A foremost show – ESXENCE 2025 report

MASTERING A DREAM

The theme of Esxence 2025 was “Masters of Dreams” and it was bigger than ever, as was last year and each year before:

Before I started to write, I thought the Esxence report would be finished after I highlighted the new perfumes and the parts of the program I liked. I did that, but felt I was not done.

Instead of shedding some light, I was (also) mastering a dream:

I did pass the information, but not my oppinions, formed in a reality I experienced on the biggest art perfumery event in Europe.

Considering that the statistics are used for support, not illumination, I added a few more lines about what I saw with my eyes wide open.

PERFUME HIGHLIGHTS

Considering that the statistics are used for support, not illumination, I added a few more lines about what I saw with my eyes wide open.

TONKA LATTE BY DUSITA

Pissara Umavijani 2025.

Pissara Umavijani created a feeling of a peaceful, happy home—a cocoon of warm lactonic top notes and an invitingly sweet but not an overly sugary blend of vanilla and tonka, all infused with honey. The new Eau de parfum is the first pure-blooded gourmand in the Dusita’s collection and will be available in April.

INFERNO (2024.) AND TWO TEASERS FROM EAU DE BOUJEES

Pia Long

In the olfactive realm, Nick and Pia of Olfiction are my equivalents of the Turner and Bowie duet.
When I smell any of Eau de Boujee perfume,  they sing both art and craft and reassure me that “everything will be alright” with perfumery.

I smelled the two finished creations that will be launched later this year.
The first is inspired by tea, and the second, with a memorable, playful name, is inspired by new, glossy magazines.

Again, everything wil be alright, na na na na na …

HAKUNA MATATA by 27_87

Rodrigo Flores Roux, 2025.

Romy Kowalevski, founder of 27_87, grabbed the attention with a single message: “Bananas are taking the stage – vanilla is over!” .

Hakuna Matata is a memorable fruity-floral-amber: a blend of banana and white florals supported by musk over a radiant and warm amber-vanilla base.

NEON LIGHTS BY MILANO FRAGRANZE

Nathalie Fiesthauer, 2025.

Milano Fragranze continues the collection!

Neon Lights, the newly launched perfume is created under the creative direction of Ermano Picco, and draws inspiration from the electrifying atmosphere of Milan’s iconic discotheque in the 1980s and 1990s.

“Neon Lights discotheque was a place where you could be whatever you wanted to be, a place of freedom and personal expression.”, said Ermano.

Neon Lights is a vibrant, sophisticatedly extroverted, and complex creation: strawberries, tuberose, musks, a touch of hairspray and powder, mixed with some heat and sweat, all revived, and mingling and dancing in tune with the early 1990s!

mUSC COUTURE BY JACQUES FATH

Jean-Christophe Herault, 2025.

I admire the work of creative director Rania Naim for Jacques Fath and the utterly French, neoclassical profile the restored brand has presented in the last several years. The credits also go to Jean-Christophe Herault, who created all perfumes in the Fath Essentials collection.

The brand is preparing to launch Musc Couture, a clean, musky and soapy perfume that, applied to skin, shows interesting twists and dynamic character.

The PEACHES Trilogy by saraH baker

Chris Maurice, 2025.

Sarah Baker launched Pastel Rumours and Rococo Pie (Chris Maurice), completing the trilogy dedicated to peaches, which was introduced last year with Peach’s Revenge.

Peaches are peaches are peaches – easy-going and indulgent, sweet but tricky, or subtly, but precisely revengeful.

As a three-part story, the Peach Trilogy creates olfactory insight into what a nice peach can do when its peachiness is turned from all-peachy into something else.

I just love that touch of larger-than-life feminine drama.

As a part of Oud trilogy, the brand also launched dark, mushroomy, earthy Prism Head, created by Miguel Matos.

Black Sand BY BLACKCLIFF PARFUMS

Sarah McCartney, 2023.

I was so wrong on Pitti Fragranze 2024 when I decided to skip Blacksmith’s stand because it was crowded each time I passed. This time I passed by early on Day 1, when the stand was magically empty, and the team was not tired. What a treat!

I smelled Sexy Eyes and very nice La Ballade de l’Homme, and the interesting facets in Black Sand made me forget to take more pictures.

