# ESTORAS ## Facts | | | |---|---| | Founded | 2021 | | Origin | Austria | | Headquarters | Vienna | | Status | Active | | Manufacturing | Grasse, France (perfume oil), Alpine region (bottle prints hand-stamped in a workshop at the foot of the Alps; bottling in an Alpine mountain village) | | Distribution | Multi-channel | | Website | https://estoras.co/de | ESTORAS is a fragrance brand based in Vienna, Austria, created by Paul-Anton Esterházy around the story of his grandfather, Prince Antal Esterházy, and a 1926 journey across the Sahara by car. The company behind it, ESTORAS Enterprises GmbH, is registered at the Commercial Court of Vienna [6]. Its first perfume, ANTAL – Chasing The Horizon, went on sale on 20 October 2021 [9]. The brand makes eaux de parfum named after stops on that expedition, from the port of Alexandria to the temples of Luxor. Its central object is a small travel perfume bottle that Antal left behind, which the founder says became the starting point for the first scent. ESTORAS is active, with a current range of four eaux de parfum and a newly added fragrance on its own online shop. ## Origin & founders The name itself points back to the family. According to the company, ESTORAS is the Latin form of Esterházy, and the founder repeated this in a 2025 interview, explaining that the brand could stand on its own while still nodding to its heritage [7]. The Esterházys were once the largest landowners in the Habsburg Empire and left Hungary after the post-war Communist takeover, as the Budapest city magazine We Love Budapest noted in a 2021 profile [8]. Paul-Anton Esterházy never met his grandfather. Antal died in 1944; Paul-Anton was born in 1986. He told We Love Budapest that he had collected every story he could about Antal since childhood, and described him as "a bit of a Great Gatsby of Hungary": a racing driver who was also a devout family man aware of the duties that came with the family name. The same profile describes Paul-Anton as an Oxbridge graduate and City financier who divides his time between Vienna and Bavaria, with German as his mother tongue. The story he chose to build on is the one the brand calls the Esterházy Safari. As the company tells it, Antal and his friend Count László Almásy were sitting by a fire in the Swiss Alps one winter, longing for warmth, when a remark about the Sahara turned into a gentlemen's wager. In the version Paul-Anton gave in Budapest, Antal had a telephone brought to the table, called the car maker Steyr in Graz and ordered a car to be delivered to Alexandria within two weeks. The pair then set off across the desert. ESTORAS says they became the first to cross the Sahara in a standard road car [2]. Almásy was later Antal's brother-in-law, having married his sister, according to the brand's heritage page. The trip marked the start of Almásy's long involvement with North Africa as an explorer and cartographer. His life later inspired Michael Ondaatje's novel *The English Patient* and its Oscar-winning film adaptation, a link the brand mentions often. The perfume connection comes from a single object. Paul-Anton says a small bottle of perfume that his grandfather carried on the 1926 trip survived in the family, with only dried residue left inside [8]. In the Gentleman's Gazette interview, he explains that he and a Cambridge classmate analysed that residue, identified a leathery tobacco base, and then updated it with citrus and pepper [7]. He has called this recreation of a hundred-year-old fragrance the moment ESTORAS was born. He told We Love Budapest that he had wanted to tell his grandfather's story in some form for about a decade before the launch. ## History & milestones The first fragrance, ANTAL – Chasing The Horizon, was launched on 20 October 2021. A launch report from that day, published by beautyme.com's Austria Insight, said it was available at the Viennese shops Le Parfum and The Treasury and through the brand's website. The unisex eau de parfum was composed by Marie Urban Le Febvre of the fragrance laboratory Urban Scents, then based in Berlin, and the brand design was created in Vienna by Studio Riebenbauer. Within weeks the brand had moved beyond Austria. In December 2021, We Love Budapest reported that ESTORAS had arrived at Madison on Andrássy út in Budapest. The magazine's interview, written by Peterjon Cresswell and conducted at the Gresham Palace, was later republished on the brand's own journal as "The Long Read". The range then grew into a series called THE ADVENTURES OF ANTAL, based