Olfiction

Olfiction is an independent fragrance house, perfumery studio and publisher based in Buckinghamshire, England. It was founded in 2016 by perfumer Pia Long and Nick Gilbert, whose background is in fragrance evaluation and development [2]. Alongside its own perfumes, the company creates scents for other brands and ingredient producers, and it has published its first book, a collection of essays and perfume formulas written by Long.

The company sums up its outlook in the tagline "Stories for your nose". Its output spans three lines under one roof: the limited Lab Editions, the theatrical Eau de Boujee perfumes, and the Demo Accords book with its matching sample set. Olfiction marked its tenth anniversary in 2026 and remains active.

Both founders came to perfume through the shop floor. According to the company, Long began selling fragrance as a teenager in the 1980s and started training as a perfumer in 2006; she has since created hundreds of formulas for all kinds of scented products. Her earlier roles, as described by the trade publication BeautyMatter, include junior perfumer at Lush and technical manager at Equinox Aromas, along with a monthly column in the trade magazine Perfumer & Flavorist.

Gilbert started selling fragrance around the turn of the millennium. The company says he soon became drawn to niche perfumery and moved into product and fragrance development, where he became responsible for designing the concepts and stories behind fragrances. BeautyMatter lists his earlier posts as trainer and fragrance ambassador for Penhaligon's, and as store and online presence manager for the London fragrance retailer Les Senteurs. His title varies from source to source. The company's own pages call him an evaluator and a scent designer, BeautyMatter calls him creative director, and the niche fragrance site CaFleureBon calls him a creative evaluator.

Together the pair say they have spent more than 60 years combined inside the fragrance industry, creating perfumes, evaluating them, writing about them and teaching others to understand them. In 2016 they set up Olfiction as a fragrance house and consultancy. BeautyMatter describes the early business as one that offered perfume creation, storytelling, copywriting and training to individuals and companies, with Long as head perfumer and Gilbert as creative director. The same 2023 feature names two further members of the team, perfumer Ezra-Lloyd Jackson and perfumer and chemist Marianne Martin [12].

For its first years Olfiction worked mainly behind the scenes. BeautyMatter reports that its clients have included Unilever, Designer Parfums and Charlotte Tilbury [12], and CaFleureBon notes work for the niche houses Beaufort and Zoologist. Some commissions later fed into the founders' own perfumes. A company blog post recalls that Ford asked the studio to recreate the smell of classic cars for the launch of an electric Mustang, a brief that eventually led to the Petrolhead fragrance [5].

In November 2020 Long and Gilbert launched Boujee Bougies, a candle label. The name plays on "boujee", a shortening of the French term bourgeoisie, and the line was built around what the founders called a postmodern perfumery manifesto. As BeautyMatter summarises it, the manifesto defines a postmodern perfume as one that "can be created by anyone, anywhere" [12]. It positions itself against what it calls an "overly marketing-led and artificially gatekept" approach to perfume, rooted in a European point of view.

The first products were scented candles made with soy, rapeseed and beeswax in recyclable glass. By 2023 the range held seven candles, with names such as Cuir Culture, Succulent, Gilt, Hellflower and Queen Jam, the last inspired by a Finnish raspberry and bilberry preserve. In September 2023 the founders followed with Eau de Boujee, a line of eaux de parfum that debuted after being shown at the Esxence fragrance fair. Each perfume grew out of an earlier candle. Verdant developed from Succulent, Queen from Queen Jam and Gilded from Gilt.

The founders' tenth year brought two new strands. In January 2026 Long appeared in the Institute of Art and Olfaction's "Meet a Nose" series with Saskia Wilson-Brown to discuss Demo Accords, Olfiction's first book. In March 2026 CaFleureBon reviewed the first four Lab Editions, a series released to mark the anniversary [10]. Two more Lab Editions followed in June 2026, bringing the collection to six fragrances.

Olfiction Limited is a company registered in England and Wales [2]. It describes itself as an independent perfume house and publisher, and no parent company or outside investor is named. The 2024 Art + Olfaction Awards listing describes Long as co-owner of Boujee Bougies, the label that became Eau de Boujee; that line is now sold through Olfiction's own website. Eau de Boujee is a separate label from the same founders, not a former name of Olfiction.

Olfiction's central idea is that "scents and stories are structurally inseparable", and the company says everything it does reflects that belief. It describes fragrance as a form of communication and perfumery as a language. The founders say they draw inspiration from raw materials, personal obsessions, sentimental memories, literature and entertainment. They also stress learning and skill over "shortcuts or smoke and mirrors", in the company's words.

The company presents itself as an independent niche house and describes its perfumes as curious, wearable and original. Its three product lines take that storytelling idea in different directions. Lab Editions draw on the studio's own archive, Eau de Boujee is framed as "perfume as theatrical performance", and Demo Accords places perfume alongside essays and fiction.

