokyo.

Isabelle: It’s also about how big it is—the bigger the plane, the more people there will be, the more smells there are likely to be.

How have the fragrances worn by passengers and flight attendants developed since you started?

Isabelle: There are sleeping cabins on flights. What I noticed a few years back is that these cabins have a very neutral smell, which in turn made me realise that, in fact, I never smelled any unpleasant perspiration smells from a crew member. I think there was a certain obsession around cleanliness, and that the crew in general was very smell conscious. We were also very careful about what we ate on the flight.

Throughout the years, I feel there has been a change of attitude towards fragrance. The more it is visible, the stronger it is, the better—seemingly without too much thought about one’s surroundings.

Today at airports, travellers increasingly want niche. I’ve also noticed more and more people using essential oils—often to neutralise odours or help them sleep, for example eucalyptus. In a way, these scents allow passengers to isolate themselves from others by creating their own small universe of smell. Since Covid, I’ve also seen a growing number of passengers cleaning their seats before settling in.

Does the way you perceive passengers’ and colleagues’ perfumes change in the air vs on the ground?

Isabelle: You become very sensitive to smells on planes—also good ones. People take their shoes off a lot—we become very aware of these smells.

Agnès: There is also an element of proximity and continuity. On the street, you might pass someone by and think they smell nice—but it’s just a fleeting moment. On the plane, you are obliged, you are exposed to the smells for the length of the flight.

What’s your favourite fragrance? Does what you wear in flight change from what you wear on the ground?

Isabelle: I never wore the same fragrance in the air as I did on the ground. I associated certain fragrances to flying, and would only wear them then—often lighter fragrances of which I had a few. A few years ago, I started wearing Voyage d’Hermès.

Agnès: I was never a hostess, but at the airport, I would often wear Eau des Merveilles by Hermès. And when I joined AF in the 80s, Hermès Rouge. To date, that fragrance reminds me of my first years at AF.

Tune of the day:

Isabelle: Desafinado - João Gilberto, Tom Jobim, Stan Getz

Agnès: The Letter - The Box Tops

Fragrance of the day:

Isabelle: Voyage - Hermès

Agnès: Habit Rouge - Hermès

First of Jan 2026, NYC

- Flo

In conversation with Claudio Denz and David Weber from Maison Noir

Please introduce yourselves in 3 sentences: 

David: I am a financial professional, former trader turned fragrance entrepreneur. I thrive when it comes to numbers and manage the operational side of our business. I might not be the creative person in the company, but fragrance is more systematic and numbers-driven than people think.

Claudio: And I’m the opposite! Jokes aside - I am more the creative person, definitely with fragrance at heart, I think you could say there is perfume flowing through my veins. I think I am creative through and through - also in my private life.

How did you start out in the fragrance industry and what is the story behind Maison Noir?

Claudio: My personal relationship to fragrance lies in my family DNA. I was literally born into the fragrance industry as my dad was in perfumes all his life. He had perfume chains in Switzerland and later built the Lalique Group, which operates a lot of licensed and own brands. This is also where I learned everything about perfumes - from the procurement part over to marketing and sales. Most of my career I spent as a creative director for multiple brands, also in home fragrance. This is really where I took the inspiration to go off and build Maison Noir with David.

David: Maison Noir was born from an idea that Claudio had - he was looking for a partner for quite a while. I had just returned from Sydney where I did my MBA and I was keen to do something more entrepreneurial. Claudio and I were old friends. We had a Bratwurst at Bellevue in Zurich, where he told me about the idea - and I was like - “wow, this sounds cool” - so we took it from there and started the week after, developing the concept and everything behind the brand.

How do you create your fragrances?

Claudio: We usually start off with the creation of a story, both visually and in words. These stories are a key element of our brand which we use to inspire our community as well as the perfumers. When it comes to the perfumers, we use those stories to give a direction to the fragrance that we would like to create. Sometimes we leave it entirely to the perfumer, other times we add notes that we would like to find in the fragrance.

We also have a classification system based on our fragrance wheel: each of our fragrances has a number in its name. Using our fragrance wheel, these numbers can be translated into the main notes of the fragrance.

We believe that these two elements help our customers to find fragrances in an omnichannel world even if they do not have the chance to smell them.

Any perfumer / artist / person you’d like to collaborate with on a fragrance?

Claudio: Quentin Bisch - he has not only been successful but also the inspiration and the way he connects ingredients is quite magical. But there are so many perfumers out there, so it would be totally unfair only highlighting one person.

There is also a musician in the States, MGK, who is super creative. He has a rock connotation but he is so diverse and is capable of creating things fully different to his actual music style. This shows me that you need to have some direction in your creative vision but equally always stay open to new inspirations and ideas.

David: This is a pitfall for me (laughs) - the result would probably not sell.

Favourite ingredient / aroma?

Claudio: I like ambergris, musks, but also hinoki which gives a bit more of a woody fresh direction, so also patchouli and akigalawood.

David: I’ll probably have the ‘boring’ ones - like the fresh and citrus notes. Those heavy and out of the box niche fragrances are usually too special and strong for me. However, Claudio has shown me that also in niche, you find accessible fragrances: with Vertigo 236 and Icarus 347 he has also created two fragrances that perfectly match my taste.

Any favourite perfume or one that has a particular memory you’d like to share?

David: I’ve not owned that many fragrances so I don’t think I have a special connection to one in particular.

Claudio: I am a big fan of Eau D’Issey by Issey Miyake because, to me, it’s one of the best fresh fragrances with a clear signature. I also admire what Narciso Rodriguez are doing, because the musk is so diffusive - of course, it’s Francis Kurkdjian and Christine Nagel behind the fragrances. Signature is something so important in this industry, because it makes you a brand, and the perfume itself, what it is.

What’s your first fragrance memory?

David: Probably not my first memory, but I experienced how powerful scent can be when I returned to Hong Kong ten years after having lived there with my dad; we got in a taxi, and it smelled exactly as I remembered from my childhood - one to one.

Claudio: It’s funny as I also connect it with a car - but more with a new car. Back in the day, when I was a small kid, cars didn’t smell nice at all. I think they’ve perfected that nowadays, which is good as a new car should actually smell great - but back then it was synthetic, of course, some sort of leather smell - somehow strange.

If you weren’t in the fragrance industry, which industry would you like to be in?

Claudio: I like architecture, but I think it would be a bit boring in terms of what we are doing today. Of course, it’s amazing to build a big building as you imagine it, but our concepts really go so deep and have such an emotional character - it wouldn’t be easy to capture this in the same way as we do with perfumes. It would have to be food, or music again - but I’m not a musician so…

David: For me the industry is not key - I can get excited about a lot of different industries if I can see a business idea or problems to solve. Of course I like fragrance and especially our business, but at heart I’m still a bit of a financial guy, and I really like doing that - so I can’t pinpoint it to this or that specific industry. Definitely something technical.

If you could change anything in the industry, what would it be?

David: Regulation. For us regulation is a big pain - the rules are changed all the time, we need to reformulate, etc. I understand that there is a need for this, definitely, but for us it can be quite frustrating when you try to build as a young brand. But even for the big ones, it’s a pain.

Any upcoming project / launch you want to share?

Claudio: We just released a new fragrance in October: RosaEterna 163 - a beautiful modern rose concept. Often, rose is seen as a dusted scent. We wanted to lift the veil off this dusted feeling and have a bit of a more modern way of presenting it. We crafted a bolder interpretation of the rose - we have the damascena rose at heart, layered with oud to give it some boldness, pulling it in a different direction again by making it modernly clean with the lavender and patchouli facets. This is definitely something with attitude.

David: Perfectly fits the season.

Tune of the day:

David: Marco Weber - Think About

Claudio: MGK - My ex’s best friend

Fragrance of the day:

David: Brioni - Eau de Parfum

Claudio: Essential Parfums - Bois Impérial

Purchase Maison Noir’s Discovery Set here

Julierpass, 2025

- Flo

In conversation with Frida (Freideriki) Michailidou from OLYMRA

Please introduce yourself in 3 sentences: 

Hi, I’m Frida, I’m a scientist (chemist) by training. My passion is perfumery, and I am the founder of fragrance brand OLYMRA. My mission is to merge art, science and heritage through my fragrances.

How did you start out in the fragrance industry and what is the story behind OLYMRA?

I started through my scientific career officially, unofficially as a hobby. As a hobby, I have been doing perfumery for many years - as a young student I was just mixing up essential oils and trying to learn things. Then, when I was a researcher and lecturer at ETH Zurich (with a focus on biochemistry, enzymology and sustainable chemistry), I got a grant at an interdisciplinary institute called Collegium Helveticum to do my own project in fragrance chemistry. Our aim was to make fragrances more sustainable by creating plant-derived molecules instead of harvesting them - while also studying consumer behaviour to understand how people would respond to these greener fragrance technologies. This then enabled me to decode, and recreate, the scents of Mount Olympus. After this scientific endeavour, I decided to translate this project work into my own brand.

How do you create your fragrances?

I have a scientific as well as intuitive approach. A big part of my work is making fragrance accords based on the reconstitution of rare plant scents in the ways described above.

However, when it comes to the final perfume, I have a very intuitive approach - I prioritise my artistic vision versus many things such as cost, longevity, sillage, etc. It takes me ages to develop a perfume - I do a lot of trials and want to make sure I exhaust the space of what’s possible artistically. Unless I’m working on a brief for a client, I usually start with a very high-level idea - the scent of a place, or what I’m now trying to do more, making something for a person.

Any perfumer / artist / person you’d like to collaborate with on a fragrance?

There are people I admire a lot - for example Ormonde Jayne (find interview here in July 2024 edition) - I really like how she has built a very elegant, modern brand.

Someone I would like to collaborate with is Antonio Gardoni from Bogue Profumo - I really like his experimental approach - I find it very daring and cool.

Mostly though, I’m looking for very interdisciplinary collaborations, for example with the world of music, architecture, visual arts. In the future I’d like to do something that breaks the boundaries through different media of expression in the art space.

Favourite ingredient / aroma?

My favourite ingredients are hyraceum, beeswax, and Ambrofix. I love hyraceum because something perceived as ‘low’ can create such incredible warmth and even ‘class’. I remember how I felt the first time I smelled this material: a tension between slight disgust and uncontrollable attraction. This feeling captures, for me, the scent of limerence, so it’s probably my favourite animalic scent. It does demand skill, though; if it isn’t blended or aged properly, it can easily go wrong. I also love beeswax for its warmth and Ambrofix because it’s a true scientific milestone in perfumery and biotech. And finally, the aromas of achillea plants are very close to my heart, obviously ;).

What’s your first olfactory memory?

I remember smells from childhood a lot. Herbs and plants from my region in northern Greece. In Crete where I spent my summers at my grandmother’s - a very strong memory is her garden that smelled of cats and jasmine.

Any favourite perfume or one that has a particular memory you’d like to share?

I do love my perfume Achillea - it’s very special to me because it reminds me of the expedition to Mount Olympus where I went to study the rare plant that names the perfume.

In terms of other people’s perfumes, I like many. I like some from Andy Tauer - mostly Incense Rosé because it reminds me of the period where I was working at Collegium, which was very interdisciplinary and had no boundaries - you could wear whatever you wanted, whichever perfume you wanted. This perfume to me means unapologetic self-expression.

If you weren’t in the fragrance industry, which industry would you like to be in?