AND MORE …

Rubini, Cristiano Caravagna, Vallence, Frassai, Source Adage, Essential parfums, Francesca Bianchi, Filipppo Sorcinelli, Free Yourself, Etat Libre d’Orange, Borntostandout, Emil Elise, Coretterno,

Off-pavillon highlits

I never wear the perfume when comming to the perfume fair – I save the selected parts of my skin for perfumes I am about to try, after I smell them and feel intrigued or sense that like may become love.

Angelos Balamis offered me to smell the beautiful narcissus he was about to launch, and that creation instantly ended up on my skin. It was still the middle of the day, lunchtime, but I occupied my skin and called it for a day.

I also got the precious insight into the collections of the two Thai brands:

Prin Lomros’ (Strangers Parfumerie) and Nutt Wesshasartar’s (Siam 1928 and Voyager) PERFUMES

A fascinating discovery

Prin Lomros of Strangers Parfumerie, a prolific independent perfumer and Art and Olfaction finalist, introduced me also to a colleague, Nutt Wesshasar, a perfumer and the founder of the brand Siam 1928, whom I knew nothing about.

Thai origins and inspiration, similar generation, same independent and art-oriented approach to perfumery and – such a different handwritings!

I am about to explore further and in detail the perfumes created by both because are fascinating:

Almost an hour and a half of smelling their collections passed in a second. It was undobtely my greatest discovery on Esxence 2025!

FROM THE PROGRAM

CALABRIAN BERGAMOT – MATERIALS AND THE EARLY HISTORY OF CULTIVATION AND PRODUCTION

A project by Accademia del Profumo

Academia dei Profumo, the Cosmetic Italia initiative (Milano) offered a sensory journey into the Calabrian bergamot by exhibiting the fruit, the four exquisite materials and the early history of cultivation and the production.

I took the journey to explore the different olfactive profiles of the bergamot essential oils from Calabria and the Central Ionian Region, produced with modern techniques but grown on different terroirs and harvested at different times.

I also smelled the bergamot petitgrain oil (produced with the distillation of bergamot leaves) and the bergamot essential oil produced with the sponge technique, the oldest way of extraction, dating back before 1700.

How to position your brand for maximum attention from press, influencers, journalists and retailers?

A panel talk

Sarah Colton, the journalist and the author of the book Bad Girls Perfume Tips and Tales, and Sebastijan Jarra / The Perfume Guy, the influential perfume reviewer, hosted a panel that joined togeher a distributor, the brand founders and creative directors to answer the currently the hottest question:

How to stand out?

In the measured 5-minute talk, each panellist gave their best to answer the question which remains unanswered, but those talks indeed reflected the differences in strategies on the highly competitive and overcrowded perfume market.

For me, Etienne de Swardt and Jun Lim – the masters of the controversial marketing – each from his own experience gave the most illuminating talks:

L’OSMOTHEQUE – THE ROARING 1920s

A selection of 15 perfumes (1921 – 1929)

On L’Osmotheque’s stand there is no apparent pressure to stand out.

L’Osmotheque stands out like the lighthouse built to spread the different set of vallues, and it keeps shedding light to olfactive and cultural aspects of perfume trade and market, both in the past and the present.

I can not be more grateful to Anne-Cécile Pouant and Antonella Fontana for the guidance through the selection of perfumes from Roaring Twenties:

“We need a lighthouse to show us the right direction,” said Francoise Henin on the panel I attended, and I could only half-agree.

Surely, there are different kinds of lighthouses and different kinds of lights.

It is also true that, once the different lights are cast, it is impossible to unsee.

It is also unreasonable to close the eyes:

THE CURRENT MOMENT STRIPPED NAKED AND TURNED TO A SHOW

A PRODUCT – PER KILO OR FOR A DIME?

Fugazzi Market

Outside of funcitional perfumery, people of yesterday were drawn to perfume because it was not a mere representation or factual recreation of the scents they got from surroundings.

The part of the market where the perfume was sold was – not a market.

The perfume was also perceived as an intellectual, artistic, and artisanal recreation of a unique idea. Thus, it was not a product sold to users per kilo, like apples and figs. It was presented in smaller packaging exclusively and by no means exchanged for a dime.

Fugazzi did a fantastic job stripping the current moment naked and turning it into a show.

