Perfume on the Radio
Exploring our deep and diverse cultural connections with smell, Perfume on the Radio is a periodic show hosted by Saskia Wilson-Brown for The Institute for Art and Olfaction. Each episode takes on a new theme, examining its connections with scent through interviews with perfumers, artists, academics, activists, and people who defy categorization.
Learn more at perfumeontheradio.com or at artandolfaction.com.
Perfume on the Radio
Field Report from Chile: Indies from the Andes
It’s easy to idealize a place, when you’re just passing through. Having said that, Chile is a remarkable country, full of remarkable perfumers, making remarkable smells.
Perfume on the Radio is back after a long hiatus, and we are resurfacing with a field report about the indie perfume scene in the delightful South American country. It’s the indies, in the Andes!
With
Alejandro Soto Rodríguez (Segundo Secretario y Cónsul de Chile en San Salvador)
Claudia Escobar Reyes (perfume evaluator)
David Muggioli (President, Fundación Chilena del Perfume | Andes Aromas)
David Santiago (Perfumer, Santiago David Parfums)
Eduardo Alonzo (Jefe técnico y de integración regional CENPROMYPE/SICA)
Osvaldo Cruz (co-founder Cruz y Valencia)
Andrés Gonzales and Raúl Toval (Santiago Perfumes)
Host: Saskia Wilson-Brown (The Institute for Art and Olfaction)
This is the first episode in a 2-part series. The second episode will air in October, 2025.
Sometimes you love a person, an experience, or a place so much and that love is tinged with longing. Because it's a person, an experience, or a place that you just can't own. By the very nature of this sort of love, you have to accept loss. You're just visiting, you're just passing through, the experience ends, ships in the night. It's easy to idealize a place when you're just visiting, of course. Having said that, Chile is a really special place. And now, back in Los Angeles, back in the daily nitty gritty of regular life, I find myself missing it ferociously. The place, the people, and of course, the smells. This episode of Perfume on the Radio is manifesting as a humble love letter to Chile. More specifically, it's an episode about perfume in the country that I am calling Indies from the Andes. You're about to listen to Perfume on the Radio, a periodic radio show and podcast where we explore the world through the lens of scent. My name is Saskia Wilson-Brown and I'm excited to be back for the relaunch of this show, which was on a year-long hiatus while the Institute for Art and Old Faction got busy doing some other projects. But I'm here now and we're here together and we're about to go on an old factory adventure to parts south. Let's get started. I love to travel, but I'm afraid of flying. So after two harrowing flights that went perfectly fine, I landed in Santiago and made my way outside with joy and thus began a 13 day cultural exchange whose purpose was for me to learn everything I could about Chilean perfumery. This program was organized by an amazing person called Alejandro Soto Rodriguez. Alejandro is Chilean, but he lives everywhere but in Chile. That's because he's a diplomat currently serving as the Chilean Consul in El Salvador. I relied heavily on Ali to explain things to me during my time in the country. He was always happy to help. And as such, you'll hear a lot from him in this episode. In fact, you'll hear from him right now. Hey Ale, it's really nice to have you on the show and I wanted to start out by asking you if you could just introduce yourself. Thank you very much Saskia. Well, I'm Alejandro Sotororigues. I'm a public administrator. I belong to the Foreign Service of Chile. I'm first secretary after being posted to Egypt and Spain before. My next post will be in Mexico. um I'm a very fond lover of perfumes. I've been trying to push in the national and regional sphere an approach uh to effective culture. So I've been behind some projects trying to push this uh very interesting and novel topic. That's awesome. And thank you for being on the show, Alejandro. It's really a delight. I'm a little bit curious, sort of big picture. What it is about perfume that you think is of interest from the perspective of what you do, know, diplomacy? uh Diplomacy and perfumery is really connected. We have to understand as like a basic definition of diplomacy is like the art of negotiation, of dialogue, of extending uh bridges of comprehension for some goal or for some objective. Perfumery is usually used as a product that represents an image. It could be very useful. For example, when a country wants to show that it has an important economy sector based on, for example, cosmetics and beauty, perfumery is a good case oh to show. Many countries have used these kind of tools to express their image in the international arena. And well, also we can understand it as a very beautiful gift when high representatives of different societies and throughout history have expressed their good and kind intentions to the other through a beautiful and meaningful gift as a perfume. That's really cool actually. I never tied the diplomacy aspect to the gift-giving aspect, but yeah, obviously now that you say it, it makes total sense. Maybe today these kind of gifts... might sound a little bit old fashioned or belonging to other times uh in the past. Nowadays, I believe that a high representative of a state can give you as a gift, uh some kind of package of natural aromas of your territory. Maybe if some government or state can have like kind of agreement with some company. that produces some certain fragrance and that could be a gift. We can think like in a kind of a similar way of giving away aromatic or perfume gift. These could be like a part of like international trade show or conference where you have an expo where your products represent an original object from your land, from your country. There are many cases that the perfume has been used as an object that gives like an image of the country that's representing. We just have to think about what used to happen like in the international expositions, especially like in the 19th century, in the beginning of the 20th century, where countries like France used to show a lot of their products through these expositions, these world exposures, as we also know them. So yes, there's a very interesting connection about it. For Chile specifically, do you feel like perfume can be a diplomatic tool? And if so, how? uh You know, our territory is very long and its nature is uh very wide and uh multidimensional, to say it some way. You have very specific weathers and land and geography all around like this. almost 5,000 kilometers length. uh In each area, you produce different herbs, plants, and smells that can be totally used for aromatic purposes. So yes, it could be used. And in this last term, Fundazione Machil de Tile, it's like our national foundation for the image of the country. is trying to support the knowledge of the smells of Chile concept, where we try to put in scene very specific plants that can be used for aromatic purposes. And they obviously related to certain lands. Fantastic. And so cool to know that Chile's Fundación de Imagen de Chile