I was in the scientific and academic industry, so realistically I would have stayed in pure science. But I think I would have really enjoyed architecture, because to me it’s similar to fragrance: both shape the world around us, and both are created to meet human needs that we often overlook. Scent is incredibly primal, yet people tend to ignore its influence. Architecture works the same way; at its best, it creates harmony between a person and their environment. That idea of designing something that supports human experience, even in subtle ways, is what connects the two for me.

If you could change anything in the industry, what would it be?

In one word: more authenticity. I would like more universal transparency, that rules apply to everyone. Dupes should disappear from the face of earth - although I understand they serve a purpose ie. enabling access to perfumes to everyone, I think there should be more solutions from the local economy to solve this problem instead of stealing people’s work and promoting relentless over-consumerism. I would like to see a market allowing for more artistic freedom vs. being such a distributors market. I would like to see more honesty, truth and care - artistically speaking - and less cultural appropriation across the board. Everyone has a new perspective to offer, and I’d like to see that authenticity more. I would also like sustainability to be a little more respected across various facets in the industry.

Any upcoming project / launch you want to share?

I just launched! I sent the first Swiss packages today - really exciting times. I have very big plans for the future, such as interdisciplinary artistic collaborations with other artists from other artistic media. I’m also planning the next perfume - I want to do something that still honours Greek heritage but this time it will be more gourmand.

I am also working on two bespoke scents for two friends of mine - also as a case study to see if I can roll out a bespoke scent service. This is a big dream of mine. It’s really nice - you get to know people very deeply when you make something so personal for them.

Any question you’d like to answer that we haven’t asked?

More than a year ago, I gave a TEDx talk on my Mount Olympus expedition, exploring how I connect sustainability with natural heritage - and how I believe heritage should be honoured in perfumery.

Tune of the day: Astor Piazzolla - Libertango

Fragrance of the day: Today, I wanted to wear something very comforting - so I’m wearing my three rose perfume: OLYMRA - Persephone

Purchase OLYMRA’s discovery set

A few of November’s highlights in short form:

• Estée Lauder Companies, through its corporate investment arm New Incubation Ventures, acquires a minority stake in XINÚ, a Mexico City-based niche fragrance brand founded in 2017. This marks the Group’s first investment in a Latin American brand

• Monogram Capital Partners acquires a majority stake in LA-based niche fragrance retailer Luckyscent, founded online in 2002 and opening Scent Bar - its first physical store - in 2006 in Hollywood

My fragrance of the day: Aethi Opum by Maya Njie: hay, mineral, coffee opening turning into deep, humid yet sandy earth and woodchips

Fin du film, debut de la montagne, 2025

- Flo

In conversation with Maya Njie

Please introduce yourself in 3 sentences: 

I’m Maya Njie, a perfumer and founder of Maya Njie Perfumes, a brand rooted in storytelling, heritage, and artistic expression. Originally from Sweden with Gambian heritage, I started my fragrance journey by blending scents that evoked personal memories and cultural influences. My work combines olfaction with visual and sensory elements, creating perfumes that feel both nostalgic and modern.

How do you create your fragrances?

I start with a concept, often inspired by photography, colours, textures, or personal experiences. From there, I explore ingredients that capture the mood or story I want to tell, blending raw materials in layers to create depth. It’s a process of experimentation and refinement, where scent becomes a way to express emotion, place, and identity.

Favourite ingredient / aroma?

Vetiver - its smoky, earthy and nutty character reminds me of both Sweden and Gambia, making it deeply personal and versatile.

Any favourite perfume or one that has a particular memory you’d like to share?

I associate CK Be with my early years in London, a time of discovery and independence. It’s clean but warm, understated yet distinct, and whenever I smell it, I’m taken back to those early years.

What’s your first fragrance memory?

One of my earliest scent memories is the smell of soil. In Sweden, it’s tied to nature of course, but also roaming around the large commercial greenhouse in my home town, playing hide and seek with my friends, being a total nuisance.

In Gambia, it’s the wet earth but also the dry, dusty ground warming under the sun, often layered with the smoky aroma of spices and incense. Two very different climates and settings, but the grounding scent of soil connects them both. That early connection to earth can’t be denied and finds its way into my work one way or another.

If you weren’t in the fragrance industry, which industry would you like to be in?

Photography or some form of product design. I’ve always been drawn to the way an image can hold a moment, much like a scent can. Creating gives me so much satisfaction and it really does make me happy, can be frustrating too at times but ultimately it’s always been a part of who I am, through work or pleasure.

If you could change anything in the industry, what would it be?

A shift is already happening in the perfume industry, with independent brands from all over the world taking center stage - let’s continue to encourage this. The bigger houses and high-street brands are paying more attention to true niche perfumery, but it’s important that we support, build, and hold space for independents to thrive. More diversity in storytelling, accessibility to materials, and transparency in the industry would also help create a richer and more inclusive fragrance landscape.

I’d like to see more transparency and education around ingredients. There’s still a lot of misinformation around “clean” and “natural” materials always being safer or more sustainable etc. Let’s help consumers make informed choices based on facts not fear.

Any upcoming project / launch you want to share?

Yes, I’ll be launching a new perfume before the end of November - debuting it at Polaris Olfactive in Stockholm on the 29th. It’s a scent that’s been slowly forming over the past few years. This one is earthy, mineral, and reflective. Linked to my West African lineage, cycles and lore. I’m excited to share it with others in the city that shaped so much of my early creative life.

Tune of the day: Midnight Confessions - Phyllis Dillon

Fragrance of the day: Vanilj layered with Tobak - warm, comforting, with a billow of leathery depth.

Purchase Maya Njie’s discovery set

Photo credits: Dunja Opalko, John William, Maya Njie

A few of October’s highlights in short form:

• L’Oréal to acquire Kering Beauty in €4bn deal expected to close in the first half of 2026 - its biggest deal to-date and an early strategic move by new Kering CEO Luca de Meo. The transaction includes the House of Creed (bought by Kering for €3.5bn in 2023) as well as 50-year licences for Bottega Veneta, Balenciaga, and Gucci (taking effect after the expiry of Coty’s current licence)

• Estée Lauder Companies has launched L’Atelier, a global fragrance innovation hub located within its new five-story, 2,000-square-meter La Maison des Parfums on Rue Volney in Paris

• Boots launches its fragrance-only store at Broadgate Central in London, stocking more than 400 niche perfumes

Upcoming fragrance events:

• London, 15th November 2025: Smellorama Winter Perfume workshop

• Stockholm, 29-30th November 2025: Polaris Olfactive Week 2025

My fragrance of the day: Private Collection Royal Vetyver by Osswald: lemon zest, fizz, pepper, freshly cut oak, all-enveloping soft smokiness

$28,000 bottle of Maison Francis Kurkdjian

Sailing through the motions, Crete, 2025

- Flo

In conversation: Adrian Yu and Jasper Li from TOBBA

Please introduce yourselves in 3 sentences: 

Adrian: Hello this is Jasper and Adrian, founders of TOBBA from Hong Kong. Jasper is the mind behind the brand taking care of creation and overall brand image while I’m focusing on external communication, sales and marketing.

Tell us more about TOBBA and your creative process?

Jasper: The story started from me being a painter before. I used to use painting as my language to communicate my thoughts. However, I have always been inspired by the fact that art is not bound by one dimension. All the different art forms are only different tools for one to express oneself and that’s how I started to explore the olfactory medium to further my artistic career. Our brand is essentially my journey transforming the art language from visual to scent. It might sound quite unrelated but they share a whole lot of similarities like construction of layers, temperature, ingredient contrast and harmony etc. I usually get inspired by the quality of ingredients for my creations. TOBBA is the name of my dad’s art studio. He’s also a painter.

How has Hong Kong influenced your creation process?

Jasper: Many people see Hong Kong as a cosmopolitan, modern and fast city with skyscrapers and beautiful harbour, but it retains a lot of traditional Asian culture and customs making it a special landscape for business and heritage. With its speedy growth, more and more traditions are sadly fading out. I draw inspiration from the heritage of Hong Kong, of times when I had the most vivid and intriguing memories and incorporate them into my creations.

Adrian: Also, with the basis of East meets West, the chemistry of it always serves as a perfect blueprint for us to clash ideas.

How do you see the Hong Kong fragrance landscape and its future?

Adrian: In Hong Kong, our warm, humid climate has historically led customers to favour fresh, citrus, and clean fragrances for their practicality, often choosing scents from traditional houses and prominent “niche” brands backed by major companies. With the global niche fragrance trend gaining momentum, local preferences are evolving. Customers are now more open-minded, exploring smaller, local indie brands and embracing diverse, creative scent profiles as a form of personal expression. Department stores are also responding, increasingly showcasing niche perfumes to meet this growing demand.

Favourite ingredient / aroma?

Jasper: Patchouli, frankincense, powdery notes.

Any perfumer / artist / person you’d like to collaborate with on a fragrance?

Jasper: If I could choose, I would love to collaborate with one of my favourite artists, Donald Judd, to create a perfume. His work stripped away the excess to focus on essence, and I like his precision in using raw materials.

What’s your first fragrance memory?

Jasper: My mum plays a vital role in my olfactory enlightenment and journey. Dad used to come back from business trips bringing perfumes from overseas for my mum. She would treasure them in her little fragrance cabinet. The one fragrance I always remember from that period is Chanel No.5, a classic masterpiece. I used to hate it so much (can you imagine), really could not appreciate it as a kid. When I grew up, I started to learn how masterful No.5 is and it planted an important seed in my olfactory enlightenment.

If you could change anything in the industry, what would it be?

Jasper: If I could change anything in the industry, I’d seek a balanced approach to IFRA regulations, valuing safety while exploring research and safer alternatives to preserve the perfumer’s palette.

Adrian: I’d also refocus on quality and creativity in perfumery and campaigns, countering aggressive niche marketing and fast-fashion fragrance trends with authenticity and creativity.

Any upcoming project / launch you want to share?

Adrian: Indeed, we are super happy to share that we are launching two new perfumes on September 2nd, 2025. It’s the first release after our debut collection. They are called Higher Self and Lovers and Strangers. Higher Self is Jasper’s 7th creation for the brand exploring Asian nostalgic scents, such as Tiger Balm. It’s a levitating and spiritual experience. Lovers and Strangers is our fragrance venture with Maxime Exler, an experienced perfumer from Mane, capturing this romantic rendezvous with coffee, rum and vanilla. That fleeting but electric tension.

Tune of the day: Lovers and Strangers - Faye Wong

Fragrance of the day: Lovers and Strangers - TOBBA

Sunset in Berlin, 2024

- Flo

In conversation: Chloe Mullen from Jorum Studio

Please introduce yourself in 3 sentences: 

Hello! I’m Chloe, co-founder of Jorum. We’re a perfumer-led fragrance brand based in Edinburgh, Scotland, founded in 2019 (with in-house perfumer Euan McCall). I have a background in design and an immense passion for fragrance: Jorum Studio is almost the intersection of these two elements.

Tell us more about Jorum Studio:

Jorum was very much born out of a desire to create new olfactory landscapes with a focus on using noble materials in new ways. Euan has been working as a professional perfumer since 2009, working on some incredible projects; in 2019 we co-founded Jorum Studio as more of a personal project which in turn developed into something much bigger! We set out with a pretty simple mission to express Jorum’s authentic Scottish heritage through the medium of fragrance. Jorum Studio for us is as much a creative outlet as it is a cultural one.

