Season 8, Episode 15: Pitti Roundup Part Two – The Fragrances That Stopped Suzy in Her Tracks
Suzy & Nicola are back for part two of their Pitti Fragranze roundup, continuing their deep-dive into the perfume launches, houses and ideas that made this year’s Florence fair feel so full of possibility. Having attended Pitti Fragranze for thirteen years, Suzy felt this was one of the most exciting editions yet. Alongside the return of classical perfume structures reinterpreted for contemporary tastes, she noticed a growing confidence in brands drawing upon personal heritage, local materials, food culture, landscape, ritual and memory. In this episode, the pair explore some of the fragrances that most vividly expressed those stories. From a Chinese-French house capturing the transient scent of sun-dried osmanthus, to Korean brands evoking fire-charred ingredients, graceful calligraphy and fine-dining balances of flavour, this episode travels widely through fragrance’s newest creative terrain. There is also a decadent, night-time gourmand journey through Bandra in Mumbai; a woody incense scent from Reserve en Afrique; and two beautifully emotional creations from Italian poet-perfumer Meo Fusciuni. Listen for a perfume that smells of roasted chestnuts, fermented tea and Korean seaweed crisp; a vivid, herbal peach; a “new century” Parma violet growing in a cold spring garden; and a cocoa-rich love story that charts the bitterness and sweetness of heartbreak… https://fragranze.pittimmagine.com/en/events-calendar Reserve en Afrique – Woodoo Reserve en Afrique’s Woodoo is a woody, resinous composition built around the warm, meditative pull of incense, balsams and dry woods. It opens with ginger and olibanum, giving the fragrance both brightness and a slightly peppery, ceremonial character. Labdanum, iris and white flowers arrive at the heart, adding a soft, ambery texture: floral, but shadowed by resin and a certain velvety darkness. The base of musk, benzoin, cedar, tonka bean and cypriol brings a long-lasting warmth, with dry woods, sweet balsams and a gently smoky earthiness. The name suggests ritual, mystery and a connection to wood, smoke and spirituality, and the composition seems to play with all those ideas. This is not necessarily a loud fragrance, but one that gradually develops its presence on skin: incense-lit, softly floral, smooth with tonka, and grounded by a woody, mineral base. Reserve en Afrique draws inspiration from African landscapes, stories and olfactory traditions, translating them into contemporary fine fragrance. Woodoo feels like a particularly atmospheric example of that approach: a scent that uses familiar perfume materials, but lets them tell a more transportive story. Cent.PM – eau de pensée Eau de pensée, the debut fragrance from Chinese-French house Cent.PM, begins with an intensely personal memory: founder Haoyuan recalling the childhood ritual of sun-drying osmanthus blossoms in a field. Rather than trying to make a literal flower portrait, Cent.PM treats the memory as something unstable and shifting. The perfume is intended to capture that instant when an old recollection suddenly brightens into focus, only to blur again as past and present overlap. The opening is vibrant and light-filled, with notes including neroli, pink pepper and mandarin lending a sparkling, green-citrus lift. From there, the fragrance becomes more veiled and contemplative, eventually settling into a warm, close-to-the-skin afterglow. Osmanthus can be a fascinating material in perfume: floral, but also capable of suggesting apricot, tea, suede and a certain honeyed, almost leathery softness. Here, its role appears to be as much emotional as olfactory, carrying the atmosphere of childhood, sunshine, landscape and passing time. Cent.PM approaches fragrance as a meeting point between cultures, materials and memory. Its name and first release suggest an interest in the fleeting, in-between time of late afternoon: a moment for reflection, imagination and sensory recollection. Sisology – Être toi Korean house Sisology’s Être toi is a tender, uplifting fragrance built around the idea that being fully oneself is its own kind of beauty. The scent opens with freesia and peach, combining clean floral freshness with soft, gently juicy fruit. Rose sits at the heart, bringing a familiar, romantic bloom, but the fragrance’s real appeal lies in the ease of its overall structure. Patchouli, woods and amber provide a warm, lightly earthy base that gives the composition depth without overwhelming its airiness. Sisology describes Être toi as a perfume for the easy laugh, the hopeful heart and the comfort of sincerity. It is imagined as sunlight through lace curtains: bright but soft, clean but intimate. That makes it sound less like a dramatic statement fragrance and more like a gentle confidence-builder, the kind of scent that feels naturally part of the wearer rather than something imposed upon them. The brand is based in Seoul and works across fragrance and sensorial beauty. Its style is rooted in the expressive, emotional side of scent, but presented in a modern, approachable way. Être toi is a quietly optimistic introduction to that world. Insenf – Charred Wood Founded in Seoul in 2025, Insenf is a niche perfume house that combines traditional Korean craftsmanship with modern scent science. Its work takes everyday cultural references such as fashion, food and lifestyle, then interprets them through fragrance in unusual and highly textural ways. Charred Wood is part of the Table Collection, inspired by ingredients transformed through fire, smoke and time. In perfume