### Lab Editions

According to Olfiction, the Lab Editions are fragrances "born from curiosity". They include personal experiments, studies of raw materials and accords, and works first made for events and exhibitions, all drawn from ten years of formulas. They come in 15 ml bottles of the same kind the studio sends to clients during fragrance development. The brand's own line for the collection is "The fragrances we couldn't keep to ourselves."

The first four, released for the anniversary, were Cologne: Orange, Iconic, Petrolhead and Salmiakki. CaFleureBon reviewer Oli Marlow, writing about bottles supplied by the brand, described them as "an eclectic collection of limited production fragrances" that showed off the duo's craft. In the same piece Gilbert called the series the pair's "most liberating creative outlet". Long said she had many personal, unfinished starting points with no home in the brands or the client work. In March 2026 she said that more eaux de cologne and fiction themes were planned [10].

Each Lab Edition comes with a short back story on the company blog. Cologne: Orange explores the whole orange tree, using the fruit, flower, bark and leaves. Iconic began as an idealised scent memory of an anti-ageing face cream from the 1980s that smelled of rose and iris with a tuberose note. Petrolhead traces back to the Ford brief, and the brand describes it as an aromatic take on Bulgari Black. Salmiakki is what the company calls "the Finnish gourmand". Gourmand scents smell sweet and edible; the founders note that client work brings frequent requests for them, although neither of them wears the style.

The two June 2026 releases continued the pattern. The Tea grew from a "scent of humidity" accord that Long refined during a brief for a project that never launched, and it combines several teas, from earl grey and jasmine tea to matcha and maté. Librido is presented as a fragrance for book lovers, built around notes of paperbacks, fresh ink and magazine pages.

### Eau de Boujee

Eau de Boujee is presented as an experiment in perfume as performance, treating fragrance as a narrative and participatory art form. BeautyMatter described the perfumes as standalone products, each different enough from its candle origin to stand on its own. Verdant pictures a skyscraper overgrown with foliage. Queen was inspired by Alice in Wonderland, and Gilded tells the story of golden light in a celestial temple. The line also includes Infleurno, which a CaFleureBon reviewer credited with finding "a new way to present citrus aromas".

### Demo Accords

Demo Accords, written by Long, is Olfiction's first book. It contains ten fully published perfume formulas, one piece of fiction and nine essays on political and personal topics. In the perfume trade, a demo accord is used to sell raw materials to perfumers. The company says it uses the form "as protest", and it sums the project up as "Perfume, Prose, Protest."

The chapter titles show the range of subjects. They include "ANTIFA (a cruelty-free musk against fascism)", "Have You Tried...? (aromatherapy about ableism)", "Male Gaze Repellent (a green chypre)" and "Dupe This (oud rose)". A sample set holds nine of the ten published formulas; Dupe This is left out. The company has also published the full ingredient list for the set on its blog.

### Production and materials

Every trial is formulated, evaluated and compounded at the studio in rural Buckinghamshire. Once a formula is final, it is sent to the company's partner Accords & Parfums in Grasse, France, where the bulk fragrance is compounded; bottling then takes place back in Buckinghamshire [6]. The studio says it uses a mix of natural and synthetic ingredients and aims to use sustainable and renewable materials wherever possible.

Olfiction states that none of its products are tested on animals. It describes all its fragrances as vegan, with named exceptions: Eau de Boujee Gilded, which contains beeswax absolute, and two Demo Accords formulas that contain ambergris tincture [6]. The company says it is a member of the fragrance industry association IFRA. No third-party certifications are documented.

The perfumes are sold through the company's own website, which ships worldwide from the UK, and through stockists in Australia, Europe, the United Kingdom and the United States [7].

In 2024 Long received the Septimus Piesse Visionary Award at the Art + Olfaction Awards, presented at a ceremony in Lisbon on 7 June 2024 [11]. The award goes to a person or group showing exceptional vision in how scent is used, developed or imagined. It was given to Long personally and lists her as perfumer and co-owner of Boujee Bougies, not as the creator of a specific Olfiction product. The company's own pages refer to her as an award-winning perfumer.

The brand has drawn attention mainly from specialist fragrance and trade media. BeautyMatter published a feature on Boujee Bougies and the founders' postmodern approach in August 2023, and CaFleureBon reviewed the Lab Editions in 2026. Olfiction's homepage also quotes a review of Petrolhead by Luca Turin.

Olfiction is active. Its most recent dated blog post, from 25 June 2026, introduced The Tea [5]. As of October 2026, the company's homepage announced two further Lab Editions, to be previewed at the Barnes Fragrance Fair. The company continues to run its studio business for outside clients alongside its own fragrance lines.