As co-founder I’m so proud to be able to showcase Euan’s unique sensibility as a perfumer and the influence his Scottish heritage has had on his craft. We really felt compelled to not only showcase innovative and expressive fragrances but something that felt true to our roots, eschewing stereotypes in favour of an authentic appreciation of Scotland, and perfumery.

How do you create your fragrances?

Our sources of inspiration really do come from anywhere and everywhere: art, literature, architecture, music or just everyday encounters. Often Euan is inspired by fragrance materials themselves and this becomes the seed of an idea.

We tend to start with a simple moodboard, building a multi-sensory world around an idea. From there we then work obsessively developing, refining and perfecting the fragrance. As we design and manufacture fragrance in-house, we have the freedom to create without any constraints. This allows us to push the boundaries both in terms of the ingredients we use as well as our creative concepts.

Favourite ingredient / aroma?

I’m a sucker for any night-scented floral: Jasmine, Orange Blossom, Stocks. Honeysuckle is my ultimate indulgence.

Any perfumer / artist / person you’d like to collaborate with on a fragrance?

It would have been a dream to collaborate with American filmmaker David Lynch. Such a creative visionary: using surrealism as a way to communicate the most unfiltered parts of the human condition.

What’s your first fragrance memory?

My earliest and strongest fragrance memory has to be smelling hot tarmac: summer holidays with family, discovering new places, new people, new food (and aromas!) is something I’ll never forget. I love that every summer when it gets hot in the city I’m reminded of these precious formative memories.

Any favourite perfume or one that has a particular memory you’d like to share?

In the 00’s my mum was really into Cacharel, so Anais Anais and Eden are very nostalgic for me! I have such a strong visual memory of seeing a bottle of Estée Lauder’s Youth Dew on my grandma’s dressing table. I was never allowed to touch the bottle, and with hindsight that was probably a good thing - an 8 year old wearing Youth Dew may have been a little odd, but certainly progressive!

If you weren’t in the fragrance industry, which industry would you like to be in?

It may sound strange to most people but I’ve always loved the energy of a factory: people hard at work, lots of movement and machinery and rhythm and progress. So anything involving manufacturing and process is where I would be!

If you could change anything in the industry, what would it be?

Dupes. You find those companies that are blatantly and unashamedly replicating original fragrances for a cheaper price, which effectively is a version of counterfeiting. And, almost more importantly it’s disappointing to find many well-known brands less blatantly copying. Sometimes I find myself in department stores and everything smells the same!

Any upcoming project / launch you want to share?

We’re excited for the upcoming Summer release for our TIME collection: a collection of limited-release seasonal fragrances direct from our perfumer’s archive.

Tune of the day: Running/Planning by CMAT

Fragrance of the day: Vernus by Jorum Studio

My fragrance of the day: CK One by Calvin Klein - nose: Alberto Morillas and Harry Fremont - fresh opening - reminiscent of fresh laundry - bergamot, lime, something grounding and enveloping, light, dry earth, dry wood, a light rose

Golborne Road, August 2023

- Flo

In conversation: Séamus Lloyd White from Imperial College London, Gaziano & Girling, E.B. Meyrowitz

Please introduce yourself in 3 sentences: 

Hello, I’m Séamus - I’m a design student across perfumery, fashion, and product design. I study Design Engineering at Imperial College London and work at Gaziano & Girling on Savile Row, and I’m currently on placement with bespoke eyewear brand E.B. Meyrowitz. I’d like to describe the style I’m working towards as a dramatic take on traditional elegance, inspired by British and Irish craft.

What interests you about fragrance?

For me, a fragrance is a complete expression of self. The fragrance you choose can tell you a lot about how someone sees themselves, how they experience life. Your favourite song can capture and carry a feeling and a memory, fragrance can too, but it’s more tactile, you can hold it in a bottle, see it, experience it as more of a product. Fragrance is more than perfume too, the most compelling fragrances are those of the world around us. They both change and stay static. I’m sure you can think of a scent from your childhood that you haven’t smelt since, and at the same time, you might occasionally catch a hint that brings you back. It’s not just a memory of a time, it’s a part of it. You could recreate the same scents your ancestors experienced thousands of years ago if you wanted to, I think that’s very cool.

The art of perfumery to me is a perfect blending of the different areas of my study. It’s an art and a science, a feeling and a formula. In much the same way as when I’m working on a product or a visual and can spend hours adjusting every colour by the smallest values until they’re just right, you can feel when a perfume is there and when it’s not. In the same way as designing a product, it’s a dichotomy, because while many aspects are subjective, there is an optimal solution for what you’re looking to make in both cases. For perfumery, there’s an ideal amount of each chemical to combine to produce exactly what you’re looking for - would one thousandth of a gram improve it or move it away from your desired result? I love that about it, I use many of the same processes for creating a perfume as I do for designing any product.

Tell us more about your experiences until now within the world of fragrance?

It’s been about a year now since I started learning perfumery. I’ve always loved and been very aware of scents in day to day life, as I imagine most people interested in perfume are, and especially of trees and the outdoors. A significant element of that environmental noticing has been carried through into what I’m doing, for sure. I’m not somebody that has a very big collection of perfumes, as much as I do enjoy picking up a new fragrance here and there, so my fragrance ideas are very much based on my memories of places and feelings, and my understanding of individual materials. I’ve been learning, practicing, and building up my library of molecules; I’m taking it gradually, really getting to know the materials I’m working with for each perfume idea. I’m currently doing some work with the Oakwood CO2 Extract from LMR, it’s a very interesting material. As of right now, I have one perfume that I would consider ‘finished’, which was a Christmas present for my sister. It’s cinnamon forward, and reminds me of the scent left behind in a warm home after someone has been baking biscuits. It can be a little tricky making something for someone as a present but she’s delighted with it, so I’m very happy about that.

What’s your first fragrance memory?

The scent of the sun rising over the trees in my childhood garden lighting the dew on the grass is something I remember clearly. That fresh, damp, grass smell. The other scent that comes to mind is the wood chippings they use around flower beds sometimes, that’s a very specific, recognisable scent.

What’s your favourite perfume, and why?

Roi Sans Équipage from Henry Jacques - it settles on me as very smooth and woody, with notes of the old wood of a Church in particular. On my skin, it’s in some ways like a more elevated traditional barbershop fragrance, it’s very wearable. I also love Lune Féline from Atelier Des Ors, created by Marie Salamagne. It’s not one I would wear, but as a women’s perfume it has such a nice warmness to it, yet still has an attention grabbing edge.

What scent would you like to capture as a perfume if you could?

The scent of a night walk in the last days of winter around my hometown of Amersham. There’s an empty, purpley-blueness to the air, the scent of the trees settling for the night, the faint smell of car exhausts as they pass you that you become more acutely aware of in contrast to the scent picture of the quiet, lamp-lit roads you walk down. The metallicness of the railway tracks as you cross the bridge over them and the last train of the night passes under, wheels sparking as it slows. The scent of the asphalt of the roads, the low-lying muddy freshness that blows in from the fields and the woods that you can see on the horizon between houses. I’m not convinced it would be wearable, and it’s not the sort of thing I make to wear, but I would love to capture that, like my own, more British-countryside commuter town interpretation of an Edward Hopper painting.

What’s a fragrance product you would create if you could? No limits to creativity!

What I’m working on and would like to fully develop is bringing in more elements of true bespoke, the same way we have in shoes and tailoring, with a real process of ‘fittings’ and consultation with the client. I know of some perfumers who offer similar, but across the market bespoke perfume compares more closely to made-to-order or made-to-measure in the shoe and tailoring worlds respectively. A client provides an idea and is given back a result - it doesn’t allow for them or the perfumer to reflect and adjust based on how the perfume fits them. With a full bespoke process, the perfumer can see how their creation works for that client specifically, and then take the time to go back, create a new version, and present it again until it’s perfect - a process that will be very familiar to bespoke tailoring clients. Tying together tailoring and fragrance in that way and creating a product that provides for those clients is what I’d like to do, and is what I’m hoping will be the foundations when I launch my own brand in the future. I’ve started work on it (although naturally university is where the majority of my time goes at the moment), and I’m looking forward to getting it going, that’s the plan.

Outside of my brand idea, I’ve been thinking about technology in perfumery. I feel a bit conflicted, because with AI being used more frequently it feels like we’re moving towards being much more efficient but possibly further from the art and heritage. I’m in two minds as to whether I want to work on something that brings more tech into perfumery. I think it’s something I’d like to explore and give a good go at least, it could definitely make for a very interesting university project next year and then maybe I’ll see where it goes from there. One area where I think tech could be useful is in aromatherapy diffusers. I’d like to look into making one that can respond to its environment based on things like what kind of room it’s in, time of day, weather, perhaps it could even sync to your calendar and output based on the aromatherapy properties that could help you with whatever task you’re working on. I think there’s also room for improvement from a product design perspective there. I've seen some very nice waterless ones coming out recently but I haven’t found one that would really fit into my interior design style yet.

Any upcoming project / launch you want to share?

There’s lots of design work we’re doing at E.B. Meyrowitz - the team have lined up some great projects that I’m really looking forward to working on. Other than that, the best place to see what I’m doing or to get in touch is my Instagram, seamus.lloyd.white. I think that’s all!

Tune of the day: Dlp 1.2.1 - William Basinski

Fragrance of the day: Opus 1870 by Penhaligon’s

My fragrance of the day: Rose on the Shore by TOBBA - rose loukoum, rose oil, green, beachy warmth, pepper, patchouli, rich, heavy soil

Sunrise in Mexico City, Dec 2022

- Flo

In conversation: Carla Seipp from BeautyMatter

Please introduce yourself in 3 sentences: 

I am an editor at BeautyMatter and a freelance beauty/fragrance journalist, although I started out writing about fashion. I also co-edited the book The Essence: Discovering the World of Scent, Perfume & Fragrance with gestalten. In addition to fragrance, I have a soft spot for writing about the cultural, social, and political roots of beauty culture and its intersections with feminism.

Tell us more about your work in the fragrance industry?

I got my start in the industry innocently enough: for my BA Final Project in fashion journalism, I created a fragrance magazine called Aldehyde. Through that I met some wonderful industry mentors like Grant Osborne (founder of online fragrance directory and editorial platform, Basenotes), Lizzie Ostrom (founder of olfactive events company, Scratch + Sniff Events), Nick Gilbert (co-founder of perfume consultancy Olfiction), and Persolaise (an award-winning fragrance writer), who have helped guide my way through this industry. I had initially written a fragrance interview with James Heeley for A Shaded View on Fashion while interning at Societé d’Alexandra Senes in Paris, but once I moved to New York City to do my Fashion Studies MA at The New School, that’s when my fragrance writing really took off. I was also lucky enough to have Callum Langston-Bolt (fragrance expert and PR/digital marketer) tell me about a retail assistant opening at fragrance boutique Twisted Lily just as I was graduating and started working there. Being on the sales floor is honestly one of the best educations in perfumery. I got to learn more about how and why people shop for fragrance the way that they do, not to mention meet perfume brand owners and learn about ingredients. I really owe a lot to Twisted Lily’s founders Eric Weiser and Stamatis Birsimijoglou for taking a chance on me. Equally Karen Orton, who I worked under as an editorial intern at Dazed & Confused, was the person who put me forward to co-edit the book with gestalten. I didn’t realise it at the time, but as someone coming from the fashion world originally, having my “niche” of fragrance writing proved to be a very valuable asset to distinguishing my writing in a competitive industry. I was lucky enough to be asked to present at the Perfumery Gender Salon at the Zurich University of the Arts in 2019, a subject I am very intrigued by as someone who wrote their MA thesis on gender and identity formation through scent. Nowadays I write about fragrance and the beauty industry at large for BeautyMatter and also contribute a seasonal fragrance column for Konfekt magazine.