is working on scent as part of its sort of presentation of the country. I think that's super cool. If it were up to you, like if you were the king of the world, you know, and you could engage in diplomacy in any way that you saw fit, how would you use SENT? How would you make SENT part of your larger diplomatic efforts? Thank you for the question. It's very challenging. What would I do? Well, I have many things in mind, but from the beginning, I would love... that each country could identify its valuable resources on effective terms, identify, recognize, and protect its legacy in aromas, in uh ingredients, all the materials that could be used for sense. Maybe like perhaps in the international arena, we should be able to establish some kind of organization to protect, to preserve, to establish a minimum, some kind of common law to protect a species. I believe that these are the only tools that can make us preserve. I know that nowadays we are facing a very difficult situation in multilateralism and the international understanding, but up to the moment, it's the only way the world can establish a minimum. to maintain peace upon agreements. Totally. Bring it on. I know it sounds like very idealistic and emotional, but I think we need it nowadays. And well, in the world that we appreciate as in the sense, we can do something similar. And obviously, it's a resource that belongs to everyone in the world. That was Alejandro Soto Rodriguez and we'll be hearing more from him over the course of the next hour. To get another perspective on Chilean perfume, I invited Osvaldo Cruz, who is one of the founders of a niche perfume shop called Cruz y Valencia in central Santiago. What's cool about Cruz y Valencia, in addition to the fact that it's a beautiful space in a really cozy area with a lot of street life and restaurants and all sorts of cool stuff is that it has a high representation of Chilean niche perfume. I thought that was really cool and I was curious about what led Osvaldo to decide to approach his shop with such an international but also local lens. And so I started off our interview asking him about it. A quick note that Osvaldo answered my questions in Spanish. And so I'll jump in and paraphrase. what he had to say in English. Here is Osvaldo. So what Osvaldo is saying here is that while his shop has many international perfumes, they also decided to incorporate independent Chilean perfumes, such as Casaniche, Synergia, 432, and a couple others. because the independent brands in Chile were mostly selling online and they needed a space where people could experience them in person. As um he notes, course, perfume is best experienced in person. It's very hard to sell online. You have to smell. So that's sort of what he set out to do. The geography of Chile plays into how Osvaldo runs the shop. Chile is very, very long. And people living outside the capital don't often have access to the same sorts of resources as people within Santiago. So in order to help mitigate that, Osvaldo often takes Cruz y Valencia on the road. Then he also invites perfumers to join sometimes. He thinks this is a very important aspect of his shop because it allows the perfumers to connect with people in real life. And in so doing, it helps promote Chilean perfumery and in general niche perfumery to the entire country, not just to Santiago. By running a shop like he does, Osvaldo is very well placed to understand different trends and movements in perfumery. I was actually pretty curious about if he saw a difference between Chilean perfumery and global perfumery. So what he thinks differentiates Chilean perfume from other brands internationally is that the Chileans tend to draw deep, deep inspiration from being from Chile. So while international brands can be, in his opinion, a little bit generic, for Chilean perfumers, there tends to be a movement towards drawing from the plants or the cultural roots. As examples, he gives a couple brands, the brand 432, which distills plants from Chile and puts that in their scents. Another example he gives is Casa Niche. that makes perfumes inspired by the desert or the Andes and puts notes in their fragrances that can only be found in Chile. For instance, maqui, which is a fruit from a tree from the south of Chile. The results of all this, in Osvaldo's opinion, is that Chilean perfume is very specific to the country and it touches on ideas and concepts that are uniquely Chilean. With that said, I wanted to know what he found were the challenges facing Chilean perfumers. He felt that sometimes Chilean perfume can kind of be a little bit willfully ignorant maybe of what's happening in the larger world. And effectively, even if a perfume identify strongly in a Chilean way, there's a way to do that while also being cognizant of how other brands do it internationally. So basically, if Chilean perfumery wants to become more international, he feels that it would benefit them to do a little more research on what the other brands internationally are doing. And this can be in terms of design or in terms of social media or marketing or anything like that. Basically, what he's saying is that if you want to be international, you've got to think with an international mindset. If you're just doing it for your buddies, that's fine too, but you're never going to expand past your immediate environment. These are all points that apply as much in Chile as they apply in the US or France or Thailand or Vietnam. But the next point he made was something that I've felt myself quite a few times, if I'm perfectly honest, which is that perfumers often lack the capacity to take criticism. Despite the occasional egocentrism that one might encounter in the fragrance world, he believes that everyone can do better and part of doing better is accepting and learning from criticism. This is particularly important in Huesfaldo's opinion for Chile because Chile is new to the game. So there's opportunities to get better and to learn. Because accepting critique is part of the artist's way, I was curious if there was something specifically Chilean that he saw in this sort of difficulty internationalizing for some of the brands. And what he basically said was that he thought that there was something in the Chilean culture. Chileans by and large, at least a lot of the Chileans told me this, are a little bit more reserved. They don't trumpet themselves. They're not bombastic. So that of course is super charming, but it does present a difficulty in a world where trumpeting yourself is how you get ahead. He attributes this also a little bit to the geography because Chile is quite a bit smaller than other countries, at least population wise, there's only 14 million people. And then also, you know, they're in the south. So sometimes they feel a little bit isolated from what's happening. in the rest of the world. All this results, he believes, in a little bit of a lack of confidence, which he, of course, is keen to help change. Confidence. Yeah. Confidence. My last question related to the opportunities that he saw as a business owner, as founder with his wife. of Crucivalencia, he pioneered a lot of things in Chile, selling perfumes