VAPORMUNDUM: An Aachen Workshop Where One Man Weaves Fragrance and Story

“Fragrance alone is still only half the picture. It is the ‘story’ alongside it that makes a fragrance special.” — Joschka Klee

Basic Information
The Founder and the Brand’s Beginnings
What Defines the Brand
The Fragrance Lineup
Incidentally…

Basic Information

Vapormundum is an independent German niche perfume brand. Its sole founder is Joschka Klee, who does everything himself, from establishing the brand and composing its fragrances to bottling, packaging, and shipping. It officially began operating as a brand in August 2023 and is based in Herzogenrath, near Aachen, in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Its official website is vapormundum.com. The name “vapormundum” is a Latin-inspired coinage combining “vapor” (vapor or scent) and “mundum” (world), said to convey something like “a world of fragrance.” In Japanese, it is sometimes rendered as “Veipamandamu” as well as “Vapomandamu.”

The Founder and the Brand’s Beginnings

Joschka Klee’s story begins with an unusual childhood habit. He was an inquisitive boy who wanted to smell everything. Whether food or flowers, he apparently could not resist bringing his nose close to investigate. On the German-language podcast DerDuftDude, Klee recalls an episode from those early years. When his mother served a meal, he would not eat until he had first checked its smell, prompting her to say in exasperation, “Just get on with eating it.” Looking back modestly on this unusually sensitive sense of smell, he says, “I don’t think I have an especially gifted nose. I was simply more curious than other people and keen to train the ‘muscle’ that is my nose.”

It was not until adulthood that his interest in fragrance moved beyond a hobby toward the creative act of perfumery. Amid days spent devouring perfume blogs, collecting fragrances, and following reviews, he happened to meet an amateur perfumer who made fragrances at home. He describes this as the decisive turning point. That encounter prompted Klee to resolve to build fragrances with his own hands.

His first workspace was his parents’ boiler room, or Heizungskeller in German, hardly an enviable environment. As Klee recalls, “I’m a night owl, so I used to mix fragrance materials at night, at the hours when other people might be gaming.” He subsequently moved his workspace into the basement and attic of the first apartment he rented, honing his skills over a great many years. He is an entirely self-taught perfumer, without formal training at a specialist school. He says he read the online forum Basenotes extensively and took a paid course by the well-known perfumer Sam Mesa, but “I had already taught myself the basics, so I didn’t get much use out of it.” He cites as influences Andy Tauer of Tauer Perfumes, who maintains a hands-on approach to making everything himself, and books by the perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena. Learning that Ellena had a workshop in the hills around Grasse, he dreamed that “one day I, too, would like to make fragrances in a house like that, rather than a boiler room.” Klee has also revealed that, at one stage, he continued making fragrances in a rented spare room that resembled a ruin.

At some point, he was labeling his own fragrances simply by writing “Trial” in a notebook, without even giving them a formal brand name. A turning point came when a friend suggested that it was time to think of a proper name. This was before ChatGPT had appeared, so the two used Google Translate to try out numerous Latin-sounding words. Eventually they combined “vapor” (vapor or scent) and “mundum” (world), choosing “vapormundum” as a coined expression meaning “a world of fragrance.” Klee says he later added his own name, Joschka Klee, because he felt that his perfumes were a direct reflection of himself.

Meanwhile, he ran the perfume blog Soul of Sense and began coming into contact with fragrance distributors and PR agencies. He says this experience left him uncomfortable with the industry practice of indiscriminately sending out large quantities of samples and demanding, “Make content with these.” That experience informed his decision to avoid excessive promotion in running his own brand. He also worked for a time at a perfume shop in Aachen, where, he says, his own fragrances were sold.

In 2023, after all this preparation, Klee finally launched Vapormundum as an official brand. He initially planned to begin with a single fragrance, but ultimately released two at once: Electri and Aura. Electri was completed first, which is why Klee describes it as “the first fragrance.” In launching the brand, his aim was not to stand alongside the niche industry’s biggest names, but, above all, “to remain niche.”

“I wasn’t trying to become a hugely successful brand. Of course I wanted success and an income, but what mattered more was being able to keep making fragrances, not just for myself but for other people too.” — Joschka Klee

The early days were far from easy. According to Klee, the online store made almost no sales during its first few months. Yet the memory of the “first sale” he says he will never forget goes back even further: the moment he sold a university classmate a 30 ml perfume, made especially for him, for just €20. The surprise of realizing “I can earn money from this” remains his most vivid memory. After the brand’s launch, a turning point came with a substantial review video by the fragrance YouTuber Mickey Monumental. Orders surged as a result. Recalling the first day his sales reached €1,000, Klee says, “I thought, this is impossible.”

