di Claudia Scattolini
When fragrance becomes method, culture and future.In December I always pause and look back at the path taken throughout the year, to recognize its deeper meaning and to understand whether the direction is the right one.
This year the answer is clear, lucid, almost moving, and it fills me with immense joy: yes, this is exactly where I wanted to be.2025 has been an intense, layered, profound year.A year in which fragrance definitively ceased to be merely something to wear and became (for me, and for those who worked alongside me) a true language, a method, and a cultural responsibility.
Being a Fragrance Designer today means far more than creating formulas.
When, in 2007, I invented the role of Fragrance Designer, I had a very precise intuition:olfactory creation cannot live in isolation within a laboratory or an atelier. It needs thought, structure, narrative and study.Today more than ever, I feel that this profession is a cultural investment.Creating fragrances means designing invisible identities, working with memory, emotion and human behavior.And all of this requires rigor as much as creativity.
2025 has strengthened this vision: formula and method are not opposites, they are allies.
Beauty is born when competence is solid.Where culture is born: universities, education, research.
One of the greatest satisfactions of this year has been bringing fragrance ever more deeply into academic institutions, not as an occasional guest, but as a discipline to be studied, analyzed and truly understood.Entering university classrooms means raising the bar of the industry. It means stating clearly that artistic perfumery is grounded in scientific, chemical, sensory and strategic foundations.In 2025, I had the privilege of collaborating with outstanding academic institutions:from the University of Ferrara (where I graduated many years ago) with advanced focuses on olfactory chemistry within the prestigious Cosmast Master’s program,to the Universities of Padua, Naples and Bari, where fragrance was also explored as a form of non-verbal identity,through to the University of Milan and my collaboration with SICC, where the dialogue between science and alcoholic perfumery became concrete, technical and finally mature.And then Rome, at Università Cattolica, an experience that deeply touched me: the rigorous use of essential oils in clinical contexts, working with fragile patients, and supervising a thesis dedicated to a blend for women in pre-chemotherapy.Here, fragrance revealed its most authentic face: care, respect and presence.
From all of this also arises the meaning of my perfumery courses:not teaching how “to make perfumes,” but how to truly understand them.Olfaction as a Bridg between people, sectors and different worlds.If there is one word that defines my 2025, it is transversality.Olfaction has shown its ability to dialogue with very different contexts, while always maintaining the same strength:activating awareness.This is where my Olfaction Kit was born: a simple yet powerful tool designed to educate people in listening to scent, in analysis and in presence.
Smelling is a cultural act, even before it is a sensory one.
I also brought olfaction into sensitive social contexts, working with young people in difficulty and with adults who were rediscovering how to “feel” after years of sensory numbness. Each time, the same thing happened: when olfaction reawakens, the person returns to the center.And then the dialogue with other sectors: enology and sensory analysis of wine, tea, raw materials and journeys in search of oud, shared in all its complexity at Esxence with the students of the Italian Perfumery Institute (IPI).Every encounter confirmed a simple truth: sensory analysis does not belong only to fragrance — it is a way of reading the world. When olfaction meets history: the project for BAXI’s 100th anniversary.Among the most significant moments of the year, without a doubt, was the olfactory project for BAXI’s 100th anniversary.Working on a centenary means engaging with time, with industrial memory, with the deep identity of a brand that has spanned generations.Here fragrance was not meant merely to “please” thousands of people, it had to tell a long story.Translating a century of innovation, solidity and vision into an invisible language was one of the most stimulating challenges of my journey this year.
A concrete example of what olfactory design means today: not decoration, but narrative and strategic synthesis.
The meaning of all this.This article is not meant to be a list of events. It is the story of a direction, my direction.2025 taught me that competence builds trust, that culture creates value and that fragrance, when explained, studied and respected, becomes a powerful tool for conscious choice.This is, and remains, my commitment: to give people, professionals and brands the tools to understand, not just to buy a perfume.Only when we truly understand what we smell can we appreciate its value, beyond its price.Thank you to everyone who shared this journey with me.The future smells like knowledge and I can’t wait to continue.