online, having a physical location that also doubled as a community space. And what he sees as opportunities lies primarily in education and also in diffusing the availability of perfume outside Santiago. Santiago no es Chile. Santiago no es Chile. Hay mucha gente apasionada en otra region. translating roughly, Santiago is not Chile. And indeed, although 7 million people live in Santiago, there are seven more waiting to be served. And he sees this as an opportunity for further growth in Chile. His father lives pretty globally and he understands, of course, that when things are new, it takes time. He gives the example of the U.S. where It took probably about 20 years for niche perfume to hit. And he's aware that basically this is all starting in Chile and he sees nothing but opportunity for himself and also for the Chilean perfumers. However, he notes that if Chile is to take its place in the world of global perfumery, it requires support. And to that end, often offers Crucivalencia as a stage for the Indies. Once a month, he invites a Chilean perfumer to present their work, including most recently a brand called Gumpf. G-A-M-F. I had the opportunity to be at that Perfume presentation and it was totally communal, convivial. Everybody was smiling, everybody was laughing. It felt like a really, really nice scene. That's great. Family. Yes, family. It's a very beautiful Osvaldo, thank you for appearing on Perfume on the radio. Thank you much. I'll see you later. That was the lovely Osvaldo Cruz. We chatted in Santiago in the lobby of the hotel where I was staying. And I actually appended that interview onto the end of an interview with me that he did. It was a little opportunistic. I'm not going to lie, but I'm paying it forward by reminding you to check out that interview and everything that he does over at CruciValencia at their Instagram channel. It's well worth a visit, if only for the work he's doing to help build this nascent niche perfume community in Santiago and beyond. Another way to learn about perfume culture, of course, is on the street at the perfume shops because no one interacts with the people more than a perfume salesperson. In the company of wonderful people, including David Mugioli, who's the president of the Fundación Chileana de Perfum and also works at Crucivalencia, Claudia Reyes, who's a fragrance evaluator and a perfume culture maven, Eduardo Alonso, who has a technical job, working for the government in El Salvador, but was actually there on vacation. Semi-vacation, a little bit of work. If you're curious, he's the technical chief of a regional integration outfit called SICA, which basically is responsible for helping small and medium-sized businesses thrive in Central America. And of course, finally, there was Alejandro Soto Rodriguez. all amazing people and all perfume lovers and we spent an entire day visiting perfume shops around Santiago and this is a little bit of a report from that experience. Now, if you haven't been to Santiago, you won't know this, but it's a massive city. And so the shops are pretty spread out. But we started in the hippest neighborhood, in my opinion, which is a neighborhood called La Estaria. La Estaria is central. It has windy roads. has tons of little shops. There's a lot of street vendors. The general vibe on the street is young and cool. And in the middle of the super hip neighborhood is a super hip little shop called Cruz y Valencia. And that's where we started our day. My name is David Muggioli. I am the president and founder of the Chilean Perfume Andes Aromas. In parallel, I work at Crucivalencia, is a perfumery specialized in niche and outdoor This was David Muggioli, who works at Crucivalencia and, as you know very well by now, is the president and founder of the Chilean Perfume As we checked out some of the different perfumes in the shop, I asked him what he was excited about relating to the perfume scene in Chile. What made it different? What made it special? Here's what he had to say. is excited about Chilean perfumery because it's a sector that is in active growth right now. What he also said to me is that it tends to express itself in several forms. So there's heritage perfumeries, which we'll learn a bit more about later. And then there's niche perfume. There's this budding scene of niche perfumeries, and that's really new, but it's moving very, very quickly, spurred on by internet chatter. And so he believes that Chile and Santiago specifically are very strong in this regard and are moving the needle in Latin America. And a lot of this is centering around brands that are promoting a very uniquely Chilean set of materials and... and cultural influences. oh What David is saying here is that one perfume brand that stands out for him is Casa Niche. First of all, because they pioneered niche perfume in Chile, but also because they are involved in education, both to the public, but also helping new perfumers learn more about fragrance. This is through the educational offering Olfativo, which we will actually learn quite a bit more about in episode two. is also inspired by smaller artisan perfumers. For instance, Joel Martinez with 432. Joel proposes an approach to perfumery that he calls Perfumeria mestiza. or mixed perfume. The mix here is of two styles of making perfume, the European approach and a dedication to a Chile's specific body of knowledge relating to botanicals and extraction methods. Finally, David mentions other brands from Chile, Cinergia, Pastor Fragrances, Christian Barrera. There are so many more, of course, he concludes, and they all share an authentic and powerful presence. Niche perfume, as David reminded me, is indeed rather new. This sentiment is echoed by other experts in the field. Later in the day, we went to a shop called Santiago Perfumes, and I asked the guys there about it as well. That was Raul Toval. He is known on Instagram as Sensoriale and the first E is a three. I'll link to it from episode notes. Raul observed that niche came to Chile in about 2019, 2020 more or less. And the first brands to come to the country were French brands like Michalèv, Galimard, etc. Then the pandemic happened. Everyone was stuck at home on the internet and this led to an explosion of perfume commentary and discussion, which in turn led to an uptick of interest in niche in the country. that was Andres Gonzalez. Andres calls himself an anti-influencer. He is very well known on Instagram as the angry reviewer and his Instagram handle is FluoEffect. All one word. I asked him about his own experience discovering niche perfumery and a lot of what he had to say echoed what Raoul was saying. He became enamored with Fragrance Run 2019. This of course is when niche really hit in Chile. And this is actually quite a bit later than say Europe or the US. However, when it hit, it hit hard. Perfume does well there. As we visited the very shops on that day, I was curious about what specifically was selling. Here again is David Mudioli at Cruce y Valencia. The best selling from the store, Atacama Bloom, Casaniche, by Maximiliano Sifuentes, is Chilean. So if you didn't quite catch that, that was Atacama Bloom by Casaniche, perfumer