Which fragrance company do you find particularly interesting, and why?

Tough question! I love them all for different reasons. Parfums Quartana does some incredibly original fragrances and Joseph Quartana is also a good friend of mine. I think his creative mind is really special. The work that Osmo is doing around AI-led fragrance creation is so innovative and really set to change the future of perfume-making. I can always count on DS & Durga to have some unexpected sources of fragrance inspiration and as someone who saw them grow through the independent boutique channel to what they are today, I think it’s an inspiring success story to witness. I also find inspiration in the cross-industry scent projects of Joya Studio.

What’s your first fragrance memory?

Certainly I remember the bottle of Chanel No. 5 or 4711 Cologne that my grandparents had in their bathroom, or the Mugler Alien fragrance my mom would wear in the winter. But in terms of a memory that holds a lot of emotional weight for me, maybe the Axe deodorant spray I used in my tomboy/rebellious youth. I moreso remember the red can than the actual scent, if research serves me correctly it was the Boost fragrance.

The first personal fragrance I ever remember buying was Subtil by Salvatore Ferragamo at Parfümerie Kobberger in Frankfurt (where I’m originally from), which wouldn’t speak to my fragrance taste today. I like how perfumes can underline different chapters of our lives like that. I actually have had a scent-led autobiography sitting on my laptop since 2020 to tell that story, but haven’t found the time to finish it.

What’s your favourite perfume, and why?

Carnal Flower by Dominique Ropion for Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle. It took me years to buy the fragrance as it was my first proper splurge, but I remember smelling it and being entranced by how the fragrance unfolded on the skin from green top notes to musky drydown like a flower in bloom. It’s the fragrance that made me fall in love with perfume and the art of its creation.

What scent would you like to capture as a perfume if you could?

The moon! A cold, metallic, space oddity. Lunar Dust by Mabelle O'Rama does an excellent job of capturing this so maybe it’s time to look to a new fragrance unicorn. I once was gifted a fragrance making workshop at Experimental Perfume Club for my birthday and decided to create the scent of a dying flower, the beauty of decay. I used a lot of indole and musks but don’t think it quite hit the spot, so maybe that concept. Or the smell of falling in love, whatever that might look like.

When did you expand to writing about beauty and why?

I have to credit BeautyMatter with being my gateway into the beauty industry and today I am lucky enough to write about both subjects. I definitely wrote about beauty on occasion as Online Editor at feminist fashion and art biannual Twin Magazine (which also recently published an essay I wrote about finding my own sense of femininity and identity through scent). But at BeautyMatter I got a 360 degree crash course in the beauty industry: brands, suppliers, ingredients, regulations, etc.

With all of the publications I have written for, I had the huge privilege of great editorial freedom in the subject matter that I covered. I am very passionate about both fragrance and beauty, just in different ways. To me the joy of scent is something childlike and very primal. The way my eyes light up when I smell a beautiful fragrance is an unparalleled experience.

Meanwhile beauty is an industry with so many different genres and players that also ties into bigger societal undercurrents. I love to be able to take a deep dive on a subject which some deem superficial — beauty isn’t solely surface-level, you just have to do a bit of digging to get there.

I have been writing at BeautyMatter for the past 4.5 years and am still learning something new every day, which keeps it incredibly fresh. Equally, every time I write about a new scent, it comes with the creative challenge of capturing its essence through descriptors like texture, temperature, cohesion, or crafting a story around the creation. I’m glad that spark is still there over a decade later.

What are the intersections of beauty and fragrance? How do they relate to each other?

Fragrance is a category in the greater beauty ecosystem but its own universe. Writing about and creating fragrance is very different than say, creating a skincare product: there is a stronger emotional component but also subjectivity to fragrance. What one person might love in a fragrance another could loathe. While yes, a cleanser might be more suitable for one skin type over another, there are more stable parameters like a non-stripping cleanse or a nice gel-like texture which work across the board. For fragrances, while there are arguably also universal factors like a well-rounded composition or long lasting wear, the scent itself is more a matter of taste rather than a pure science.

Both fragrance and beauty also have strong ties to fashion. Designer brands often make more from their fragrance or cosmetic lines than they do selling clothing, so they are an important financial backbone.

Trends used to be less important in the fragrance cycle as it was more about discovering creations on your own timeline, but social media and FragranceTok have definitely changed the course on that. That being said, I think there will always be those who desire wearing an undiscovered gem that is not TikTok viral.

Both beauty and fragrance dupes exist. With gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, creating them in fragrance is obviously very easy, but within both categories there is little copyright protection for formulas and, unless you are working with captives or creating your own ingredients, there is little monopoly on what goes inside them too. That being said I think original creative thinking will prevail and continue to stand strong.

Is there any other adjacent industry that you find particularly interesting and if so, why?

I would love to go into colour cosmetic product development. I have always had a particular love for hues, textures, and finishes, plus how you can combine them in a contrasting or complimentary manner to create something new. Plus through my work at BeautyMatter, I have had the opportunity to speak to a lot of brand founders and am always curious about the magic happening behind the scenes. How does a product go from concept to fully fleshed creation, incorporating everything from the finishes to the packaging, and what ingredient innovation can be used to give something an exciting new touch? I’m a firm believer in the mood-shifting possibilities of the things we surround ourselves with and colour (alongside scent of course) is no exception.

I find the work of ISAMAYA, Pat McGrath Labs, and Danessa Myricks particularly exciting in this regard, especially their eyeshadow palettes and lip products. The artistry led brands creating unique colour stories, dazzling multichrome, and innovative textures, these are the creatives that inspire me.

What trends do you anticipate seeing in scent and beauty/cosmetics?

I think we are going to see a resurgence of more fresh and skin musk scents following the gourmand craze — less dense and sweet, more soft and subtle.

I don’t see the clean girl/minimal makeup movement dying down anytime soon because it is incredibly practical for everyday wear. But within that I think fun textures like jelly sticks or putty highlighter can provide some novel excitement. Overall I believe people enjoy less complex and complicated makeup routines because we are busier than ever. So even if someone wants to do a holographic eye look, if they can do that with a one swipe product as opposed to multiple steps, they will take that convenience.

When it comes to predicting trends, working at strategic foresight agency The Future Laboratory really provided me with the ultimate framework. First off, three make a trend so if you can find three examples to your theory that’s a good start. But finding the wider social and cultural foundations that make a trend, plus the trends that preceded it, make for even more solid grounding. I would say that aside from those facts, there is also a little bit of intuition that goes into it, a gut feeling when you can tell the buzz around something is substantial and not just a short-term occurrence.

If you could create any product, what would it be (no limits to creativity)?

Good question. For scent, I think the concept started by Lucy McRae, Swallowable Perfume, a pill you ingest that then gives off a unique scent through your pores, is very sci-fi fabulous. If it were colour, I would have said shades that can reflect all colours of the rainbow and shade-shift, but The Unseen Beauty has done an incredible job with that already. If I had to decide on a completely new concept, I think mood-shifting scent and shades that can somehow pick up on your state of feelings through the skin and then change according to that? It would however make it difficult to keep a poker face (or should I say poker perfume?) during intense discussions.

Any upcoming article/project/launch you want to share?

In terms of my writing for BeautyMatter, I just finished two pieces, one on animalic fragrances and also what the post-gourmand fragrance trend would be. I will be presenting a panel at our FUTURE50 event on April 3 on brands building themselves through branded boutiques featuring Amouage, Madison Reed, and Malin+Goetz.

I am continuing my quarterly scent column for Konfekt. The next theme is still being decided on, but my last one was grass scents for the spring season. Before that I did one on snow scents for winter, a task that turned out to be a bit more challenging than first anticipated (after all, frozen water doesn’t really have a distinctive aromatic profile, does it?). Nonetheless it’s a gift to get to go down the perfumery rabbit hole every three months. It would be wonderful to finish the scent autobiography but it’s not easy finding time to write in my free time on top of writing for work so that project is still TBD.

Two pieces I am currently working on which I am excited to release are one on the politics of female body hair and another on women’s health brands stepping in where legislation and the medical system are falling short on issues like hormonal health and fertility. I’ve always wanted to write an article on the recent rise in labiaplasty but it’s a controversial subject so not sure how to best tackle it.

Any question you’d like to answer that we haven’t asked?

Maybe what I have learned about the industry since working in it versus when I was outside of it, consumer myths? For fragrance I would say the obvious ones like notes aren’t ingredients (which Christophe Laudamiel and Sarah McCartney have both previously mentioned) plus that just because a fragrance is more expensive doesn’t always mean it’s better quality (Persolaise was one of the first to mention this to me when I was starting out). I also think there is an unnecessary fear of or judgement on the use of synthetics, they are incredibly versatile ingredients that can boost longevity and complexity. But of course naturals are incredibly beautiful and complex as well. I think it’s the mix of both that makes the magic.

As for the beauty industry overall, I think some people would be surprised to learn that there isn’t a completely united front on subjects like sustainability and ingredient safety. Whether it’s greenwashing or unregulated use of the term ‘clean’, I hope we can come to an international and universal standard as there is currently a lot of misinformation and also confusion among professionals and consumers alike.

Tune of the day: Pink Pony Club by Chappell Roan

Fragrance of the day: Parisian Musc by Matiere Premiere

Beauty product of the day: ISAMAYA Industrial II eyeshadow palette

My fragrance of the day: Lunar Dust by Mabelle O’Rama: metallic, fresh white paper, enveloping warmth

Fin de soirée, petit matin ou encore les deux, 2024

- Flo

In conversation: Thibaut Mathieu from Cakedesign

Please introduce yourself in 3 sentences: 

I am Thibaut Mathieu, founder of the Cakedesign agency in Paris and creative director. I work for luxury brands in the world of fashion, perfumes, jewellery and decoration. I was the creative director of AD magazine in France for 8 years.

Tell us more about the projects you’ve done within the fragrance industry

I worked for many years for brands such as Kenzo Parfums, Paco Rabanne, Nina Ricci and Lancôme, designing communication campaigns and packaging.

One project we worked on was the cardboard packaging and campaign for Kenzo Air in 2003. The whole idea was to transform the idea of air in imagery. We did that by putting together a very gentle image which embodies this idea of ​​something that we cannot apprehend. On the campaign, there is a hand, a car - which take up less than a third of the total image - and everything else is the sky. The image we had imagined evoked the idea that the young man wanted to catch a piece of the sky, a bit of air - this perfume was aerial - in its concept and its scent.

Which fragrance company do you find particularly interesting, and why?

I have always loved the work of Comme des Garçons, both in terms of the olfactory concepts and the design of the bottles.

It is a very conceptual approach, based on the idea of ​​the moment, of the memory; the idea of creating perfumes evoking places, moments, colours - the whole concept is superb.

Most of the perfumes imagined are from the same creator: Christian Astuguevieille.

What’s your first fragrance memory?

The smell of my father using shampoo with cade oil and sandalwood (by Hégor). Cade oil has an extremely particular smell which I much enjoy.

Any favourite perfume or one that has a particular memory you’d like to share?

Acqua di Colonia Sandalo by Santa Maria Novella. I discovered sandalwood thanks to my father who bought a lot of sandalwood perfumes and used Roger Gallet sandalwood soap which I loved.

What scent would you like to capture as a perfume if you could?

