The niche as a living ecosystem

By María Laura Ortiz Chiavetta — Scent Storyteller, Winelux Scent & Story

London has two niche perfumeries that could not be more different from one another. One has occupied the same location for forty-two years. The other exists for three days and then disappears. Both are, in their own way, perfect.

Within the space of forty-eight hours, I visited both: Les Senteurs in Belgravia — a house founded by the Hoxley family in 1984 — and the Niche Show London, a fair where more than one hundred emerging brands presented their collections.

Les Senteurs: Authority as Accumulation

There is something that only time can produce and that no marketing budget can buy: institutional memory. Les Senteurs possesses it. Forty-two years of careful selection, of editorial decisions about which brands deserve to occupy its shelves and which do not.

The walls display black-and-white photographs of the perfumers whose creations sit on those shelves. Serge Lutens. Frédéric Malle. Andy Tauer. They are not decoration — they are context. They are a declaration that behind every bottle there is a person with a story.

The Niche Show: The Energy of What Still Has No Name

The Niche Show is the exact opposite in almost every respect — and complementary in what truly matters. Founders present at their own stands, many of them also perfumers, designers and packagers. Projects that are still searching for their audience.

When you speak with the founder of a three-year-old brand standing behind their own display, you are having a conversation that exists in no other commercial format. There is no intermediary. There is no polished marketing narrative. There is simply a person telling you why they created what they created.

The Models That Emerged

Kinetic Perfumes Barcelona — An eleven-vial discovery set presented in a black box that was already an object of desire before being opened. Its fragrance Mosaic combines green, gourmand and spicy notes with cumin in a way that defies easy categorisation.

QHUE New York — Urban packaging with terracotta and black bottles, an aesthetic that references the city’s architecture. Its founder, Andreo Warren, was present with the energy of someone who completely believes in what he is building.

Bohemia Maison de Parfum — The most visually exuberant stand at the show. Colourful, dense, entirely different from the minimalist austerity that dominates contemporary niche aesthetics. A proposal unafraid of being celebratory.

Kajal — Something closer to an installation than to a stand. The illustration of Layala dominated the main wall. Its alcohol-free fragrance pearls from Lamar Cabillon demonstrated that niche perfumery is not merely a pricing category, but also a laboratory of ideas.

Tallulah O’Hara — Winner of the Niche London 2026 Award with Mrs. Jones, built around the figure of the 1920s flapper, combining spices, mint and bergamot, and finished with a homemade Madagascar vanilla tincture.

Regulation as an Unfinished Conversation

IFRA establishes limits on the use of certain ingredients according to their allergenic potential. In the United Kingdom, post-Brexit, there is an additional layer of complexity: local regulations that differ from European ones. There are fragrances — certain uses of patchouli were mentioned — that can be sold on the continent but not within the British market.

For smaller brands, that regulatory complexity represents a disproportionate cost. It is creating a silent fracture within the ecosystem between the brands that can access certain markets and those that cannot. It is not a comfortable conversation. But it is one the industry needs to have openly.

What Connects Both Worlds

Les Senteurs and the Niche Show are not competitors. They need one another. The brands present at the show today are the very brands that, ten years from now, may occupy the shelves of Belgravia.

What impacted me most about both experiences was the density of intention behind every conversation. Behind every bottle stood someone who had made a difficult decision: to create something small, specific, expensive to produce and difficult to distribute, within a market dominated by large corporations.

Luxury is measured by the density of meaning — not by the price of the bottle. Belgravia and the Niche Show, together, are proof that such a commitment is still possible.

María Laura Ortiz Chiavetta is the founder of Winelux Scent & Story and author of Diary of a Nose.

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