Maximiliano Sifuentes. Atacama Bloom is inspired by the Atacama Desert, and despite the aridity of what that might convey, it is a juicy, floral, and extraordinarily pretty perfume that is as sweet as can be. Other perfumes he mentioned were Musk Moscus by Ranja J, Again, a rather sweet blackcurrant vanilla musk concoction. The last one he mentioned was L'Air du Désert Marocain by Swiss perfumer Andy Tower, which is also word on the street, one of his best sellers in the US. I asked the same question of the guys at Santiago Perfumes, and here was Andres Garcia's response. First of all, Electimus London, one of our beloved brands. Next, have Todoros Calodinis, coffee addict. And this is RealisticCook.com. And this is Creme Brulee, his highest level fragrances. are Streg de Parfum, Lorenzo Bazzaglia from Italy. One our best sellers. It's a very special fragrance, Summer Hammer. And this is Buon Talenti from Perfumo di Pirenze. It's like a vanilla ice cream. And this is the best seller from all the country. Biancolate, uno de nuestros favoritos. Biancolate. Okay, so let's review. We have Mercurial Cashmere by Electum is London. which is spicy with cardamom, some florals and caramel, vanilla, tonka bean and woods at the base. We have Coffee Addict by Theodoros Kalatinis, a Greek perfumer, which smells exactly like you might expect. Also by Theodoros Kalatinis is Crème Brulee, which smells like crème brûlee in perfume form, but pretty close. Summer Hammer by Lorenzo Passaglia, mango fruit and piña colada, and then Buon Talenti by Profumo di Firenze with a peachy apricot fruit top. followed by coconut, vanilla, toffee, cookie, caramel, oh my god, the cavity is forming. And finally, Bianco Latte by Giardini di Toscana, vanilla, caramel, honey, cumerun, and you guessed it, more vanilla. So are you sensing a theme? Because I sure am. In Santiago perfumes, according to the guys that work there, gourmand perfumes take the prize. So gourmand are popular. Yeah. Yeah. Very, very, very popular. love to smell like dessert. There we go. People like to smell like dessert. So to round out our exploration of the bestsellers in the city of Santiago, we hopped in a cab, hopped by a gentle and beautiful perfume store called Dior Lor, started by Chilean women who moved to Grasse and brought some of their perfumes back to the city, and finally made our way to Liqueur. Liqueur is a very modern store with minimal decor and dramatic lighting. We made our way to the second floor where we all perched along a perfume bar, strengthened by a solid cup of coffee, facing a beautiful backlit display of perfumes. And Costanza ran us through the shop's bestsellers. They chose more motherly sweeter... We this off by contextualizing what was selling in the season in August. In August it's winter in Chile, so people were looking for fragrances that are woodier and sweeter. We with Matier Premier. Matier Premier is a very interesting She went on to systematically run us through what was selling in the shop at that moment. We were there for a very long time, so I'll spare you the blow by blow, but to quickly run through them, the best sellers, well, there were quite a few of them. By Matière Premier, a French brand, there was Crystal Saffron, Saintal Austral, Falcon Leather, Vanilla Powder. By Jevois, another French brand, there was Fire at Will. By Cajal, there was Almas and Ruby. And then Montabaca and Ormond Man by Ormond Jane, Bois Imperial by Essential Perfumes. I'm sorry, excuse me, Essential Parfum, French. Matin Amogador by Botanicae and Hermann Améquot by État Libre d'Orange. So I know that's a lot of French, forgive me. But effectively, the result of it all was that like in the other shops, what she told us was that people liked woody, gourmand fragrances. With an emphasis on gourmand. It's a thing. It's a thing here. People really like their sweets. So that just about covers the Indy niche perfume shops that we visited. In addition to these, my lovely guides, David, Claudia, Alejandro and Eduardo took me on a nice little walking tour to a very special place. One of the many shops dotted around Santiago that are known locally as Arabic perfumeries. These are visually and practically different to the niche and Indy specialty shops. For one, they're kind of everywhere. And for two, they present a visual and auditory approach that can only be described as pan-Arabic, at least in inspiration. In these shops, you can find original compositions and a ton of dupes. Whatever you think about dupes, they certainly appear to present big business, because these shops were hopping. I asked Alejandro why he thought this was. Because they are like a chance to get something of valuable quality. uh And for a reasonable price. It's very affordable. And well, all this decorative things that surround the product might sound like interesting for a lot of people. The interesting thing here is the environment of the store like tries to show you some of like Middle Eastern senses. Yeah. Opulence. a quick aside with an apology. The audio in this segment will be a little bit crunchy. It was very loud and my recording equipment was rudimentary at best. Alright, so to paint a little picture, the shop is located on a busy street in Santiago in a neighborhood that is hustling and bustling in the center of town. I wouldn't say that it was a neighborhood that felt wealthy. I'd say that it was a neighborhood that felt work oriented. And in the window of the shop, there's a mannequin dressed in an Arabic costume of sorts. He has a long white robe, a thawb, and he's also wearing a kaffir in the traditional Palestinian black and white pattern. Inside, The saleswomen are wearing jangly belly dance scarves and accessories. The music, which was blaring, presented a mishmash of Arabic music. Amr Diab from Egypt was on the radio. I heard some Omar Suleiman from Syria. I think I even heard Snatches of a Fayrouz song from Lebanon. So it's confusing. North Africa, the Levant, the Gulf. The Arabic inspiration is eclectic and pretty puzzling, but it certainly sends a message. This, my friends, is not Paris. This is a whole different ecosystem and this ecosystem is above all dripping in smell, mirrors and gold. Everything, wherever you looked was gold or mirrored or gold and mirrored. The name of the shop incidentally was Dubai Fragrances. While I stood outside puzzled and dazed, Claudia grabbed my arm and brought me inside. uh uh That was the lovely Claudia Escobar Reyes. Claudia is a fan of these shops because as she understands it, they are democratizing perfume by offering a novel experience and a whole lot of perfume to people at a very, very low price point. And indeed, the clientele seemed to really reflect all levels of society and all levels of wealth. Now, as far as what the shop was selling to them, well, here's Claudia. uh The majority are dupes or as she puts it euphemistically, imitations. Claudia grabbed a young salesperson, Eduardo, and asked him to slowly explain what he thought about the Arabic perfume phenomenon. Hello, meet you. Eduardo. We wanted to you some questions. What do you about the Arab perfumery Well, the Arab perfumery phenomenon... Eduardo