terms, that means the scent has the drama of a meal cooked over open heat: black pepper freshly crushed on the table; chestnuts slowly roasting; smoke rising from salted seaweed; the mineral warmth of charcoal lingering after the flames are gone. The opening combines black pepper, roasted chestnut and smoked sea salt. It is dry, spicy and savoury, with the chestnut adding a nutty, almost comforting contrast to the salt and smoke. The heart moves in an even more unexpected direction: fermented tea, Korean seaweed crisp, incense resin, myrrh and clove leaf. These notes suggest a rich umami character, but the resins and clove also ensure it remains recognisably perfumery rather than becoming simply gastronomic. Charcoal, hinoki, amberwood, patchouli and vetiver provide the base. Hinoki is especially evocative here, its dry, aromatic woodiness echoing Japanese and Korean bathing and temple woods, while vetiver and patchouli add rootiness and shadow. Charred Wood sounds like a fragrance for anyone who enjoys scent at its most savoury, smoky and unconventional. Kuoca – Wild Peach Kuoca approaches fragrance through the lens of fine dining, treating its compositions as carefully balanced experiences in which freshness, sweetness, texture and contrast all matter. The Korean beauty brand is best known for making sensorial products that feel deliciously tactile, and Wild Peach takes that same appetite for pleasure into fragrance. Wild Peach centres on the sunny, juicy character of ripe fruit, but it is not designed as a dense peach syrup. Verbena and mint bring a sparkling, aromatic greenness that makes the peach feel freshly picked and still cool from the morning air. Peach blossom adds a lighter floral aspect, while ho wood lends a smooth, softly woody finish. The brand describes Wild Peach through the image of freshly squeezed peaches from Provence, with aromatic herbs giving a more sophisticated edge to the fruit. This sounds like a peach scent for those who usually find fruit fragrances too candied or obvious: bright, translucent and almost thirst-quenching rather than sticky. It is also a useful example of one of the wider trends Suzy noticed at Pitti: perfume houses taking familiar notes and shifting expectations around them. Peach here becomes less about confectionery and more about the contrast between ripe flesh, green leaves, fresh herbs and pale wood. Salon de Nevaeh – Choseo Korean house Salon de Nevaeh was impossible to overlook at Pitti, not least because of its exquisite bottle design. The flacons are ceramic and inset with mother-of-pearl, giving them the presence of miniature objects of craft rather than simply containers for perfume. Inside, the fragrances draw upon Korean aesthetic and cultural references. Choseo is inspired by “Grass Script”, a flowing form of cursive calligraphy in which brushstrokes can appear dynamic, spontaneous and unruly, while still carrying great poise and control. That movement is reflected in the perfume’s green composition. Dried herbs, green leaves, lime and mandarin give the opening an angular, bright and almost brush-like energy. Spearmint, geranium and muguet create a cooler, softer heart, while pine needle, galbanum, rosewood and musk provide a base that is leafy, resinous and quietly woody. The brand describes the fragrance as sharp and unruly green up close, but gentler and pale green from a distance. That is a beautiful way of describing the evolution of a green scent: the vivid snap of crushed stems and herbs gradually becoming more hazy, calm and atmospheric on skin. Salon de Nevaeh is described as Korea’s first niche perfume house and translates traditional Korean culture into contemporary fragrance. Sasva – Forbidden Words Bombay Gourmand Sasva is a contemporary Indian perfume house that refuses easy ideas of heritage or nostalgia. Rooted in India but created for a global, modern audience, the brand looks to poetry, ritual, cinema, craftsmanship, street life and contemporary culture to form what it calls a new olfactory language. Forbidden Words Bombay Gourmand takes the original Forbidden Words fragrance into the pulsating night-time atmosphere of Bandra, Mumbai. It imagines the warm, smoky air of bars and late-night streets, where desire, ambition, indulgence and possibility mingle with the scents of cocktails and boozy desserts. The fragrance is by Luca Maffei, and its core is the contrast between oud, salted caramel and vanilla. Sweet orange and rose introduce a nod to Indian sweets, while patchouli, davana and labdanum help give the composition its darker, more aromatic structure. The salted caramel adds a modern gourmand temptation, but the oud and resins are there to ensure depth, shadow and texture. It sounds like a perfume of excess, but not necessarily heaviness. The use of orange, rose and davana can bring luminosity and lift, while patchouli and labdanum make the fragrance feel woody and smoky rather than merely sugary. It is an especially enticing choice for anyone who likes their gourmands with a little danger and a lot of atmosphere. Meo Fusciuni – Amara Mia Meo Fusciuni is the Italian independent house created by perfumer Giuseppe Imprezzabile. The brand is known for its deeply personal approach to scent, using fragrance as a poetic medium for memory, landscape, love, loss and the sensations that remain after an experience has passed. Amara Mia is a cocoa-centred fragrance that explores the bitter and sweet sensations of a relationship coming to an end. Rather than simply making cocoa smell delicious, it uses it as an emotional material: comforting, sensual, nostalgic and, ultimately, a