MiN New York

MiN New York, stylized MiN NEW YORK, is an American niche fragrance house based in New York City. It was founded by Chad Murawczyk together with Mindy Yang, and its name refers to the "New York minute" — the idea of time passing quickly in the city. The house frames scent as a record of lived experience, describing itself as "a liquid anthology of lived experience." Its fragrances are blended by perfumers in Grasse, France.

Sources disagree on the founding date. The company itself dates its founding to 1999 [5], while several editorial profiles place the launch in 2010 [6]. The two figures describe different milestones: 1999 marks the founding of the business, and 2010 the opening of the brand's flagship boutique in SoHo. The brand remains active: its physical store on Crosby Street has since closed [15], but it continues to sell online and presented two new fragrances at the ESXENCE trade fair in Milan in 2025 [16].

Before MiN New York, Murawczyk worked in beauty manufacturing and product development, and had co-founded the men's hair-care line American Crew [6]. According to founder-stated accounts, he established the house originally to curate niche fragrance brands from Italy and France rather than to produce his own. He describes himself not as a perfumer but as "a designer, a product developer, a thinker, a tinkerer," working from a belief that "the world does not need more products, just better products" [10].

The name carries the brand's central idea. "MiN stands for the 'New York minute' and explores moments, fast and slow, because time is an allusion in New York City," Murawczyk has written. Co-founder Mindy Yang shaped the retail experience around guided fragrance discovery, comparing the process to a wine tasting.

In 2010, MiN New York opened a flagship boutique at 117 Crosby Street in SoHo, presented as a haute parfumerie and atelier. The store combined the communal feel of a European apothecary with the atmosphere of an American speakeasy, displaying fragrances along a dark wooden bar. Alongside its own curation, it stocked international niche houses such as Naomi Goodsir, Laboratorio Olfattivo, Amouage and Juliette Has a Gun, and offered a one-hour "Bespoke Fragrance Flight" consultation in which customers sampled around 25 scents across three rounds.

In 2014, the house launched the first volume of its own line, SCENT STORIES, after roughly two and a half years of development [10]. The collection comprised eleven fragrances, including Long Board, Moon Dust, Old School Bench and The Botanist. A second volume followed, built around the senses, with releases such as Ad Lumen, Plush, Chef's Table, Forever Now and Coda. In 2025, the brand debuted Origin of Love and A Moment Apart, both from its Experimental Collection, at ESXENCE in Milan [16].

MiN New York positions itself as a luxury niche house built on craftsmanship and scarcity rather than volume. The company says each fragrance is produced only once a year for the entire world, and that every bottle carries a unique number recording the bottle, the batch size and the year. "True luxury is based on an actual tangible quality of materials and workmanship," Murawczyk has said, adding that he does not make fragrances "for the mass market" but "for individuals" [5]. He has described the aim as building "a luxury lifestyle brand from scratch" and "something that will be here long after I am gone."

The bottles are part of that positioning. According to the founder, the glass is produced in France on the same press used for the Chanel No. 5 bottle, with hand-screened panels and a magnetic closure designed to appear to float.

The house works chiefly in fragrance, organized under its SCENT STORIES line and an Experimental Collection, with a separate MOMENTO collection the founder has linked to his father's emigration from Havana. Scents are developed by master perfumers in Grasse and formulated, the company says, with a high proportion of natural raw materials. Forever Now, a frankincense-led scent from the second volume, is frequently singled out in editorial coverage as defining the house style, while Long Board has been cited as a bestseller. Prices for fragrances have been reported in the range of roughly 80 to 350 US dollars [6].

MiN New York was named in the top five perfumeries in the world in the 2014 Basenotes Reader's Choice Awards [13]. It has been profiled by titles including Interview, W Magazine and Wallpaper, with coverage focused on the founder, the Crosby Street boutique and the SCENT STORIES collections.

The brand remains active. Its Crosby Street boutique in SoHo is listed as closed [15], but MiN New York continues to operate through its own e-commerce and international stockists such as Bloomingdale's, Galeries Lafayette and Le BHV Marais [9]. Its most recent recorded activity is the launch of two fragrances at ESXENCE in Milan in March 2025 [16].