had quite a bit to say, but the main thing and the first thing that he pointed out was related to the perfumes themselves. He praised their longevity and their durability and mentioned that some lasted up to 10 hours. Because his answer was so ready, I suspect that this is something that he gets asked a lot. Another factor that he mentioned was the price. The perfumes were extremely affordable. And then the final thing he mentioned was the variety. He said that the amount of perfumes in the shop was impressive, as was the variety of their olfactory profiles. Those factors all combine to allow regular people to get a lot of aromatic bang for their buck, a long lasting perfume for a cost that's low enough to allow folks to buy several and to create a fragrance wardrobe for themselves. As for the shop's best sellers, this is what he had to say. oh If you didn't catch that, that's a perfume called Yara and another called Cambra. You're probably not familiar with those names because they are shop-specific names that mask the fact that they are, in fact, inspired by other mainstream perfumes. One was La Vie est Belle by Lancome and the other one, unfortunately, I did not catch. Whatever your thoughts are on dupes, I certainly have my own. They did appear here to lead to a sort of joyful olfactory consumption. Certainly they appeared to present big. business. Lying at the heart of this expansion of niche practices and interests lies the important and curious figure of the perfumer. I was keen to meet as many Chilean perfumers as I could while I was in the country and Presto, the magical Alejandro Soto Rodriguez, made this possible by organizing a full perfume fair on the second floor atrium of the Ministry of Foreign Relations. At this fair, he invited somewhere between 15 and 20 Chilean perfume brands to present their work. This was, I gather, the first meeting of this kind, and it felt like a pretty special moment to be part of. So I did my due diligence. I carried my sad little audio recorder around asking as many people as many questions as I could. But because my equipment sucked, everything that came back was garbled gobbledygook. Luckily, technology extends beyond borders, and a week later I followed up with some of the folks I met in order to catch up with them about their practice. There were so many amazing people that I spoke to at the fair and I want to take this moment to apologize to all of them that I'm not able to use the audio of our chat. In an effort to make up for it, I've popped the brands and links in the podcast description so you can go and visit their websites and learn about them directly. Some of them, of course, you'll be hearing from in this and the next episode. Placed somewhere in the middle of a row of tables was a smiling, kind-looking human called David Santiago. I was intrigued by his work and so I followed up when I got back to Los Angeles with some questions. Let's start with the introductions. Hello, my name is David Santiago. I am the CEO and nose behind Santiago David Parfums based in Viña del Mar. I used to be a language teacher communicating through various forms and especially through perfumes. It's my, my number one passion right now. So David, you've been a perfumer for about three and a half years, I think. And I'm curious about the genesis of your brand. How did you, how did you get started with Santiago David perfume? Well, my brand, I would say that started very early in life, just that I didn't know that. my mom used to and still to this day collects, uh, perfumes. And as a kid, I was always curious to go to her cabinet and try some of these. perfumes. That's how I began to accustom and attune my nose to different smells. I studied perfumery independently with the courses from Alfativo. It's a company here that offers perfume studies. After the course, I just wanted to create something for myself, you know? Yeah, totally. Not just only to be exclusive. but because I had a certain profile of a scent that I wanted to wear. And that's how Picnic para Dos, my first fragrance, came about. I didn't think at first about selling perfumes, but my wife, she encouraged me. Then my colleagues at the school I was working also wanted to buy the fragrance from me. And I sold like 20 bottles or so. And I began to ask myself, well, maybe there's something here and I should reconsider to make a career as a perfumer. That's cool. It sounds like it was very, very organic. I'm curious, David, with the perfumer scene in Chile, how do you see yourself within the perfume scene? And what's the scene all about? Like, how do you define it? Okay. So the way I see the perfumer scene in Chile, it's like it's blooming. like really, really blooming. At first, when I started to study perfumery, I didn't know that there were Chilean perfumers. That's the truth. I met Maximiliano Sifuentes from Casa Nietzsche. And then I learned about Joel Martinez from 432. And then with the Olfativo courses, a lot of students began to launch their brands and their perfumes. So I believe that the Chilean perfumery scene, it's really blooming. Yeah, I get the same impression actually. So, you know, what's missing right now, do you think, for the scene to bloom further, in your words? Maybe we need more like uh spreading the news kind of thing. about our brands, about our creations. I see myself immersed in this sense of community between perfumers. In fact, have, uh with some of the perfumers, we have an association, La Sociedad Chilena del Perfume, like Chilin Society of Perfume. And we help each other to present our brands, to present our perfumes. We also evaluate our formulas and we give advice to each other. So yeah, it's a very friendly way to live the perfumery. We know that the most perfumers there are, the better for the scene, you know? Right, so like strength in numbers and that kind of thing. Yeah, totally. We don't see ourselves as competition because there's no human being that's equal to another human being. So with that in mind, There's also no other perfumer that can replicate your style. Everyone has a way to communicate through fragrance that is different. And that's the beauty of it, I think. That's really a refreshing approach, actually. So, but you mentioned style. So if everyone has their own style, how would you define your style? I see myself as maybe not uh hyper realistic or realistic at all at fragrances. But I have so much to say and I believe I can take so many things about our culture, our Chilean culture and myself. That's why the brand is called Santiago David Parfums because it's an outlet for me to express what I see, what I feel, my experiences and to be able to tell them through fragrance. It sounds like for you perfume is a sort of, well, it's storytelling, like a sort of personal storytelling medium. So within that context, like within that emphasis on narrative, what would you say is the purpose of perfume for you? Like, what's the, what's the point? Okay. That's a very good question. Um, the point of perfume for me, it's a way to achieve a desire to achieve fantasy and to experience those things in a way that no other form of art can do. For me, perfumery