“Fragrance is nothing without imagination. We believe fragrance is, above all, an emotional experience.”
— Chinlun Shen, founder and creative director (translated by the author into Japanese; English translation of that Japanese text)
Born in Shanghai, Handhandhand (Chinese name: 叁手香氛) treats perfume less as a branch of cosmetics than as design connecting color, form, texture, and even space. Its starting point was not perfume but the scented candles its founders regularly burned. From there it expanded into home fragrance, hand care, body care, and eventually eau de parfum.
Essential Information
Brand name: Handhandhand
Chinese name: 叁手香氛
Base: Shanghai, China
Launch: 2016. Its full-scale launch of fragrance products took place in 2017
Founders: Chinlun Shen and two designers with whom he had worked for many years
Official website: http://handhandhand.com/
The name, with “Hand” repeated three times, first signals three designers joining hands. At the same time, hands are the medium through which creators turn ideas into objects and pass them on to users’ senses. What began as a simple indication of the number of people eventually became the methodology of the entire brand.
The Founder and the Brand’s Origins
From Advertising and Fashion
The central figure, Chinlun Shen, worked as an art director at an advertising agency in Taiwan before becoming creative director for fashion at Ogilvy in Shanghai in 2009. According to his biography for the Ontimeshow trade show, he established his independent design studio, “handhandhand,” in 2011, providing visual and brand-image work for labels including Ed Hardy, Belle, and Balabala.
In other words, Handhandhand originated not in a perfumery laboratory or a cosmetics company but in fashion advertising and brand design. Before making products, Shen was already working across graphics, advertising campaigns, websites, visual identity (VI), packaging, and photography. Knowing this background makes it understandable that the later products are not complete with “scent alone”: bottles, labels, photographs, and stores are designed as a single world.
One Candle Revealed a Market
Shen was already a fragrance enthusiast who regarded living with scent as indispensable. He has said that in 2016, although Chinese perfume brands existed, he felt there were still few widely recognized domestic home-fragrance brands. He gave colleagues scented candles whose fragrances he had customized, and they were well received, even prompting requests to buy them.
“Fragrance products were an indispensable part of my way of life. I wanted to bring this wonderful experience to every consumer.”
— Chinlun Shen (translated by the author into Japanese; English translation of that Japanese text)
It was the moment a personal enthusiasm met a market that was not yet adequately served. Shen launched the brand with two designer friends with whom he had long collaborated. In 2017, they released scented candles made with natural soy wax and cotton wicks, together with room sprays, followed by reed diffusers in 2018. They subsequently added sachets, hand creams, liquid soaps, and other products that brought fragrance into daily life.
What the “Three Hands” Represent
According to Shen, the “three hands” represent more than collaboration among three friends. The name also encompasses a two-way exchange: designers use their hands to give form to ideas, and consumers understand the brand by touching and using its products with their own hands.
“Through the designers’ hands, into yours. Fragrance, color, and design are a secret exchange of emotions, passed from heart to heart without words.”
— Handhandhand brand statement (translated by the author into Japanese; English translation of that Japanese text)
In the brand’s own words, design is a chain of conscious and unconscious impulses that “begins in the heart, sets the mind in motion, and takes shape through the hands.” Hands connect the five senses, turning abstract ideas into things that can be encountered as smell, texture, and form. The repeated brand name becomes easier to understand if seen not as an attempt at eccentricity but as a constant reminder of the sequence of conception, creation, and use.
From Select Shops into the City
From its early days, Handhandhand chose places where people could touch and smell the products rather than relying on mass advertising. It first developed fashion select-shop channels, then entered the lifestyle store Little B in 2018, the beauty select shop HARMAY in 2020, and Shanghai’s Tsutaya Books and Tmall in 2021.
There is a paradox in this sequence, particularly for someone from advertising. Rather than first building awareness through the volume of advertising, the brand placed products in retail settings that suited its atmosphere, expanding from a small circle to urban consumers. Between the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022, it opened its first directly operated experiential store on Yongfu Road in Shanghai, after approximately a year of preparation. The in-house team designed everything from the choice of location to the interior and displays, making it a place to experience scent as an entire space.
The current official store directory lists West Bund Central, Xintiandi Dongtaili, and Yongfu Road in Shanghai, Sanlitun in Beijing, and Hubin in77 in Hangzhou. A brand that once began on select-shop shelves had come to create spaces of its own. A 2022 interview with the founder describes its commitment to remaining independently operated, centered on products and design, while receiving investment from HARMAY.
What Defines the Brand
Emotion Moves Before Reason
Handhandhand’s official statement initially describes fragrance in detached terms as a “chemical formula of molecules,” color as a “combination of red, green, and blue,” and design as the “geometry of points, lines, and planes.” Only when imagination, a sixth sense, or a muse intervenes, it says, do these become something capable of moving people.
Its “The Touch by Hand” aesthetic is not simply a celebration of handmade objects. It is an attitude of choosing subtle, hard-to-quantify differences through touch and the senses. Shen’s assertion that “fragrance is nothing without imagination” likewise reflects the idea that an arrangement of fragrance ingredients alone does not complete a perfume: it becomes an experience only through the person who receives its memories and stories.
Translating Scent into Color and Form
The brand gives each fragrance its own color, emotion, and form. In its packaging, it has used labels reminiscent of fabric tags in fashion, and fabric bags with patterns and cords, encouraging people to remember scents visually and through touch as well.
Its home-fragrance diffusers incorporated brass components. Because brass changes color over time, it becomes a material that leaves the passage of time itself in the space where it is placed. Choosing to let time spent in use accumulate on an object’s appearance, rather than keeping it looking new, also connects to the later perfume series The Scent of Time.