After smelling the perfumes, which were also represented by real fruits, visitors were offered coins, and they could choose and pick the sample from the actual vending machine.

The Fugazzi stand was one of the most crowded during the first three days of Esxence. It was almost impossible to pass by the long line of people waiting in front of the vending machine

I can only imagine how it looked on Day 4, which was open to the general public. Or maybe the line between business visitors and the general public has become as blurred as the difference between a fruit market and a perfumery.

I was actually tempted to cut through the crowd and replace the given coin with an apple (the green ones looked very tempting). But, in these circumstances, asking for an apple on a fruit market show would be very odd, wouldn’t it?

THE DUPE SHOW

Double Dragon

Another Italian brand that has also stripped the current moment naked and turned it into a show was Double Dragon from RTW group:

The word “dupe” is frequently used because dupes are evidently and openly everywhere.

Still, in the global perfume community, when speaking about an eminent brand, it is definitely less controversial (and risky) to use the word “fuckin’” than the word “dupe”.

While the first word is (still a bit) controversial (or just not well-mannered) but potentially beneficial, “dupe” is clearly pejorative, so it is often spoken below the voice. It is also damaging for the business based on exclusiveness, thus it is rarely written or published.

Double Dragon did precisely the opposite – their stand was screaming “Dupe show!”.

The stand was not big, but I noticed it from a distance:

Remember those shops that offer the service of applying whatever prints on T-shirts? Looking at the stand, my first association was the unmistakable guerilla message: “We don’t care for exclusives!”

“For this fair, we invented a game by copying all the most copied accords and mixing them into the two total dupes. The game is called Dupe Show, because on our stand the Esxence visitors can vote on which dupe they like more.”

I smelled the two dupes of the dupes: what a punch to my nose and what a slap to, well, so many….

The brand’s collection presented outside the Dupe Show did not include a gourmand. Still remembering the smell of the last perfume inspired by green apple, I smelled Teen Spirit, a perfume named after the popular deodorant Kurt Cobain used and infused into Nirvana’s hit.

“Do you know who Kurt Cobain was?”, I heard the question and instantly remembered the profound feeling of loss I felt back then in 1994.

I really liked the two very young people who presented the brand. They looked like my grunge-obsessed friends and me during high school in the 1990s. They were also radically different-looking compared to the kids of probably the same age, which flooded Esxence 2025 as content creators and fragrance lovers.

But let’s not be fooled:

What Double Dragon did by screaming “Dupe Show!” at the collective face of Esxence 2025 was the same kind of marketing I saw eslwhere. The difference was mainly related to the targeted group of buyers.

The change of name that made My Sin (1925, exhibited on L’Osmotheque’s stand) a success shows that controversial marketing is everything but new:

This woolf changed hair many times, but its nature remained unchanged. It always derives from the hunger to stand out on the market.

Now it is fed also on the reasoning that young buyers buy the familiar, that their willingness to stand out in a crowd had been gradually reduced to pure lazy loudness and that they are developing progressively shorter attention spans.

Who fuckin’ cares, right?

Those changes in young buyers’ behaviour and habits were not initially originated within the perfume business itself. Nevertheless, once they became apparent as a general trend, they became treated as business assets and – logically, but sadly – further carefully groomed by the businesses that deal with large numbers.

Now they occupy the territory where art perfumery thrived.

So – hit them hard! Give them dupe of the dupe in stronger and stronger concentration, and biger and biger controversy or show.

The Esxence 2025 reflected that struggle to stand out:

It was too much, too loud, and – above all – much the same.

THE LIGHTHOUSES

Back to the thought about needing the new lighthouse to show us the right direction:

While listening to the sentence of the successful, long-standing business insider, distributor, brand owner, and perfume connoisseur, I immediately thought none of the existing lighthouses was mentioned — and it’s not that there were none.

The brands swim and drown in the sea, already overcrowded with lighthouses of all sorts.

Esxence 2025 also showed that lighthouses work more than ever – only the light they spread has changed.

God help too small or quiet brands, and good luck to all new brands who believe they arrived at the show just in time.

A new path is needed, instead of just having another lighthouse for the more light show on the current routes. That first requires a willingness to find solution, and than the courage to take a risk.