is art. We have to say that right off the bat. I agree. In the previous question, I said that I don't see my creations as realistic compositions because I believe in this idea and this is my aesthetic proposal that perfumery, my perfumery specifically, tends to suggest fantasy. If I want to smell like a lemon, I might as well pour some lemon juice over me, you know, maybe. Maybe it's not the best, you know, because it could cause like an allergic reaction and be very sticky. But even though I admire deeply the hyper realistic creations, my aesthetic proposal has always been that perfume should be the smell of the bottle, not the smell of reality, not to replicate reality. You're telling a story and a story what it is, it's fiction. Ultimately, you don't want to experience reality in fiction. You want to experience something larger. And I believe perfume serves to that purpose. How does this manifest in your practice? Like your first line, if I recall. I can't remember the name of it. It's called sentiros, senses in English. That's right. Thank you. So how did you interpret this sort of fantasy aspect? that you're interested in, in something as embodied and biological as the senses? Well, it tries to evoke each of the five senses in the way of a perfume. So it's very maybe abstract. It's like a concept made into a fragrance. You have some suggestions to reality, but ultimately it is a suggestion of fantasy, of something that you can only experience through one of my bottles. That's what I want to achieve. And also that you have to smell good, right? Because sometimes with niche perfumes, they sell to you like these experiences. And sometimes the smells are really weird. You don't know how to interpret them and that's cool. But I see myself like a fantasy giver, like a story giver through perfume. That is the point of perfume for me, at least. Okay, so that's super fascinating. But the truth is lot of our listeners are perfumers, so I'm actually curious about, sort of in brass tacks, how you interpreted these concepts in actual materiality. Can you get a little bit literal with the Sentidos line? So for my line, first of all, thank you for taking interest in the line, in the Sentidos line. My pleasure, of course. Okay, so the first one I made was Picnic para dos. which is translated to picnic for two. It's the fragrance that represents taste. The concept came about a couple having a picnic outside in the country, drinking coffee, having fruit, and finishing the evening with a romantic hug. The fragrance tries to tell that through jasmine and cedar and lavender, and notes on the top. Then it has pineapple and orange, coffee and... Also it has musk, amber and strawberry. It's sort of a really uplifting and sparkling fragrance. It's the fragrance we sell the most. I think it's the most amicable of the line. so yeah, that Picnic Parados kind of started the line. And then I tried to go after the sense of sight with Galeidoscopio, which translates to uh kaleidoscope. The idea was to transfer the experience of seeing through a kaleidoscope. When you turn the kaleidoscope and see the forms change, it's a deeply uh personal experience. Those forms are never to be seen by anyone else, you know? So with that in mind, I began the concept of the fragrance. So I made these huge cords of pear, violet and vanilla. to mimic somehow the three sides of the kaleidoscope. In every skin it has its nuances. For example, in some skins the violet could be with a touch of anise or maybe powdery or the vanilla could be overly sweet or rum-like. That's the experience I wanted to give. For every skin it's like you're watching through the kaleidoscope. You have your own experience even though the... content of the kaleidoscope is the same. That's really, really a cool way of thinking about it because it's so conceptual and it relies on this sort of idea that we bring ourselves to the experience of the perfume. Beautiful idea. So what was next for you? I started to work in the hearing sense with a fragrance called Fiu Fiu, which has no translation whatsoever. Here, Fiu Fiu refers to a whistle-like sound that you make with your lips together. As a quick aside, if it's not immediately clear what he's referring to here, in the US we call this a wolf whistle. I try to position the whistling not to be like a harassment because I'm not okay with that, but to have the power to seduce. So through hearing, when they give you that whistle, they're telling you, you know, you look beautiful, you're pretty, you're handsome, whatever. So the purpose of the fragrance was to give that same sense of being beautiful, feeling beautiful through fragrance. So it's a very sensual perfume, a very sexy perfume. Also, it's kind of flirty, like you can look but you can touch kind of thing. I believe sometimes you as a person feel that way or want to feel that way. And this fragrance was created with that in mind. It has uh cherry, mango, freesia, gardenia. coconut, almonds, vanilla. So it's very powerful and sexy. my gosh, all those fruits. sounds enticing. Okay, so I think that brings us to the sense of touch. What was the name of that perfume again? It's called Nanai. It's an indigenous word that means something like a consoling hug from a mother, especially, or a father. We were taught as kids here in Chile that when you... I'm going to say it like very tenderly. When you had a boo boo, you know, you, you went to your mom and crying and your mom said, okay, none. I, none. I, and this idea of touching really resonated with me because I wanted to, to give the word the experience of being calm, being at peace, trying to remember that same feeling of tenderness, uh of a hug of warmth of You know, I'm here for you. I'm going to help you. Everything's going to be fine. That perfume smells of really relaxing things for me. For example, bergamot on a cord of salt, really, and Tyson musk, green apple, vanilla. It has all of those things that when you smell them all together, you say, wow, this is tender. That sounds very, very sweet. So this brings us to the last perfume in the senses series, which is about smell, which I imagine was quite uh a undertaking because basically you're, you're proposing to yourself that you're going to make a smell that is about smell. How did you even begin to go about that? Well, I began to study things about smelling and one quote caught my eye. It was that on average human beings breathe 23,000 times a day. So that number was resonating on my head for weeks and then it dawned on me that the fragrance should be called 23K, 23K, which is the number 23,000. The concept of the fragrance was, you know, we breathe during the day, but we're not conscious about it all the time. So I wanted to create this fragrance so you could be conscious of what you're breathing and go back to the natural, the first breathing. For example, like going into the forest and you take a big breath and feel nature all around you, not with the urgencies of the day. So that was the concept of the fragments. It has notes of lily of the valley, mint, uh wet soil, oud a little bit, uh various woods. It's the most polarizing fragments of the line. Maybe