A long-circulating online rumor that “Vapormundum’s founder is a 19-year-old perfume prodigy” is, however, untrue. The misinformation reportedly appeared even in material from an American perfume shop and content creators. In an interview released in February 2026, Klee himself disclosed that he was 28. Laughing about the rumor, he said it had become “a bit of a running joke.”

What Defines the Brand

For Klee, making fragrance is not a self-contained activity. He has found pleasure in combining perfume with other art forms, such as music, painting, and poetry, and presenting them in art exhibitions. The brand name “vapormundum” itself extends the idea of “a world of fragrance as a gateway to stories.” Weaving stories through scent and giving a fragrance meaning is a principle running through the heart of the brand.

Another defining feature of Vapormundum is its concept of “customizable accords,” or additional scent profiles. While many niche brands release large numbers of flankers, or variations on popular fragrances, Klee deliberately supplies several additional accords with a single perfume, allowing wearers to adjust and reconstruct it according to their mood that day. Serpent, for example, offers two contrasting options: the Innocent Flower Accord, which puts on the face of a guileless flower, and the Fatal Poison Accord, which bares venomous fangs. The idea is that wearers choose for themselves “whether to be prey or predator.” Speaking of this approach, Klee says that particular attention to the bottle, or flacon, itself is “not that important,” but adds, “I don’t like tacky flacons. Even if they are simple, they should convey a sense of luxury.” He has explained that he prioritizes packaging quality, using presentation boxes with magnetic closures. Some reviewers have nevertheless observed, “The perfume bottles themselves are beautiful, but the paper used for the outer boxes could feel more luxurious.”

The formulas combine natural fragrance materials, including those from France, with synthetic materials. The principal bottle contains 50 ml of extrait de parfum, a perfume with a high concentration of fragrance. Two additional 8 ml accords bring the total set to 66 ml. Depending on the date and specifications described, prices have been around €150–195; in September 2026, the official selling price was €195 for both Serpent and Deserta. This places the brand in the middle-to-upper price range of the niche perfume market.

The Fragrance Lineup

Vapormundum fragrances are all built around distinct concepts, whether techno music and rave culture or a particular landscape or story.

Electri: Released in 2023, this was one of the brand’s earliest fragrances. Described as being made for those who “command the space of the night” at techno raves, it combines champagne, incense (frankincense), labdanum, patchouli, sandalwood, and vanilla, bringing together exuberance and deep warmth.
Aura: Also released in 2023. Called a “dark cherry and oud dream,” it is said to express the “softer side” of the techno scene. Cherry, rose, oud, incense, patchouli, sandalwood, and other notes unfold in layers.
Deserta: Released in 2024. Inspired by the nighttime landscape of Colombia’s Tatacoa Desert, it depicts the earth releasing the heat it has stored during the day as the desert cools at night. The composition features solar notes, soil, patchouli, cedarwood, amber, and vanilla. Its two additional accords are Juicy Curuba, which evokes the curuba passionfruit enjoyed in Colombia, and Milky Coconut, reminiscent of coconut milk.
Serpent: The official website presents it as a 2024 creation, although some perfume information sites list 2025. Its concept is a venomous rose elixir, quoting a passage from Shakespeare’s Macbeth: “Appear like an innocent flower, but be the serpent hidden beneath it.”
Incaro: A limited edition released in 2025. Created in collaboration with the content creator JoNoir, it comes with two accords themed around sunrise and sunset. Production was limited to just 40 sets.
Burning Cheesecake: Released in 2025. A gourmand fragrance co-created with Parfumerie Lubner and sold exclusively by that store.

Klee also works as a perfumer for brands other than his own. One example is Roots of Kente for the brand twentysecondofmay, inspired by Ghana’s cultural heritage. He has also spoken of undertaking a commission for a Japanese brand with a classical symphony as its starting point. The perfume rating website Parfumo has at one point presented the fragrances he composed with an average score of 8.1 out of 10. Ratings fluctuate as reviews are posted, but they suggest that fragrances from this small workshop are reaching enthusiasts.

Incidentally…

Review videos have helped Vapormundum win fans abroad. Klee has spoken with delight about his perfumes being stocked in a physical shop in New York, describing it as “a pretty cool store.” As for the recurring online rumor that he was a “19-year-old perfume prodigy,” the misinformation reportedly even made its way into the description of a video by an American content creator. Klee laughingly corrected it: “I’m actually 28.” This exchange refers to his age at the time the podcast was recorded.

For a closer sense of Klee’s personality, his long interview on DerDuftDude makes for interesting listening. From childhood habits to experiments in the boiler room and his first sales, the days he has spent making fragrance connect in his own words. Reading the fragrance stories on the official website alongside introductions on Parfumo and Parfinity and reviews by YouTubers brings the contours of this small brand, founded in 2023, into focus. It is a brand that invites attention to a single maker and the scents he creates, rather than to awards or figures measuring the size of the business.

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