little painful. The opening combines cocoa with raspberry and candied orange, creating a warm, fruit-bright impression that could suggest the first sweetness of love or the urge to seek comfort after heartbreak. Iris then brings a powdery, elegant softness, while sandalwood and tonka bean create creaminess and warmth. The dry-down is intended to hold both bitterness and serenity: an acknowledgement that love can end, change and still leave something precious behind. This is an enveloping fragrance, but it has an emotional seriousness beneath the gourmand appeal. It is ideal for anyone drawn to cocoa scents that feel more intimate and melancholic than edible: less chocolate box, more a late-night memory held close to the skin. Meo Fusciuni describes its perfume-making as a language of sensing, memory and emotion. Meo Fusciuni – Viole Nere With Viole Nere, Meo Fusciuni reinterprets the iconic Parma violet in a way that retains its powdery charm but roots it firmly in earth, weather and emotional complexity. Violet can so easily become overly sweet, cosmetic or nostalgic in perfume. Here, it is pictured in a garden in the early days of March, when the soil is still cold and damp from winter, but the first signs of spring are beginning to appear. Cassis provides an opening sparkle that feels both fruity and green. Violet, iris and floral accords offer their tender, powdery and elegant facets, while vetiver, patchouli and incense pull the scent downward towards soil, roots, resin and shadow. The result is not a naïve floral, but a violet with history and gravity. It has the soft focus and familiar charm of an old-fashioned Parma violet, while feeling more textural, darker and more contemporary. The brand describes it as “a Violetta from the 1920s but of the new century”, which perfectly captures that meeting of vintage romance and modern perfumery. Viole Nere won the 2024 Accademia del Profumo Award for Best Artistic Perfume by an Independent Brand. It is a fitting accolade for a fragrance that takes a beloved, often underestimated note and gives it complexity, atmosphere and an unforgettable sense of place. Taken together, these two Pitti Fragranze episodes reveal a perfume world that feels newly confident in the quieter powers of beauty. There were, of course, striking ideas and vividly imaginative stories at every turn – shipwrecked tobacco, the rare botanicals of Mount Olympus, sun-dried osmanthus, fire-charred Korean ingredients and Mumbai after dark – but what stayed with Suzy most was the sense of refinement running through so many of the fragrances. These scents weren’t about loudness and longevity for their own sake. Instead, perfumers seemed increasingly interested in classical forms, traditional materials and recognisable olfactory families, then finding new ways to make them feel alive on skin. Iris appeared again and again, in textures ranging from buttery and cosmetic to rooty, cool and leathery. Rose felt more nuanced than merely romantic, paired with tea, pepper, tobacco, dark woods or amber. Leather returned in supple, smoky and suede-like forms, while tobacco was made strange and compelling through salt, sunlight, water, fruit, smoke and resin. Amber and fougère also felt ripe for rediscovery. Rather than simply recreating the past, these fragrances used familiar structures as a starting point, playing with aldehydes, shaving soap, lavender, oakmoss, balsams and musks to create perfumes that nodded to vintage elegance while still feeling utterly wearable now. They were beautifully rounded compositions – full of character, but balanced; rich in material, but never overworked. Food remained an important source of inspiration, too, but often with greater complexity than straightforward sweetness. There were Nordic buns, salted caramel, smoked sea salt, roasted chestnut, fermented tea, seaweed crisp, cocoa, peach and boozy desserts. The most compelling examples did not smell like novelties. They used flavour, texture, heat, smoke and memory as tools of perfumery, bringing savoury, bitter, mineral, herbal or resinous facets into the picture. A fragrance might begin with a food reference, but develop into something much more layered and emotionally resonant. The emotive rendering of scent memories was perhaps the common thread connecting everything. Whether recalling a childhood field of osmanthus drying in the sun, the first violets in damp March earth, a beloved cabin bag, a mythological passage through darkness, a late night in Bandra, or the scent of warm peach and fresh herbs, these perfumes made distant places and private experiences feel immediately attainable. One spray, and a landscape, meal, garden, journey or moment of intimacy could be summoned again. Even the bottles reflected this renewed appreciation for craft and beauty. Ceramic flacons with mother-of-pearl inlay, considered glasswork and objects designed to be treasured suggested that perfume is increasingly being presented not simply as a product, but as a complete artistic experience. Ultimately, the most exciting message from Pitti Fragranze was that a perfume does not need to shout in order to make an impression. It can be poetic, nuanced and exquisitely composed. It can be softly spoken but emotionally enormous. And when traditional materials are handled with imagination, sensitivity and a real sense of story, they can still surprise us completely… And hurrah for that!
/https://artwork.captivate.fm/818390fc-ca2c-44e9-bd49-d278ca11f840/0a58bd3b70b1cb97143a57f4bfdbd0ba.jpg)
/https://artwork.captivate.fm/818390fc-ca2c-44e9-bd49-d278ca11f840/0a58bd3b70b1cb97143a57f4bfdbd0ba.jpg)