December 2025

Fragrance lately

Dec 28, 2025

In conversation with Claudio Denz and David Weber from Maison Noir

Please introduce yourself 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.

*Claudio's combination of images to create a deeper impression of his preferred ingredients*

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…

*Claudio’s photo of Zaha Hadid’s 520 West 28th, a building he particularly appreciates, captured from the High Line in New York*

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.