because it's really, uh no pun intended, but it's really uh breathtaking. You smell it and you are like, wow, what is this? It's like an experience. It's a fragrance. It's a smell of nature. What is this? It was purposely intended that way because I wanted to almost overwhelm the nose with this experience of going back to the first breathing. You are out in the woods in nature and not in the city. not in a rhythm of life that's too complicated. Okay, so there you have it. Those are the fragrances of the first line. I really hope that everyone could try them. I gave you like the mini set, so maybe some lucky people could get to know these fragrances. Yes, indeed. And for those of you near or visiting Los Angeles, we will be having these perfumes archived in our perfume library. So if you come visit, just ask for them. We'll fish them out and you can smell them in person. David, thank you so much for your time on this rather extensive interview. Yeah, thank you for the interview and we'll talk to each other soon, Saskia. I very much look forward to that, David. Thank you. What's new in perfume often finds its echoes in history, and Chile's emergent indie perfume scene may have its roots in its perfume-making history. This history is no doubt deep. The pre-colonial inhabitants of the country certainly use scent in their everyday lives. More recently, however, Chileans tend to point to the country's four homegrown brands that specialize in colones, or what they call colonias. The history of cologne in and of itself is rather fascinating, but that's for another day. What's relevant here is that this perfume style with its European roots was adopted in the Americas with gusto. Just about every country from Mexico on down has a tradition of cologne usage. Often this is attributed to the hot climate. Nothing is more refreshing than a citrus splash on a hot, humid day. In Chile, however, where the climate varies wildly from temperate to freezing, the adoption of colonias might have a different reason. Perhaps it was a cultural export from Central America and the Caribbean. perhaps a vestige of European colonization. I don't know, but what I do know is that most Chileans have a nostalgic memory associated with one of the four main brands in the country. Claudia Escobar Reyes, a walking, talking fount of perfume knowledge, sat me down over breakfast one day to present these perfume brands. Here's Claudia. The first perfume that Claudia showed me was called Ideal Quimera, which was formed in Santiago in 1896. It was created as an export product for Spain and was considered important in cross-cultural exchange between Spain and its former colony. The Colonia was well-esteemed and won awards in Europe. And while the formula has changed over time, it is still very recognizable for most Chileans as a sort of nostalgic product that has survived and been sold for more than a century. The next traditional Colonia company that she introduced is called Barcellato. This was created by two Italian immigrants who were brothers. They wrote the perfume formula, which they called a Reservae. And for a while it was the official fragrance of the country's airline, Lan Cile. Both of the Colonias that she presented here have a citric profile. She characterizes them both as a traditional Ode Colonia, the citric top, white flowers in the heart and clean white woods in the base, generally sandalwood or cedar. Claudia continued her history lesson by discussing the third important brand of Chilean colonias, which was called colonias flanio. This dated from 1953. And as she explained, it was traditionally seen as having a more masculine profile. It has more musk in it, allegedly, she explains. And in Chile, she says they say that adult men or older men smell of flanio. Flanio was what seduced our grandmothers. and possibly also our grand uncles. The fourth and final brand that she spoke about was called Monique's, which is known best for a perfume called 124. This Colonia was named after the company's first street address, a street called Causino 124. Monique's was hugely popular in Chile and at one date there were 15 or 16 of those shops. Today only one remains and after breakfast Claudia explained we would go and visit this last remaining shop. The reason Claudia is so excited about this history of colonias is that she believes that Chile in its new blossoming of niche culture will benefit from understanding its perfume history. All four of these brands are homegrown. Some started by immigrants, some started by Chileans, but all of them are an important part of the country's material culture and history. uh Later that day, Alejandro, David, Eduardo, Claudia and I went to visit the last remaining Monique's shop. The shop was tucked away on a pedestrian street in the center of Santiago, an area that they had formed me in the 40s and 50s was one of the most elegant shopping areas of the city. From outside, the shop is unassuming. It's a small storefront with a modern San Serif logo above the door. When you walk in, you are immediately standing at a counter manned by two lovely humans. I was excited about the opportunity to discover one of these traditional Chilean brands, and my best bud Alejandro Soto Rodriguez was on hand to give me some important context about Chile's olfactory culture. Here is Alejandro. Regarding our history and our DNA of perfume or fragrances, we have to think about the geographical position of Chile. We are a very far country in the international context. We always felt like this way of isolation. So in those terms, we have to think that the products that came from uh overseas, in terms of like French or European perfumery, was extremely expensive. Some European families that came here during the 90th century, they started to create some small stores to produce these colonies. And their products were mainly produced taking what we had around, like availability of raw materials. And this somehow formed our way of perceiving perfumery. All these heritage perfumes are like the revelation or the result of this. Very soft smell and nature smell and always in this way of making you feel clean. This concept of cleanliness that Alejandro speaks of here came up quite a bit during my trip in Chile. So I asked him what that was about and he related it to the original inhabitants of the country. We have from our pre-Columbian groups this sense of cleanliness. What I mean is not saying that European colonizers were not clean. But people that live here used to have this habit of going to the river, like, fresh. These products feel like the extension of this. It's a beautiful sense and usually these smells are not very invading, you know, like it's very simple smells. It's been through times where it's not been very high appreciated. It's something very common, low price, maybe low quality. But I feel that especially in newer generations, there's an appreciation starting to grow. People like to feel like, oh, this reminds me my grandmother, my grandfather, the smell of my childhood. Or people that, for example, have left the country and live overseas, and when they smell a bottle of these, they immediately connect. like