on Almásy's original travel diary. According to the exhibitor profile of the Pitti Fragranze fair in Florence, the line was launched there with Port of Alexandria and Shadows of Giza [10]. Shores of Asyut followed later and was marked as new on the brand's shop in October 2026. By mid-2025 the company was presenting itself to a wider audience. A Gentleman's Gazette video interview, posted on 31 July 2025 and filmed at Café Goldegg in Vienna, described ESTORAS as launching its first four scents and gearing up for a debut in the United States [7]. The four-scent line in that description appears to refer to the current range as a whole rather than to four new releases, since ANTAL dates from 2021. ## Philosophy & positioning ESTORAS uses the tagline "Heritage in Motion". The company says it wants to capture the energy of the 1920s pioneers and rework it for people "who continue to chase impossible horizons today". In a short credo on its website, ESTORAS states that respect for its heritage sits at the centre of its philosophy, and that it aims to make fragrances as layered as the history that inspires them. The founder has rejected the idea of perfumes "for him" or "for her". In his 2025 interview he said the fragrances are meant for strong, complex characters with a taste for adventure rather than for one gender, and every scent is sold as unisex. He also said it mattered to him that the perfumes should be elegant and complex without being overpowering. Design plays a large part in how the brand presents itself. ESTORAS describes its bottle as a minimalist, modern take on the bold, angular shapes of Viennese Secession and Art Deco design from the 1920s. The logo, the company says, combines three references: the Wiener Werkstätte design collective, the former Steyr car logo and the Esterházy family crest. The caps are made from aged metal, which the brand links both to the Sahara car and to the brass tones of the Art Deco period. ## Products & innovation The range is built as a route map. The brand's heritage page follows the 1926 journey day by day, attaching a scent to each stop: - **Port of Alexandria** marks the travellers' arrival by sea on 22 February. In the 2025 interview, the founder said it carries a hint of gasoline to recall the ships in the port and the car being unloaded. - **Shadows of Giza** recalls the evening of 23 February at the Great Pyramid. The brand's shop labels it a bestseller. - **Shores of Asyut** is tied to a sunset on the banks of the Nile on 1 March. - **Fires of Luxor** is linked to a bonfire at the temples of Luxor on 3 March. ANTAL, described on the shop as "the original", stands apart as the scent drawn from the grandfather's bottle. It is sold in a 100 ml size and in a limited 30 ml edition, and a discovery set holds four 2 ml samples of the signature eaux de parfum. Fires of Luxor is the one unclear case. The heritage page presents it as a separate eau de parfum alongside the others [2], but it does not appear in the shop's product list, and its "Discover the scent" link leads to the ANTAL product page [1]. It may be the Luxor chapter of ANTAL, or a scent that has been withdrawn or is still to come. According to Gentleman's Gazette, every ESTORAS fragrance has an oil concentration of 16 percent, a level the founder said lets each scent last like an eau de parfum while staying light enough for daily wear [7]. Two perfumers are named by the brand. Marie Urban Le Febvre is a French perfumer and a professor at ISIPCA, the perfume institute linked to the University of Versailles. She graduated in 2000, worked for the fragrance houses Symrise and Takasago, and became independent in Berlin in 2014. She has also helped reconstruct historical perfumes with museums and archaeologists, and in 2023 she moved her Urban Scents laboratory to Trieste, Italy. The second, Zsolt Zólyomi, is described by ESTORAS as Hungary's only perfumer. He founded the Budapest fragrance shop Le Parfum in 2009 and studied at ISIPCA as well. Accounts of where the perfumes are made differ in their detail. The brand's own description says the perfume oil comes from Grasse, the French perfume centre, while the bottle prints are hand-stamped in a small workshop at the foot of the Alps and the fragrances are bottled in an Alpine mountain village [3]. Gentleman's Gazette gives a more specific version: the oils are blended in Grasse, and bottling and packaging take place in Austria and southern Germany [7]. The two accounts can be read as complementary rather than