The origin of Parfuses.

Parfuses begins with an experience, not an idea.

For a long time I wore one perfume. Not out of loyalty, but out of ignorance. I didn't know the language. I didn't know what I was missing. Then something happened during lockdown in 2020 that changed how I think about fragrance — and eventually led to Parfuses.

With no office, no travel and no social obligations, what was left was time — and a curiosity I had always had but never fed. I started going deep. First just to be able to talk about it, then because I was moved by what I was finding. I learned the difference between Eau de Toilette, EDP and Extrait. That some perfumes live on your skin for a whole day. That winter and summer fragrances are not the same. That perfume is essentially unisex, and that a man can calmly wear a floral composition without it saying anything about him except that he smells good.

Three worlds I didn't know existed

But the deeper shift was this: I discovered that fragrance isn't one world. It is three.

There is the designer world — Chanel, Dior, Tom Ford, Yves Saint Laurent — with advertising campaigns, celebrity endorsements, and global volumes. This is what most people know.

Next to it is the niche world: smaller houses with catalogues of twenty to thirty perfumes, a perfumer and a story behind each bottle. Houses like Maison Francis Kurkdjian, Parfums de Marly, Initio, Widian, Ex Nihilo. Many of these are now available at Douglas or Notino too, but the approach remains different — smaller batches, higher prices, a sharper identity.

And underneath those two layers, there is the indie world: a few hundred bottles per batch, makers blending their own formulas in an atelier, available only through direct channels or specialty boutiques.

Those three worlds barely overlapped in my head. I literally didn't know they all existed until I started looking. Six years ago, I knew Chanel.

The problem starts at niche prices

When I stepped into niche, that's where it got expensive. A single bottle €200, €300, sometimes €400. And at those prices, my real problem started: how do you choose without gambling?

Gusti e colori non si discutano. There's no arguing about taste, as we say in Italy.

And that is exactly what makes perfume advice unusable. Every review — from Fragrantica, from YouTube, from a salesperson in the store — comes out of someone's personal taste. A salesperson recommends what's on their shelf. Influencers recommend what their sponsors sell. Fragrantica reviewers recommend what they happen to like themselves.

So I went blind buying. From Maison Francis Kurkdjian to Widian, from Parfums de Marly to Ex Nihilo to Initio. Each time I opened the bottle with hope, and more than once had to accept again that this one wasn't mine.

And then I found it. My signature scent. Not through an algorithm, but after a long search, a lot of money, and a few lucky accidents. A perfume that fits me. One people associate with me.

Moments I will never forget

My current girlfriend — at the time not yet my girlfriend — first noticed me at a concert. A DJ set, thousands of people, a dark room. She walked toward me in a straight line through the crowd, past all those bodies and scents. Because she had caught mine and followed it.

Then there's my office. I spray perfume before leaving in the morning — an hour of driving, lift up, lift out, desk. And almost every week, someone comments. "I knew you were in today, I smelled you in the lift." "That's you in the hallway, isn't it?" "You smelled great this morning, what were you wearing?" Different colleagues, different moments, same thing: they recognise me by how I smell, sometimes an hour after I've walked past. It's not one memorable moment. It's a pattern.

Another day I was sitting outside the airport waiting for my girlfriend. I was smoking a cigarette among a group of other smokers — blue smoke, ashtrays, air thick with tobacco. A woman walked up to me. "Excuse me, may I ask what you're wearing? You smell fantastic." Through the cigarette smoke.

Two unforgettable moments and a weekly pattern. That kind of thing doesn't happen when you wear one-of-the-crowd. It only happens when you've found something that belongs to you, and that is strong enough to rise above the noise — through music, through traffic, through cigarette smoke, through the scent of an entire office building.

But those moments are the end of a long story — not the beginning. They happened because I eventually found something that belonged to me. The six years before them were different.

€10,000 in scattered bets

From 2020 until today — six years of going deep — I have personally spent around €10,000 on perfume. That is not bragging, it is an honest figure. But it is also not a coherent collection. It is six years of trying, being disappointed, trying again. Bottles sitting next to each other without a common story. Several of them I never wear anymore.

That is the reality without a neutral coach. It is not just that you spend too much — you build something that is not tuned to itself. A pile of loose perfumes instead of an identity.

€4,000 that actually belong together

The proof that it can be different is at home. I brought my girlfriend into this world, but with a shortcut — I asked her the right questions. Which fragrance direction pulled her in: floral, spices, woods, gourmand. What memories it called up. What her mood asked for. She found her signature scent in one purchase.

After that — and this is the important part — she kept buying. The way anyone with a passion for fragrance keeps buying. But every new bottle fits what she already has. A summer variant of her signature, an office version for the day, an evening scent in the same family. In less than two years she has fifteen perfumes, worth about €4,000 together. And she still wears everything. Each bottle chooses the next.

The difference isn't how much you bought. The difference is whether your wardrobe is tuned to itself.

Parfuses isn't about buying less. It's about making sure that whatever you buy — whether that's one bottle or fifteen — actually becomes part of who you are in fragrance. A curated wardrobe instead of a graveyard of impulses.

A quick word on layering

Some people love layering perfumes — combining two or three fragrances on their skin to create something entirely their own. With all respect to them: if that is what you want, go for it.

Personally, it's not for me. I have too much respect for the hours a master perfumer puts into designing a composition. Every note, every accord, every dry-down has been shaped with intent. Layering, to me, feels a bit like walking into a Michelin-starred restaurant and asking for a bottle of ketchup on the side — you miss the experience the chef spent years perfecting.

But this is just me, and taste is taste. Gusti e colori non si discutano. If layering is your direction, Parfuses will help you find fragrances that combine well. We're not here to push you one way or the other — we're here to help you find what you actually want.

Why Parfuses exists

I started out looking for one signature scent. For me that took six years and €10,000. For my girlfriend it took one conversation and one purchase. That difference — six years versus one conversation — is why Parfuses exists.

You come to Parfuses because you want to find your signature scent. Not to build a collection, not to test thirty samples, not to learn what sillage means. Just: know which fragrance fits you, and get it in your hands without five blind buys in between.

What happens after that is up to you. Many people find peace with their one perfume — that is fine. Others notice the passion catches on and build a coherent wardrobe from there. Both paths work, because both start with the same thing: knowing who you are in fragrance.

What you're really buying, every time you commit to a bottle, is an experience you'll have with yourself and with others. The moments I described — the concert, the office, the airport — are what perfume is actually for. Everything else is just chemistry.

Buying perfume is buying an experience.

That does not happen through a banner ad or a sponsored list. It happens through the right questions at the right moment. That is what we are building.

If you want to begin your own search, start here.