When I was a child, we would go down to the parking lot to get the car and in the hallway a strange smell always struck me... it wasn't unpleasant, I don't know where it came from, but it left a deep mark on me... I would like to find it again.

Was it a mixture of paint, concrete… it smelled new... because the parking lot was recent. Every time I enter a parking lot now I imagine finding it... but it is not the case.

What’s a fragrance product you would create if you could?

The scent of intelligence.

Any upcoming project / launch you want to share?

I am currently working on the launch of a brand of modernist jewellery, Templier, together with the grandchildren of a great designer from the 1930s who was a friend of Jean Puiforcat. I am also working on art direction and branding for Mariha, a Japanese jewellery and dress brand - and I will likely also accompany the creation of their first fragrance launch.

Tune of the day: Melancholic - for example Nightporter de Japan

Fragrance of the day: Mouchoir de Monsieur Guerlain by Guerlain

Recent investments in fragrance:

• L’Oréal acquires minority stake in Omani luxury fragrance house Amouage

• L’Oréal venture capital arm BOLD invests in South Korean luxury fragrance brand Borntostandout, launched 2022 and present in 60 countries

New industry appointments:

• Vanita Sabnani Dalamal, Global Vice President of Transformation, Strategy, and Creative Lab at Puig, named as new chairman of The Fragrance Foundation UK

• Samantha Mane succeeds her father Jean Mane as CEO of the MANE Group

My fragrance of the day: Odisiaque n°6 by Sous Le Manteau - nose: Nathalie Feisthauer - spice, very subtle lemon spritz, warmth, dry cedar, resin, smooth ginger, shiny smooth leather

C’est la vie, Zurich 2021

- Flo

In conversation: Renaud Coutaudier from Naomi Goodsir

Please introduce yourself in 3 sentences: 

I’m the Creative Director of Naomi Goodsir Parfums, since the launch of our brand in 2012.

I’ve worked in the field of niche/alternative perfumery for more than 25 years, in Paris but also overseas, creating perfumes mainly for fashion designers.

I was lucky enough to have seen the full evolution of niche/alternative perfumery, at a time when there were very few doing it.

Tell us more about Naomi Goodsir

Naomi Goodsir is an Australian designer who trained as a milliner creating and making hats for fashion designers, stylists and institutions. We met in Sydney. We live and work together in France, where our creative studio and home are based.

Favourite ingredient / aroma? 

Definitely Cistus Labdanum, which is, for us, the most “animalistic” mediterranean bush tree. We discovered it, along with perfumer Julien Rasquinet, about 12 years ago, when we were all still quite unknown in the world of perfumery. Actually, you can feel Cistus Labdanum in Bois d’Ascèse.

How and with whom do you create your fragrances? 

First, we started with perfumer Julien Rasquinet, then Bertrand Duchaufour and Isabelle Doyen, who I met 25 years ago. We are all great friends.

We always start from an emblematic ingredient such as incense (Bois d’Ascèse by Julien Rasquinet), leather (Cuir Velours by Julien Rasquinet and Corpus Equus by Bertrand Duchaufour), an iris (Iris Cendré by Julien Rasquinet), a tuberosa (Nuit de Bakélite by Isabelle Doyen). All our perfumes were composed from a blank page. We know which ingredients we want. Each perfumer comes with several proposals and then we start together reshaping the formulation. As an example, for Nuit de Bakélite, we wanted to bring our own vision of a tuberosa (one of the most iconic and difficult ingredients to work with; already on the market are iconic perfumes such as Fracas by Piguet, Carnal Flower by Frédéric Malle, Tubéreuse Criminelle by Serge Lutens, Opium by Dior, etc.). Isabelle Doyen came to us with two different tracks; a day tuberose and a night one, both reworked at the same time. After more or less 800 tries and about four years, Naomi finally brought the final touch to it. The premise of a narcotic lady… Green, obsessive and addictive. Tuberose sap, peeled tuberose, tuberose in a cage made of green leather, a focus on the small peduncle that connects the flower to the stem, the sound of latex when several stalks of tuberose tangle, the wild majesty of the Persian tuberose.

Any favourite perfume or one that has a particular memory you’d like to share?

Probably Bois d’Ascèse, which is a tribute to Naomi’s father and to her wooden chapel in New South Wales, surrounded in summertime by bush fires. I will always remember Julien Rasquinet joining me for a drink in a Parisian hotel in order to introduce the final formulation of Bois d’Ascèse, while Naomi was stitching hats for Kanye West for his first catwalk in Paris that same day. It was our first perfume. A “radical smoke” with quite an unknown ingredient at the time… The Styrax.

Any perfumer / artist / person you’d like to collaborate with on a fragrance?

So many… In a way, we did it indirectly with Corpus Equus by Bertrand Duchaufour, a creation which was influenced by Pierre Soulages’ “Outrenoir” and Anish Kapoor’s “Vantablack”. This perfume is a tribute to the noble and wild nature of an Arabian stallion, fiery, intrepid and hot-blooded with an elegant gait. Naomi’s favourite steed.

If you weren’t in the fragrance industry, which industry would you like to be in?

I was lucky enough to have lived several lives in one. Prior to working in the fragrance industry, I was a safari guide in Tanzania, East Africa, for several years.

If you could change anything in the industry, what would it be?

I will say less regulation (IFRA) and also, as a piece of advice, to stop following the latest trend, which by definition is ephemeral.

Any upcoming project / launch you want to share?

In process…

Tune of the day: Currently, Baroque music

Fragrance of the day: L’Eau des Immortels by Voyages Imaginaires Parfums

You can purchase Naomi Goodsir’s samples here

Picture credits: Ian MacKenzie/Jean-Michel Sordello/Claudio Bonoldi

A few of January’s highlights in short form:

• Air France launches AF001, its first home fragrance created by Francis Kurkdjian and named after the Concorde’s 1970s route from NYC to Paris. The fragrance is gradually being introduced at the entrances of Air France lounges at Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport

• Carla Seipp on water-based perfumes - from the different variations that exist, to their potential benefits and drawbacks

• The titan arum plant at Sydney’s Royal Botanical Gardens, also known as the Corpse Flower for its putrid smell, drew thousands of viewers online and in-person to witness its rare 24h bloom, taking place only once every few years

  

• Singapore Airlines launches a business class amenity kit with Le Labo Fragrances

Upcoming fragrance events:

• Online, 27th February 2025: British Society of Perfumers with “Human in the Loop: The Future of AI for Fragrance with Alex Wiltschko”

• Paris, 20-23rd March 2025: Nez’s second Paris Perfume Week

• London, 8th May 2025: The Fragrance Foundation UK Awards 2025

• Grasse, 2-5th July 2025: Grasse Perfume Week

My fragrance of the day: Farina 1709 Eau de Cologne by Johann Maria Farina - mandarine, lemon peel, fresh metallic rain, mountain air, bergamot, pamplemousse, light herby depth

“The fragrance boom is nowhere near over”

Engadin, Switzerland, Winter 2024

- Flo

A fragrant lookback on 2024

This year’s impressions:

• Molecule 01 + Patchouli by Escentric Molecules - nose: Geza Schoen - light yet warm and earthy

• La Fille de Berlin by Serge Lutens - nose: Christopher Sheldrake - a sanguine rose

• Liquid Amber by Maya Njie - nose: Maya Njie - a velvety hay meadow

• Xi’An by Ormonde Jayne - nose: Celine Ripert - a soft spice, airy, soapy and dry rhubarb

• Bois D’Ascèse by Naomi Goodsir - nose: Julien Rasquinet - the warm yet cold, incens-y inside of a church on a snowy, lantern-lit evening

• Figueres by FUMParFUM - nose: Aistis Mickevičius - green, freshly cut fennel, tomato, grapefruit

• Ervas by ODUR - nose: Giovanni Sammarco - synthetic lemon, bergamot, vague foresty musk, harmonious soap, Savon de Marseille

• Star Seren by Wales Perfumery - nose: Louise Smith - metallic forest, damp hay, barley, warm sand, and starry night

• 724 by Maison Francis Kurkdjian - nose: Francis Kurkdjian - lime zest opening, light green apple, bar soap, light talc powder, warm musk, heavy flour and rich oily texture

• Montabaco Intensivo by Ormonde Jayne - nose: Geza Schoen - warm candle wax opening, pepper, soap, damp dried tobacco leaves, light yet sweet and deep, oily orange, soft leather, cold and wet yet comforting and homely tea leaves

• Cashmere Noir by Angela Flanders - nose: Angela Flanders - light, iris powder veil, warming dark spice, peppercorn, light-coloured, watery rum, paper, deep vanilla

A few of December’s highlights in short form:

• Carla Seipp on what it takes for a fragrance brand to become the next major acquisition target

• Unilever invests €100m to establish a digital-first fragrance house, bringing perfume creation and design capabilities in-house to accelerate growth and increase productivity

• Interparfums SA, the French subsidiary of New York-based Interparfums Inc, acquires all rights to Virgil Abloh’s Off-White brand

• Coty to license, develop, produce and distribute fragrances for Swarovski

• Scottish perfume brand Jorum Studio receives investment from premium goods group Chanrossa, owned by entrepreneur Bill Dobbie and family

• Zara launches three hair fragrances developed in collaboration with hairstylist Guido Palau and perfumer Jérôme Epinette

Upcoming fragrance events:

• Paris, 20-23rd March 2025: Nez’s second Paris Perfume Week (and last year’s highlights)

• London, 8th May 2025: The Fragrance Foundation UK Awards 2025

My fragrance of the day: Iris Nazarena by Aedes de Venustas - nose: Ralf Schwieger - slightly sweet lipstick, pepper, rum, Savon de Marseille, light grey clay, ash, moist earth, dry wood

Volksbühne, Berlin, October 2024

- Flo - see you in 2025!