contradictory. No third-party certifications or proprietary technologies are documented for the brand. ## Recognition & press No industry awards are documented. Coverage has come mainly from interviews and launch reports: the Austria Insight launch note in October 2021, the We Love Budapest feature in December 2021, and the Gentleman's Gazette video interview in July 2025, which presented ESTORAS as an artisan Viennese fragrance house. ## Current status ESTORAS is active. Its online shop, in German and English, offered four 100 ml eaux de parfum, the 30 ml ANTAL edition and the discovery set as of October 2026, with Shores of Asyut flagged as new. The company also runs a journal on its website and an Instagram account. As of July 2025, it was described as preparing a launch in the United States; whether that launch has taken place is not publicly confirmed. ## Timeline {#belagg-timeline} | Year | Event | Source | |---|---|---| | 1926 | Heritage event (pre-brand): Prince Antal Esterházy and Count László Almásy cross the Sahara in a Steyr road car (the 'Esterházy Safari'), the story the brand is built on. | https://estoras.co/de/pages/heritage | | 2021 | Launch of the first fragrance, 'ANTAL - Chasing The Horizon' (unisex EdP by perfumer Marie Urban Le Febvre / Urban Scents; brand design by Studio Riebenbauer, Vienna), on 20 October 2021 at the Viennese stores Le Parfum and The Treasury and online. | https://www.beautyme.com/fragrance/2021/Austria-Insight_New_perfume_Antal_by_Estoras_inspired_by_the_lifestyle_of_Antal-Esterhazy_and_the_history_of_adventure_traveling10-2021.htm | | 2021 | After launching in Austria, ESTORAS arrives at Madison on Andrássy út, Budapest (reported December 2021). | https://welovebudapest.com/en/article/2021/12/06/shopping-the-prince-and-the-perfume-sahara-adventurer-antal-esterhazy-inspires-new-luxury-brand-estoras | | 2025 | Gentleman's Gazette interview (posted 31 July 2025) describes ESTORAS as launching its first four scents and gearing up for a U.S. debut. | https://www.gentlemansgazette.com/estoras-fragrance-founder-paul-esterhazy/ | | — | Pitti Fragranze (Florence): launch of the line THE ADVENTURES OF ANTAL with Port of Alexandria and Shadows of Giza, based on Count László Almásy's travel diary (fair year not shown on the fetched page). | https://fragranze.pittimmagine.com/en/exhibitors/E/estoras | ## Signature products {#belagg-products} - **ANTAL (Eau de Parfum)** — DAS ORIGINAL ANTAL Eau de Parfum 100 ml — https://estoras.co/de - **Shadows of Giza (Eau de Parfum)** — BESTSELLER Shadows of Giza Eau de Parfum 100 ml — https://estoras.co/de - **Port of Alexandria (Eau de Parfum)** — Port of Alexandria Eau de Parfum 100 ml — https://estoras.co/de - **Shores of Asyut (Eau de Parfum)** — NEU Shores of Asyut Eau de Parfum 100 ml — https://estoras.co/de - **Fires of Luxor (Eau de Parfum)** — Fires of Luxor Eau de Parfum — https://estoras.co/de/pages/heritage ## Mentioned in {#belagg-press} - **beautyme.com (Austria Insight)** (2021) — Launch report for the perfume 'Antal' by the new brand Estoras, 20 October 2021. — https://www.beautyme.com/fragrance/2021/Austria-Insight_New_perfume_Antal_by_Estoras_inspired_by_the_lifestyle_of_Antal-Esterhazy_and_the_history_of_adventure_traveling10-2021.htm - **We Love Budapest** (2021) — Feature/interview with Paul-Anton Esterházy on the launch of ESTORAS and its arrival in Budapest. — https://welovebudapest.com/en/article/2021/12/06/shopping-the-prince-and-the-perfume-sahara-adventurer-antal-esterhazy-inspires-new-luxury-brand-estoras - **Gentleman's Gazette** (2025) — Video interview with Paul-Anton Esterházy in Vienna: 'The Origins of ESTORAS, an Artisan Viennese Fragrance House'. — https://www.gentlemansgazette.com/estoras-fragrance-founder-paul-esterhazy/ ## Sources 1. (T1) https://estoras.co/de 2. (T1) https://estoras.co/de/pages/heritage 3. (T2) https://estoras.co/de/pages/about 6. (T2) https://estoras.co/de/policies/legal-notice 7. (T4) https://www.gentlemansgazette.com/estoras-fragrance-founder-paul-esterhazy/ 8. (T4) https://welovebudapest.com/en/article/2021/12/06/shopping-the-prince-and-the-perfume-sahara-adventurer-antal-esterhazy-inspires-new-luxury-brand-estoras 9. (T4) https://www.beautyme.com/fragrance/2021/Austria-Insight_New_perfume_Antal_by_Estoras_inspired_by_the_lifestyle_of_Antal-Esterhazy_and_the_history_of_adventure_traveling10-2021.htm 10. (T4) https://fragranze.pittimmagine.com/en/exhibitors/E/estoras --- Glowpedia · · Published 2026-10-13 Please cite with a link to the article URL.