to the country. So it's something like olfactory heritage and something connected to your senses of where you belong to. Alejandro went on to talk a little bit about the challenges that these heritage brands were facing, which he explained primarily due to the increasing competition from perfume brands from overseas. It's very difficult, especially because of the invasion of foreign formulas or fragrances. But they still resist because we still have in our DNA as a society this way of feeling of, want to get clean and this makes me feel more clean. I, for example, when I get a shower, the first thing I use after a shower is this. And then comes the perfume. Yeah, that's it. Okay. So after all this context, Alejandro and the rest of the crew and I walked into the shop and we started nosing around. The shop lady had, according to Alejandro, been there for quite a long time and she was a self-assured expert on the products. And I was excited to smell them. So my first request was for the original perfume that they released, the one that they called 124. now I'm smelling 124, which is a pretty high citrus top note in the style of anode Colonia. They have the notes. Yeah, so... Sintric lemon, bergamota, white flowers, sandalwood. And you say you the stamp, fragrances with history, collection vintage. 1938. Yeah, I'm gonna have to get one of these for a perfume library, think, because it's... Yes, I'll take a little bit. For context, a 50 gram bottle of the 124 perfume cost me an astounding seven dollars. So this is extremely affordable stuff. And for that reason, it's very accessible. It's no surprise that many Chileans I met, not everybody, but most, had a memory of this cologne from their childhood or being used in their family. A lot of people come here just to feel the fragrance and to remember like the passed away mother or some relative. This is the smell of the past. It's whole factory heritage of Chile, right? Totally, totally heritage. people, the people's memories of the people. their own stories about it. So with all this said, Alejandro feels that there's a value to these fragrances above and beyond the personal value it brings to people who experience them. And that is that it can be a tool for diplomacy, or as he puts it, a friendly tool. and one that allows people to experience Chilean culture through its olfactory heritage, through its heritage brands, and also in turn helps support those brands and allow them to survive to see another day. And of course, it also helps that the perfumes smell pretty nice. Our friend Eduardo Alonso, who is visiting from El Salvador, decided to make a purchase himself. To briefly translate, Eduardo basically said that he's going to buy the tobacco perfume and lotion specifically because in his home country of El Salvador, where it's hot and humid, These perfumes and this lotion gives him a sense of freshness, of cleanliness, and this matters to him. Is it cultural diplomacy? Is it just a really nice smell? Either way, it's working out, and it's really nice to see a heritage brand like Monique's extending into the future by playing to their strengths, which is classic, affordable, pretty perfume. What to conclude from such a rich couple weeks of perfume? It's not an easy thing to do, but if I were to take away a couple things from my time exploring the niche and indie perfume scene here in Santiago, it would be one, that it's a scene in growth, in rapid growth, two, that it's a scene that feels so fresh because it's so new, and three, that it's a scene that's generous. There are so many brands that have been formed within the last six years and the overwhelming sensation that I encountered is one of celebration and of mutual assistance. Maybe Chileans are just kinder with one another. More likely, the generosity is rooted in enthusiasm and a sense of national pride. To support the statement, let me point out how many brands are placing themselves within the context of being Chilean. Something unique to this scene is that the national identity, while it takes many forms, is without a doubt present. So I guess this episode ends where it began, which is by posing the question, can perfume be a form of diplomacy? I have to say that I initially had my doubts. Is our mutual connection best expressed or experienced through what is, at the end of the day, so often a commercial interest? Can product lead to greater international dialogue? Well, I guess it can. A product is, after all, just a bit of human ingenuity placed on the open market. And despite the transactional nature of a transfer of ownership, there are some intangible no-cost perks that invisibly ride along on that receipt. The sharing of stories, the sharing of ideas, the sharing of resources, and the sharing of sensorial experiences. At the end of the day, I can't think of any better tools for creating meaningful connections than that. This episode introduces the Indies in the Andes. In the second episode of the Chilean exploration, we will delve deep into the role of materials, landscape, and artisan practices in perfumery, speaking with some of the pioneers of the niche movement in Chile and some folks that are deeply connected to the landscape. A huge, huge thanks goes out to Alejandro Soto Rodriguez, Claudia Escobar Reyes, David Muggioli and the Fundación Chilena del Perfum, Andy's Aromas. Eduardo Alonso, my sweet, sweet friend. Macarena Inostrosa, Osvaldo Cruz, David Santiago, the team at Liquo, Raul Toval, Andres Gonzales and their sweet team at Santiago Perfumes, the crew at Geolor and CBC. and a special thanks to Juan Carlos Rivas for the music and cultural intelligence. Finally, all the amazing perfumers that I met who took the time to talk to me. What is not transmissible on the radio is that somewhere during this trip, I contracted a terrible allergy, a contact dermatitis, in fact, that manifested all over my face and made me look like a scaly red turtle. Despite, or perhaps because of my appalling appearance, People went above and beyond to make me feel comfortable and to make me feel better and to help me brave my discomfort through sincere and deep conversations. I am grateful to them for that and in particular to Macarena's mom for the impromptu dermatological consultation. Senora, muchisimas gracias. This has been Indies from the Andes on Perfume on the Radio. My name is Saskia Wilson-Brown and I'll see you next time. Until then, keep it kind, keep it real, and keep it smelly. Perfume on the Radio is a radio show and podcast produced and presented by the Institute for Art and Olfaction, a nonprofit organization devoted to experimentation and access in the field of perfumery. You can learn more about us at artandolfaction.com or on Instagram at artandolfaction. A few thanks, Emmet James, Maxwell Williams, and Darian Zahedi for the Perfume on the Radio interstitials, and Cameron and the whole team at the nonprofit radio station Lookout FM. As always, this episode will be archived on our website, perfumeontheradio.com, and as a podcast. If you like what we do, please don't forget to rate and review us so we can continue to bring you this, we think pretty cool, monthly hour of audio.