An exploration of Berlin

… with a focus on German soaps

Sebamed Seifenfreies Waschstück: powdery, irisy, soft, bitter, and fresh suede leather

Speick Original Seife: hard, clean scent - sunscreen on a beach on slightly chilly mornings at the end of summer, warm, light grey, round and soft pebbles in the sun by the sea, 90s men’s shaving cream freshly mixed with a soft shaving brush

Speick Original Arztseife: strong lemon opening, summery evenings with anti-mosquito candles

A few of November’s highlights in short form:

• Osmo AI launches its first teleported scent - Plum 1.0 - here’s the source code and Founder and CEO Alex Wiltschko on the making of

• Estée Lauder Companies reported a 5% decline in net sales to $3.36bn for Q1 2025 ending 30th September 2024, driven by weaker consumer sentiment in China and challenges in Asia travel retail, partly offset by growth in Japan and Priority Emerging Markets. Fragrance net sales fell 1%, impacted by global travel retail challenges but supported by growth in EMEA and APAC. Luxury fragrance brand sales saw mid-single-digit growth (with Le Labo up double digits), boosted by investments into direct-to-consumer expansion, particularly freestanding stores

• Puig reported a 9.6% rise in net sales to €3.43bn for the first nine months of 2024, with growth across all markets and business segments. Q3 2024 net revenues rose by 11.6% to €1.26bn, driven by an 11.1% increase in net revenues of the company’s largest segment Fragrance and Fashion (with double-digit growth in Niche Fragrance) and a 12.6% growth in net revenues of their largest market, EMEA

• Kering reported a 12% revenue drop to €12.8bn for the first nine months of 2024 and a 16% decline in Q3 2024 revenues to €3.79bn, with revenues from its largest company, Gucci, down 25% to €1.6bn and sales at other houses, including YSL and Balenciaga, seeing double-digit declines. Bottega Veneta’s sales rose 5%, boosted by the launch of a new fragrance collection. Key drivers included a slowdown in China and Japan and uneven results across group houses in Western Europe and North America

• Hermès reported a 14% revenue increase to €11.2bn for the first nine months of 2024 ending 30th September 2024. Q3 2024 sales grew by 11.3% to €3.7bn, with growth across all regions and sectors except for Watches (one of its smallest divisions). Perfume & Beauty revenues rose by 10.6% in Q3 2024, a period which saw the launch of Barénia, Hermès’ first Chypre by in-house perfumer Christine Nagel

• LVMH’s revenues were stable at €60.8bn in the first nine months of 2024, with double-digit revenue growth in Japan and an increase in spending by Chinese customers in Europe and Japan. Perfume & Cosmetics revenues rose by 5%, supported by the performance of Christian Dior’s Sauvage. Q3 2024 revenues declined by 3% to €19.08bn, largely attributed to weaker demand in China and slower growth in Japan

• NOBILIS GROUP signs exclusive distribution agreement with Geza Schoen’s Escentric Molecules for the DACH Region starting 1st January 2025

• Céline Ellena on “Les Odeurs de Berlin”

New industry appointments and changes

• Stéphane de La Faverie appointed CEO and President of Estée Lauder Companies effective 1st January 2025

• Jane Lauder steps down from her Chief Data Officer and Executive VP Enterprise Marketing role at Estée Lauder Companies, and will remain on the board

My fragrance of the day: Cashmere Noir by Angela Flanders: light, iris powder veil, warming dark spice, peppercorn, light-coloured, watery rum, paper, deep vanilla

Berlin analogue

- Flo

In conversation: Ugo Charron from MANE

Please introduce yourself in 3 sentences: 

I am Ugo Charron, originally from Sancerre, and I am now a Fine Fragrance Perfumer at MANE in NYC. I am also a musician and one half of Cosmic Gardens, an immersive experience blending live music, 360 visuals and fragrances. I try to combine my two passions for a living.

Tell us more about your music, and how you combine it with fragrance 

Cosmic Gardens shows are more than music; it is a multi-sensory odyssey, blending live music, 360 visuals, fragrances, and bespoke cocktails, transporting you into a poetic universe of art and inspiration. We began that project with Clément Mercet in 2019, whom I met during a weekend in the Hamptons - we both had our guitars, and it immediately clicked. At the beginning it was “only” music, but I had a dream as a child - which was combining both of my passions into a unique show. Clément is also very sensitive to smells and was very receptive to the multi sensorial project. When brainstorming we then thought of adding visuals to get the show even more immersive, and Cosmic Gardens took another dimension: a journey that transcends the senses and awakens the spirit!

Perfumes and music have a lot in common, they share the same vocabulary, are both invisible, linked to your neurological emotions and more prone to sensorial evasions. I think that’s why I love those two senses the most.

The show is divided into 3 chapters with dedicated visuals, fragrances and live music. The journey starts in the ocean as blue light bathes the stage, the smell of saltwater fills the air, and the music envelopes you like waves. I used MANE’s beautiful Red Seaweed Jungle Essence™ to emphasise the depths of the ocean. Next is a lush, green rainforest with the smell of aromatics and earth (100% biodegradable and carbon renewable), moved by organic rhythms and acoustic guitars. The journey ends with a trip to the cosmos induced by a visual mix of outer space footage, planets, and galaxies paired with the abstract smell of outer space. The twinkling sound of stars completes the experience.

Favourite ingredient / aroma? 

Ingredient is a tool, and even if I am drawn by woody smokey amber ingredients, I sometimes need to forget my own taste to achieve effects only by using ingredients I “like less”. For instance I don’t like the smell of milk but I need to use certain molecules to achieve milky accords. I am beginning to like those molecules actually so I might be able to drink some milk one day :) We have new ways to create effects at MANE by doing co-extractions. Oliwood™ is good example (co-extraction between Incense and Iso E Super) I am recently very fond of. It is easier to use than real incense that can be too smokey or metallic for certain clients. 

How and with whom do you create your fragrances? 

Creating a perfume in a fragrance house is teamwork. Around the perfumer, who is kind of the face of the fragrance, dozens of people gravitate. The perfumer needs an assistant to be able to work on multiple projects at the same time. Evaluators are there to guide them navigating through clients’ preferences and have a more objectivised vision of their own creation. Then you have a sales representative teaming up with marketing fragrance experts to sell the fragrances to the client. I am also working with other MANE perfumers to join forces on certain projects, but most of the time I am in competition with my own perfumer colleagues!

Any favourite perfume or one that has a particular memory you’d like to share?

Cuir Noir by Armani Privé and Féminité du Bois by Serge Lutens.

Cuir Noir is a gift I received when I worked at L’Oréal. For me it is an addictive soft leather skin fragrance!

Féminité du Bois is the first niche perfume I discovered! I discovered it during an internship in Grasse. I was living at my friend's aunt’s house and she made me discover that woody spicy fruity beauty :)

Any perfumer / artist / person you’d like to collaborate with on a fragrance?

I would love to create a perfume with Christopher Sheldrake one day. His Féminité du Bois is one of my favourite fragrances ever. I had the chance to meet him a few times and each time is a lesson of humility. I don’t know how it could happen, but life is full of surprises!

I would love to create a fragrance for Rodriguez Junior. He is an electronic artist I have admired since I was 15. His music is so transparent and crystal-like. I also had the chance to meet him and talk briefly about the project. Hopefully it will happen one day :)

If you weren’t in the fragrance industry, which industry would you like to be in?

Of course in the music industry. I was also dreaming of becoming an opera singer! And I had always thought of doing cartoon voices (doublage). I also began to paint during covid, one day I will go back to painting :) Living from it is another story though…

Any upcoming project / launch you want to share?

I had the chance to work on a very special project 2 years ago. Creating a perfume for a congenital anosmic, Emmanuelle Dancourt. It finally launched 2 weeks ago in the US.

UMEMA was designed to symbolise the invisible nature of disabilities and give anosmics an olfactory identity. Proceeds will support anosmie.org in Europe and WTSA in the US, organisations dedicated to aiding those with anosmia.

Creating UMEMA was a journey of synesthetic exploration, celebrating a fragrance that transcends traditional boundaries, connecting us all through the universal language of scent. 

Crafted with Emmanuelle, UMEMA centres around the rich, savoury flavour of umami, a first in the world of perfumery. It opens with the natural freshness of Blackcurrant Bud Absolute and Red Seaweed Jungle Essence. The heart blossoms with Rose Superessence, enveloped in an intriguing Umami accord. The base is a luxurious blend of Cacao Resinoid, Vegan Musc, Orris Concrete, and Fir Balsam Absolute, creating a skin scent that is both cosy and captivating.

Regarding music and Cosmic Gardens, we are releasing our album A Quest to Infinity next year, but our first single is already out: Outer Waves: Act I. Ocean, Pt. III. It's part of our first act dedicated to Ocean :) 

If you are in NY, we have a show on Friday the 11th and Saturday the 12th of October :) more info here. 

Tune of the day: A Quest to Infinity: Act I. Ocean, Pt. III Outer Waves by Cosmic Gardens

Fragrance of the day: Mountain Memories from Roan. It is a fragrance around Tea I had the chance to create for this upcoming brand Roan. I had a lot of liberty creating the dark sides of the Tea :)

A few of September’s highlights in short form:

• Elevate Beauty, an L Catterton platform investing into early-stage beauty and wellness brands, leads investment round into British independent fragrance brand Vyrao founded by Yasmin Sewell in 2021. Manzanita Capital and Estée Lauder’s New Incubation Ventures also participated in the round

• For H1 2024, Puig announces €2.2bn in net revenues, up 9.6% YOY, and net profits down c. 27% YOY, largely due to IPO costs, M&A expenses and employee bonuses

• Osmo AI launches Fragrance 2o, a private beta with the aim to design and create fragrances for a select group of clients based on their submitted briefs

Things to explore in fragrance:

• Paris, 22nd October 2024: Conférence olfactive “Dans le noir - Voyage au cœur des matières premières précieuses de la parfumerie”

My fragrance of the day: Montabaco Intensivo by Ormonde Jayne - nose: Geza Schoen - warm candle wax opening, pepper, soap, damp dried tobacco leaves, light yet sweet and deep, oily orange, soft leather, cold and wet yet comforting and homely tea leaves

Financial Times: “How fragrances are becoming the mane attraction”

Trellick Tower, London, August 2023

- Flo

In conversation: Rebecca Rose from To The Fairest

Please introduce yourself in 3 sentences: 

I’m Rebecca Rose, founder and creative director of independent British fragrance brand To The Fairest. The brand takes its name from the words inscribed on a golden apple from the Garden of the Hesperides: the apple represented beauty, knowledge and power. This classic motif celebrates woman as muse - embodying the arts, imparting wisdom and inspiring creation - a powerful emblem that I hope connects with our beautiful fragrances.

How and with whom do you create your fragrances?

Our first four fragrances were made with creative perfumer Penny Williams. She has an extraordinary ability to tap into the odour profile that best connects with the concept behind each scent. Our collaborative process began with a visual mood board, a soundscape, and a visualisation of the person who would wear the scent. I had specific notes in mind, which Penny would then interpret into a multifaceted composition.

Any favourite perfume or one that has a particular memory you’d like to share?

I don’t have a favourite scent, although one that always brings a smile to my lips is Caron’s Délire de Roses. On the surface it’s very innocent, but something strange happens to me when I wear this fragrance - I end up having the most surreal and unforgettable evenings.

Any perfumer / artist / person you’d like to collaborate with on a fragrance?

I would love to collaborate with Nikita Gill, a brilliant poet whose retellings of ancient myths are utterly compelling. I also hope to create more fragrances for hotels - To The Fairest offers a ’scentscaping’ service for venues and events and this part of the business is growing quite quickly.

Not All Girls Are Made of Sugar by Nikita Gill

“Not all girls are made of sugar

and spice and all things nice.

These are girls made of dark lace

and witchcraft and a little bit of vice.

These are daughters made claw first

and story-mad, tiger roar and wolf-bad.

These are women made of terrible tempests

and savage storms and the untamed unwanted.

These are damsels made of flawless fearlessness

made of more bravery than knights have ever seen.

These are princesses made of valour and poison alike

and they are here to hold court as your queens.”

If you weren’t in the fragrance industry, which industry would you like to be in?

Career Plan B was / is a speech therapist. I read modern languages and linguistics at university and have always been fascinated by speech rehabilitation programmes. I’ve been looking at ways to train alongside my career in perfumery.

Is there anything you would do differently if you had start all over again, and is there anything you would change in the industry? 

There isn’t a great deal I would change, even the heinous mistakes have been educational! I’ve made massive blunders but these have been compensated by the sheer joy the comes with the moments when I get it right. I’m very proud of the fact that we have an incredibly loyal and supportive customer base, that our products have won awards across the most prestigious categories in the industry, and I’m excited for the brand’s future.

Previously, I worked in academia and then on the periphery of the fashion industry, sourcing vintage clothes and textiles for retail and design teams. By contrast, the fragrance industry is incredibly welcoming, collaborative and inclusive. Scent is a creative expression and there is room for everybody, so I’m not sure there is much I would change about the industry. Niche fragrance is not just accepted, but heralded as a bellwether. Niche, prestige and mass sectors have a lot to learn from each other.

