This IAO-Nominated Perfumer Makes Perfume from Swiss Money

Postmodern Perfumer | Newsletter #1

Andreas Wilhelm is the nose behind the Swiss fragrance brand PERFUME.SUCKS. One of the fragrances in his Conspiracy line, WEALTH 4181, got selected as one of ten finalists at the Art and Olfaction Awards 2024 in the category Artisanal.

The winners will be announced at the tenth Art and Olfaction Awards on June 7, 2024, at Casa do Alentejo in the heart of Lisbon, Portugal.

With over 20 years of experience creating scents for other brands, Andreas Wilhelm launched his own label in 2017 with a mission to disrupt the industry through radical transparency, open-source formulas, and provocative storytelling.

We spoke to him about WEALTH 4181, the inception of PERFUME.SUCKS and his critical stance on the current state of the fragrance industry:

Andreas, congratulations on being nominated for the Art and Olfaction finals in Lisbon! How are you feeling about it?

I'm still speechless, to be honest. After "Fuchsrot" I made for Bodé Studios won the award in the independent category last year, I thought it couldn't get any better. And now I'm looking forward to Lisbon and the award show. It's an incredible honor.

Let's talk about your nominated fragrance, WEALTH 4181. What's the concept behind it?

With WEALTH 4181, we want to remind people that depending on the socioeconomic context we grow up in, we have different opportunities in life. This scent is based on a headspace analysis of a freshly printed 200 Swiss franc note and envelops the wearer in a luxurious cloud. How much is your soul worth?

I'm intrigued! Can you explain more about how you did the headspace analysis of the banknote?

Well, I used to work at Givaudan and later got the appropriate equipment from someone. Basically, air is drawn through an absorber tube, later eluted with Methyl Tertiary Buthyl Ether, and analyzed with GC-MS technology.

Think of it like this - imagine you have a fancy vacuum cleaner that sucks up the smell molecules from an object. Then those molecules get washed out with a special liquid and fed into a machine that separates and identifies each individual scent compound. After that, I just had to evaluate the raw materials and find alternatives to make sure they complied with fragrance regulations.

Your brand name and the radical open-source approach of printing the fragrance formula on the bottle have struck a nerve in the industry. What do you think is currently going wrong in the perfume world?

Instead of transparency, people like Christophe Laudamiel call for copyright laws. That's so conservative. Perfumes have always been inspired by something, so what? I think we really need more education on a consumer level also about synthetic and natural ingredients used in perfumery.

Transparency of ingredients, combinations, and ratios will be key. How can you attribute an accord to the original creator? How do you know who was first to come up with it? Imagine a world where every combination of ethyl maltol, ambroxan, and evernyl has to be credited to Francis Kurkdjian because of Baccarat Rouge 540. Do we need that or should we just focus on transparency and education?

Your Conspiracy line is centered around social issues. What's the story behind the name and concept?

To be honest, retailers told me the products were too cheap at €98 for 50ml and there were no stories to go with them, so customers would think they weren't quality. People smell with their wallets! I guess their profit margin was too low.

So I got the idea for the Conspiracy line. I started telling stories too and raised the prices to €144 for 30ml. But since I always said scents must speak for themselves, it’s kind of like a conspiracy.

Besides, the accords are based on the golden ratio, so I only used Fibonacci numbers in the formulas - 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, etc. And the logos are printed so that the recipes underneath are still visible when you hold the bottles up to the light. It's a long story!

One last question - which fragrance will you be wearing in Lisbon at the awards?

Haha, WEALTH4181 of course! The evening belongs to Wealth.

Brilliant. Thank you so much for your time and insights, Andreas. And all the best in Lisbon.