Any upcoming project / launch you want to share?

To The Fairest is currently working on a new Eau de Parfum called Oracle, due to launch soon. A crisp, gender-neutral rose inspired by the ritual of insight at Delphi. It’s the scent I am most proud of, and can’t wait to share it.

Tune of the day: Parallelograms by Linda Perhacs

Fragrance of the day: Cécile Eau de Parfum by To The Fairest. This beautiful summery scent transports me to the French Riviera. It’s our best-selling fragrance and has notes of bergamot, mandarin, amber and coconut. Irresistible.

You can purchase To The Fairest Sample Discovery Set here

A few of August’s highlights in short form:

• Shiseido’s shares plunged c. 16% on August 7th 2024, their steepest single day slide since 1987, following the announcement of their mid-year results which were weighed down by a production decline in the US and slowing Chinese consumer demand

• Estée Lauder Companies reported a c. 2% decrease in net sales for FY 2024, dropping from $15.91bn to $15.61bn, partly driven by weaker consumer demand in China and a decline in Asia travel retail. Whilst net sales in the skin care, makeup, and hair care segments decreased, fragrance net sales increased by 2%, largely driven by ELC’s luxury brands such as Le Labo and Jo Malone

• Coty’s FY 2024 results showed a c. 10% increase in total net revenues, outpacing the global beauty market growth, with net revenues for all of Coty’s largest Prestige fragrance brands growing by a mid-single to double-digit percentage

• With fragrance as one of the fastest-growing prestige beauty category in the first half of 2024 and an ever more curious consumer base, an increasingly diverse range of companies are venturing into the space, ranging from American men’s magazine Esquire, to circus producer Cirque du Soleil, to fast food chain KFC with their now sold out Eau de BBQ. Read more in Emily Jensen’s piece

• Dolce & Gabbana launches a €99 dog fragrance, inspired by D&G co-founder Domenico Dolce’s “love for his loyal dog Fefé”

  

Industry retirements

• Anne Kirby, Chanel’s president of fragrance and beauty, to retire at end of 2024, after 35 years at the luxury house

• Fabrizio Freda, Estée Lauder Companies’ President and CEO since 2009, announces intention to retire at end of FY 2025

My fragrance of the day: 724 by Maison Francis Kurkdjian - lime zest opening, light green apple, bar soap, light talc powder, warm musk, heavy flour and rich oily texture

Is Mexico the next great fragrance market? by Emily Jensen

The Financial Times on the fragrance sector’s double digit growth

Lej da Staz, Switzerland, June 2024

- Flo

In conversation: Linda Pilkington from Ormonde Jayne

Please introduce yourself in 3 sentences: 

I’m Linda from Ormonde Jayne, creator and founder. I have had a company now for 25 years. I am independent and we are also manufacturers and create our perfumes in-house.

Favourite ingredient / aroma?

I’ve consistently used Pink Pepper. I’ve always talked about it. I’ve always had a bottle in my fridge and I find it a very beautiful ingredient that I also put directly on my skin. I love the way it performs. It's also present in a lot of our perfumes - practically all of them except Tolu, Ormonde Man, and Arabesque. It’s otherwise known as Baie Rose.

How and with whom do you create your fragrances?

We collaborate with a couple of perfume houses and we work with a lot of different people. We create our own perfumes in-house when it’s a bespoke fragrance for a department store. If it’s something for La Route de La Soie or the Signature collection, so if it’s a perfume that I want a lot of fruity/florals in, I go to Expressions Parfumées in Grasse because their oils are the best, and if it’s slightly more Four Corner of the Earth, more involved, I use IFF. The Signature Collection started in 2001 with the launch of the boutique, using oils not widely used in the perfume industry. My philosophy used travel, culture and British craftsmanship to recapture memories - the fragrant smell of basmati rice tied in to the Indian flower Champaca, or the freshly picked dates left by my bedside in the town of Ta’if when I created Ta’if; it was my personal experiences to give purpose and relevance to our perfumes using these priceless extraordinary oils from all over the world. The collection La Route de la Soie was a departure from that collection using ingredients found across this extraordinary ancient Silk Road. It uses more fruity notes that are appealing to all generations, but particularly resonate with wearers trying niche perfumes for the first time.

Any favourite perfume or one that has a particular memory you’d like to share?

The one that’s stood the test of time, one that I constantly wear all year round, is Ta’if; orange blossom, dates, saffron and pink pepper. This is a fragrance that I created 20 years ago using my personal favourite notes and marrying them with ingredients from this extraordinary region. My second go-to is Ormonde Woman, which is part of our Signature Scents collection. I alternate between the two - Ta’if I wear a lot more, and Ormonde Woman I wear when I want to feel powerful, and have a purposeful day.

Any perfumer / artist / person you’d like to collaborate with on a fragrance?

I would like to collaborate with an artist I met - he’s got a very creative mind  - I’ve never asked him so he’d be very surprised if I said that to him! He’s got very good taste, I like the way he paints, I like the way he dresses, I like his attitude, I like his personality - he’s very kind. I think kindness is a very good starting point. His name is Ollie Amhurst, and he’s the founder of luxury leather clothing brand Lot 78.

If you weren’t in the fragrance industry, which industry would you like to be in?

I would be a chocolatier. I’ve always enjoyed cooking and flavouring my cooking with edible perfume oils. 

When I was young, I used to love making things; sewing, cooking, growing plants, making room sprays, candles. I used to make chocolates too, and I really enjoyed the process. I used to have moulds on a tray, I used to melt the chocolate, put it in, wipe it off, mix my mixture, put it into the middle, put my chocolate over the top, spread it with that flat thing, and put it in the fridge. Then I’d take it out of the fridge the next day, put them in the boxes and go around from door to door selling them - I was very good, that’s why I went into business. I used to make mixtures using a tiny bit of alcohol - I don’t think I was particularly sophisticated in those days, I’ve got more style now. 

I am a chocolate connoisseur, at the moment my number one chocolates are Melt with their own premises in Holland Park where they make the chocolates. Second is Pierre Marcolini. Third is Charbonnel, because it’s right across our store in the Royal Arcade. I have two or three favourites from each brand.

I’d love to know what you do to make chocolates at that level. I would have to work very hard to come up with a style - I’d probably have to make chocolates called ‘fragrance & chocolate’ or ‘fragrance & flavours’ or something like that - a ‘perfumer’s box’ of chocolates with Osmanthus, Jasmine… That would be keeping with what I know! I could ask at Brown’s. After dinner they serve these paper thin chocolates. If I made chocolate, that would be my starting base: thin chocolate.

If you could change anything in the industry, what would it be?

If we could temper the enthusiasm of the IFRA rules, then I know I could create absolutely extraordinary no holds barred perfumes. But, whilst I understand the rationale behind it, our hands are tied. 

Any upcoming project / launch you want to share?

We have two new perfumes from the Routes de La Soie collection, Kashmir and Bukhara, and we have our very first advent calendar, the “8 Days of Christmas”, which goes from Christmas Eve to News Year’s Eve. Eight being my lucky number - my bottles are eight-sided, they hold 88ml, I’m born in the eighth month, I get the 88 bus to work - and eight days of Christmas. Day eight of the calendar is a full, 88ml bottle.

The calendar launches October the 8th, the perfumes launch September the 8th. The calendars will be available in department stores and there will be two types: the atmospheric/fruity/floral and the amberesque version. In the Ormonde Jayne Boutique and online, you will get the three festive candles, and then you can pick and pack what you want!

5% of the takings of Kashmir go to the Himalayan Trust, and 10% of our Christmas candle sales go to the Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity.

Tune of the day:  Dua Lipa - Be The One

I love Dua Lipa at the moment, I think she’s fantastic. I watched her Glastonbury show on the TV and my husband and I danced all night in our hotel room - and then I went and googled her and somehow ended up on her WhatsApp group - I don’t know how I managed to do that! I get messages from her and I’m claiming her as my daughter. So I say to my husband: “I’ve just heard from our daughter, darling! She’s going to be performing then and there.”

Fragrance of the day: Kashmir - Ormonde Jayne. I always wear my own perfumes!

You can purchase Ormonde Jayne’s tasting menu here

A few of July’s highlights in short form:

• Valentino and Paco Rabanne each launch high-end fragrance lines

• Shiseido enters license agreement with Max Mara to develop, produce, market and distribute fragrances under the brand

• True Beauty Ventures invest first round into The Maker, a hotel-inspired perfume brand created by second-time founders Lev Glazman and Alina Roytberg

• The Fragrance Foundation launches Next Gen, a networking group and accelerator to support perfume enthusiasts and UK-based emerging brands

• Estée Lauder Companies’ New Incubation Ventures launches The Catalysts with support from TikTok, an incubator aiming to transform the future of beauty

• Clara Muller writes about Art & Olfaction’s 5th Experimental Scent Summit

• Lush opens ‘The Perfume Library’, a fragrance concept store on London’s Beak Street

• Jo Malone and Paddington Bear launch an Orange Marmalade cologne, celebrating the Bear’s favourite snack

New industry appointments

• Stéphane Perrault appointed as CFO of Kering Beauté

• Laurence Semichon announced as new CEO of Diptyque

• Akhil Shrivastava promoted to Executive VP and CFO of Estée Lauder Companies

My fragrance of the day: Star Seren by Wales Perfumery - nose: Louise Smith - metallic forest, damp hay, barley, warm sand, and starry night

“How expensive can fragrance get?”

Lisbon, June 2024

- Flo

In conversation: Nick Steward from GALLIVANT

Please introduce yourself in 3 sentences: 

Hello, I’m Nick Steward, the founder & creator of GALLIVANT. We’re an award-winning indie perfume-maker based in Hackney, East London, making playful perfumes inspired by memorable journeys I’ve been on. I’m a linguist by background (Arabic, French among others), and with a great passion for travel and exploring other cultures.

Favourite ingredient / aroma?

I have a particular fondness for orris (iris). There’s something very beautifully raw about it – and it has so many facets (earthy, powdery, paper-like, chocolate-y, vegetal, carroty/rooty, violet floral, those hard-boiled sweets we used to have for travelling – even a putty smell). Constantly fascinates me.

Read more in BBC’s “Orris: The world’s rarest perfume ingredient”

How and with whom do you create your fragrances?

For whom? For human beings – and I’m often struck by how our customers really trust their own noses – and don’t run with the crowd.

How? The main point I would say is slowly. Slowly and thoughtfully.

With whom? I’m blessed to work with a wonderful team of perfumers, compounders and raw material sourcers (perfumery, at its best, is really a collective collaborative affair) – especially those based at the Roudnitska company “Art & Parfum” in Grasse, in the south of France.

Any favourite perfume or one that has a particular memory you’d like to share?

Timbuktu. By the supremely wonderful Bertrand Duchaufour. We worked together at L’Artisan Parfumeur – and that was a very special time in my life and career: a great training ground, many fun and creative times, and of course it has had a big impact on my approach to perfumery, and what I do at GALLIVANT today. And Timbuktu holds a special place for many fragrance lovers: a sort of ‘gateway drug’ into ‘niche’ or ‘alternative’ perfumery. I still love wearing it (vintage bottles from my archive).

Any perfumer / artist / person you’d like to collaborate with on a fragrance?

I’m a big admirer of the artist Yanko Tihov – I find his maps endlessly fascinating – what stories they hold!

Mylène Farmer – her music means a lot to me – and I love the dreamy other-worldly quality to her artistry.

If you weren’t in the fragrance industry, which industry would you love to be in?

At this point, I honestly can’t imagine doing anything else – I feel very blessed to be doing what I’m doing with GALLIVANT. I’m very lucky to have so many good friends and colleagues in this industry – my ‘tribe’ of fellow indie makers around the world. And my hope is that I can continue like this, being free, and independent, for many years to come…

If you could change anything in the industry, what would it be?

More focus on the perfumery. Less hype, less marketing bullshit would be a good thing, in my book… let’s slow down, more quality, less quantity.

Any upcoming project / launch you want to share?

I have something up my sleeve for late autumn. I’m superstitious so don’t like to reveal the destination, but it’s a new continent for GALLIVANT, somewhere I feel very connected to. And the perfume itself is a very fun, irreverent take on the place. Watch this space! 

Tune of the day:  Rayon Vert – Mylène Farmer and AaRON – wonderfully atmospheric stuff!

Fragrance of the day: Today I’m wearing Ta’if – the new parfum we’ve created exclusively for Fortnum & Mason (it launched there 12^th June), so please pop along to Piccadilly to get your noses on that! Spoiler alert: it is an homage to the famous roses of Ta’if, in Saudi Arabia.

You can purchase GALLIVANT’s discovery set here

Recent investment in fragrance:

• French perfume brand MATIERE PREMIERE closes its second funding round (amount and terms undisclosed), with Kering Beauté acquiring a minority stake

Things to explore in fragrance:

• Florence, 13-15th Sep 2024: Fragrance trading fair Pitti Fragranze

• London, until 7th July 2024: Saatchi Gallery multisensory exhibition

My fragrance of the day: Ervas by ODUR - nose: Giovanni Sammarco - synthetic lemon, bergamot, vague foresty musk, harmonious soap, Savon de Marseilles

A billboard that … Smells like McDonald’s

Cotswolds, 2024

- Flo

In conversation: Sarah McCartney from 4160Tuesdays

Please introduce yourself in 3 sentences: 

I am Sarah McCartney, former musician (semi-professional baritone sax player) and copywriter, self-taught perfumer and founder of 4160Tuesdays. I make adventurous perfume with my team in our small, L-shaped studio, hidden behind a big black door in Hammersmith, West London. My aim is to encourage thousands of people to make their own scents so I set up Scenthusiasm: a community with live and online classes for everyone wanting to learn more about artisan perfumery.

Favourite ingredient / aroma?

I am in love with blackcurrant bud absolute as it's like intense, sour Ribena.

Any favourite perfume or one that has a particular memory you’d like to share?

My all time favourite perfume and love of my youth is Diorella by Edmond Roudnitska. My first scent memory is from the day, aged two, that I discovered mock orange blossom and found it so beautiful that I shoved the buds up my nose so I could store them there, and had to be dashed to the doctor to have them removed. 

Any ideas for your next fragrance / project?

My issue is that I have too many ideas to fit into one answer, and probably one life. However, I'd like to create a London-inspired perfume called Keep Left - picture the aromas which waft from the shrubs in suburban gardens and parks linked by the outer extensions of the Piccadilly, Central and Metropolitan Lines. I made Goodbye Piccadilly for the London Transport Museum, so perhaps they would like Keep Left as it's inspired by their Underground signage.

Any perfumer / artist / person you’d like to collaborate with on a fragrance?

I would like to work with comedian Sarah Millican to create ‘Cake Shelf’, which she suggested as a more accurate description of a ‘muffin top’. I feel that she deserves her own fragrance following an experience she described when she was unable to attract the attention of the sales people in a posh perfumery department. I was so incensed on her behalf that I thought it would be great to make one for her. It would smell of whatever she wanted, but maybe cakes - and incense?

Any question you’d like to answer that we haven’t asked?

My long term aim is to broaden access to perfume-making, which is too exclusive in my view. It's no harder to learn than music and a lot less dangerous than cooking, yet its secrets are kept behind locked doors off a hidden corridor, behind a bookshelf accessed only by people invited into the room.

Tune of the day: When I'm working I listen to politics podcasts, nothing at all, or to my nephew Alex McCartney’s music. Today it's the theorbo, because I need complex beauty.

Fragrance of the day: Today I am testing new blends on my skin, and my favourite is codenamed Spring Summer Autumn BGB No1. News follows.

You can purchase 4160Tuesday’s taster set here

A few of May’s highlights in short form:

• France launches a scratch-and-sniff-baguette stamp

• Cosmo International Fragrances launches its C3 Fragrance Accelerator in NYC, led by industry veteran Dulce Almario, who brings over 25 years of industry expertise to the division

• Puig’s IPO becomes Europe’s largest in 2024, raising €2.6bn on its first day trading on May 3rd 2024. The Puig family retains the majority stake and voting rights in the company

• German NOBILIS GROUP, founded 1993 and run by CEO Udo Heuser, announces exclusive distribution agreement with fragrance houses Juliette Has A Gun and Goldfield and Banks for the DACH region

• High perfumery house Amouage has published its Q1 2024 results, marking its highest performing quarter with sales up +23.8%

• The Fragrance Foundation’s ‘Oscars of the Fragrance Industry’ results are out - with Diptyque taking home three awards

• Interview with Marc Chaya, Co-founder, President and CEO of Maison Francis Kurkdjian, on the story of the house, and the “genius of creativity”

New industry appointments:

• Laure de Metz, previously at LMVH, appointed CEO at Henry Rose, the perfume house founded by actress Michelle Pfeiffer in 2019

Things to explore in fragrance:

• NYC until Sep 2nd 2024: multi sensorial exhibition “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion” at the Met

• Venice until Nov 24th 2024: Korean artist Koo Jeong A’s “Odorama Cities” at the 60th Venice Biennale

My fragrance of the day: Figueres by FUMParFUM - nose: Aistis Mickevičius - green, freshly cut fennel, tomato, grapefruit

Le Coq Sportif launches Olympic perfumes

Paris, March 2024

- Flo

Frédéric Malle to step down from eponymous brand

Frédéric Malle stems from a family routed in the world of fragrance, with his grand-father Serge Heftler-Louiche having established Parfums Christian Dior in 1947 and his mother Marie-Christine having been the artistic director of the House.

In 2000, fragrance industry expert Frédéric launched his own venture, Editions de Parfums: a ‘perfume publishing house’ where he is the editor, giving the ‘fragrance authors’ full artistic freedom and visibly crediting them on the bottles - ultimately enabling a new kind of bond between creator and wearer.

In 2015, his business was acquired by Estée Lauder Companies and this coming June 2024, he will be stepping down fully. Read more in his interview with Erica Smith

Acne Studios launch debut fragrance with Frédéric Malle

Acne Studios par Frédéric Malle marks the fashion label’s first perfume, and in Acne co-founder Jonny Johansson’s words, combines classicism and kitsch

Nose: Suzy Le Helley, perfumer at Symrise - portfolio

Price: £200 for 50ml / £290 for 100ml

What we smell: Fabric softener, flying saucer sweets, blackcurrant, soap, and a hint of Karma by Lush 

What Fragrantica smells:

Osmo AI and scent teleportation

Founded in 2022 by Alex Wiltschko as a continuation of his olfactory neuroscience work at Google Research, Osmo is on a mission to digitise scent to ultimately improve health and wellbeing of human life. Backed by a $60m Series A round led by Google Ventures and Lux Capital, the team is currently working on teleporting scent; capturing it in one part of the world, and releasing it in another. Read more

Charlotte Tilbury (re-)enters the world of fragrance

Puig-owned Charlotte Tilbury has launched six fragrances as part of a new Collection of Emotions range - the brand’s first perfume drop its 2016 limited edition, ‘NSFW’ Scent of a Dream by nose François Robert.

The fragrances were created by IFF perfumers Anne Flipo, Juliette Karagueuzoglou and Dominique Ropion, in collaboration with IFF’s Senior Consumer Science Manager Céline Manetta, with each scent aiming to enhance a particular emotion - from love to serenity.

Read more in this piece by Alexandra Pauly

New industry appointments:

• Alexandre Choueiri appointed CEO and President of the Americas at Kering Beauté, previously President at House of Creed Latin America

• James Krivda appointed Senior Perfumer at Robertet SA

Things to explore in London:

• 10-19th May 2024: Charlotte Tilbury fragrance pop-up

• 18th May 2024: Barnes Fragrance Fair 2024

My fragrance of the day: Bois D’Ascèse by Naomi Goodsir - nose: Julien Rasquinet - the warm yet cold, incens-y inside of a church on a snowy, lantern-lit evening

“What fragrance family will feel “dated” a few years from now?” - a reddit thread

Colin the Caterpillar backpack

Espadrilling through Spring - Mexico City, June 2023

- Flo

BRAND HIGHLIGHT: TO THE FAIREST

Story: Founded in 2018 in England by art historian, creative director and vintage fashion entrepreneur Rebecca Rose in collaboration with expert perfumer Penny Williams, To The Fairest takes inspiration from ‘imagined landscapes, literature, and love’. The brand embraces a slow and conscious perfumery model, growing one fragrance at a time, in small quantities, with a social responsibility budget for donations to charities such as Thrive, which helps create positive change through horticulture.

Read more in Suzy Nightingale’s piece and watch Lorna McKay’s interview

Perfumes: The range currently consists of four fragrances created by Penny, ranging from the strong character, oakmoss-y and earthy Élan Vital, to the mysterious, twinkling sky and fresh metallic, dry coco powder Ordre Cosmique.

Prices: £85 for 50ml Eau de Parfum / £5 for 2ml samples / £17 for sample set

Where to buy? Online, in London at Suzannah

BRAND HIGHLIGHT: BASTILLE PARFUMS

Story: Run by beauty and luxury expert, CEO Sophie Maisant, BASTILLE PARFUMS was originally founded in France in 2020 by Marie-Hortense Varin as a brand anchored in transparency and sustainability - with 95% natural formulations, and a pledge to donate 1% of sales to the NGO Surfrider Foundation, which fights against oceanic plastic pollution. Interviews with the noses behind the fragrances shared on their blog, as well as integrated RFID technology enabling full traceability of ingredients, demonstrate how authenticity is central to the brand.

Read more in Mary Cleary’s piece

Perfumes: The collection comprises seven perfumes, to-date all created with various IFF perfumers. The fragrances range from the most recently launched Paradis Nuit by Nicolas Beaulieu, a soft yet powerful, spicy hay, and icy Savon de Marseilles scent, to Domitille Michalon-Bertier’s Un Deux Trois Soleil, a pepper-rose, familiar and warm, play-doh accord.

Prices: €39 for 15ml / €98 for 50ml / €145 for 100ml Eau de Parfum / €30 for sample set

Where to buy? Online, in London at Jovoy, Bloom Perfumery and The Beauty Edit Mayfair and globally at various points of sale

New industry appointments:

• Shiseido promotes Alberto Noé to President and CEO EMEA

• Chanel names Emilie de Tramasure as new GM of Fragrance and Beauty

• A.S. Watson appoints Kulvinder Birring as CEO of Marionnaud Group

Things to explore in London:

• Liberty London’s Fragrance Lounge

My fragrance of the day: Xi’An by Ormonde Jayne - a soft spice, airy, soapy and dry rhubarb

#oldmoneyperfume - the scent of wealth growing c. 110% month-on-month

“What is 2024’s version of 2010s Santal 33 trend” - a reddit thread

Engadin, Switzerland, March 2024

- Flo