Working with Perfumers
For The Spectrum of Scents eau de parfum collection, announced in 2024, the brand invited international perfumers Tanguy Guesnet of IFF and Yann Vasnier (in Japanese) and Ryoko Akatsu of Givaudan. The designers develop concepts of color and emotion, which the perfumers translate into fragrance through their technical expertise.
This differs somewhat from the traditional story of a “house and its exclusive perfumer.” At Handhandhand, perfumery, like graphics and material design, is positioned as one part of an integrated design process. As a result, names such as Black Sheep, White Lie, and Flash of Blue present a person’s state of being or the implications of words before directly describing fragrance ingredients.
The Perfume Lineup
The Spectrum of Scents
The Spectrum of Scents comprises four creations, using color as a medium to translate emotions that words alone cannot clearly express into scent. The fragrance called OUT OF BLUE in its home market is introduced in Japan as Flash of Blue. Below, fragrances available in Japan are referred to by their Japanese-market product names.
- Black Sheep: Lentisk and labdanum lead into incense, balsam fir, eucalyptus, cedar, and ambergris. Departing from familiar floral and fruity formulas, it depicts a single tree holding its own place within the flock.
- White Lie: Bergamot and mandarin, basil, freesia, pink pepper, woody notes, and musk. It superimposes a well-intentioned lie that does not reveal everything onto the spectrum of colors hidden within white light.
- Flash of Blue: Fig, galbanum, and pink pepper with benzoin, guaiac wood, vetiver, patchouli, and cedar. This green-woody scent likens a sudden inspiration to a small shooting star crossing a blue sky or the new shoots of spring.
- First Blush: Bergamot and black tea, Turkish rose absolute, hay, leather, oud, guaiac wood, and patchouli. It depicts the certainty and anxiety of encountering a great love for the first time through steaming black tea and a rose garden in May.
The Scent of Time
Announced in 2025, The Scent of Time consists of three creations exploring the fragments time leaves after passing through memory, skin, and the senses.
- Ash to Ash: Pink pepper and thyme, incense and cypress, vetiver, frankincense, and oakmoss. Like embers about to die out, it expresses memories that suddenly return through smell.
- Santal Nights: Bergamot and freesia with coriander, ginger, sandalwood, musk, and cedarwood. It journeys through an Arabian Nights whose ending has yet to be written: a misty forest, a traveler straying from the path, and a foreign market.
- Rebel Beige: Lavender, cypress, and rosemary lead into matcha, iris, lily of the valley, wormwood, amber, musk, and oakmoss. Rather than equating calmness with submission, it uses pale beige to express the rebellion within restraint.
Where the previous series refracted emotions through color, this one shifts its focus to memories fading with time and what nevertheless remains. What they share is an approach that gives emotion definition through dry materials such as wood, smoke, moss, herbs, and leather, rather than placing sweetness at the forefront.
Three New Outlines
The official website also lists Mr. TAM, Tea Rose, and Boundless. Mr. TAM is a woody floral in which fig wood, cashmere wood, and incense quietly unfold close to the skin. Tea Rose strips the rose of sweetness and symbolism, drawing out its clear botanical outline with sage and pink pepper. Through sage, mugwort, hay, orris, and frankincense, Boundless depicts not a destination but “a state that has yet to be defined.”
The stories of these three scents are even shorter and more abstract. Descriptions of remaining close to the skin and expressing a state of being rather than projecting forcefully reveal the maturation of Handhandhand’s longstanding attempt to “give form by hand to sensations that cannot be given form.”
Incidentally…
Handhandhand has not become a perfume-only brand. It continues to offer candles, diffusers, hand creams, hand washes, body care, home sprays, car fragrances, and sachets. Rather than treating perfume as decoration for the body alone, it places it within a continuum of living spaces: bedrooms, studies, car interiors, and hotels.
Another distinctive feature is its continuing collaboration with artists, illustrators, bookstores, and brands in fashion, music, and confectionery. In 2024, through a partnership with ADA Cosmetics, it became the first Chinese brand to join that company’s international hotel-amenities portfolio. This can be seen as an example of its philosophy, from the maker’s hands to the user’s, expanding from private rooms into shared spaces for a stay.
If you try Handhandhand, it may be better not to decide too firmly on your “favorite ingredients” at the outset. The solitude of Black Sheep, the silence of White Lie, the memory of Ash to Ash, the quiet rebellion of Rebel Beige: what this brand offers first is not a list of ingredients but a human state. When your own memories meet it, a fragrance created by three hands finally becomes the wearer’s own.
Additional Note
Two years, 2016 and 2017, are given for the brand’s beginnings. In an interview, the founder says the three launched the brand in 2016 and released candles and room sprays in 2017, while introductions by partners and retailers often give 2017 as its founding year. The sequence described in the founder’s interview runs from the 2016 launch to the 2017 product releases.
References
- ADA Cosmetics, “Handhandhand,” founder’s comments – https://ada-cosmetics.com/ja/house-of-brands/handhandhand/
- CBO Cosmetics Finance Online, “Entering Tsutaya and HARMAY: A Fragrance Brand Emerging from the Buyer-Store Scene,” interview with founder Chinlun Shen – https://www.sohu.com/a/544648615_120166458
- ifanr, “Why Are Young People Today Becoming Addicted to Smells?”, product development and brass materials – https://www.ifanr.com/1451380
- Ontimeshow, “A Sensory Designer Brand: handhandhand,” founder’s biography – https://www.ontimeshow.com/zh-hans/brand/10174
- Handhandhand official website, “Brand Story / The Touch by Hand” – http://handhandhand.com/about.php?id=10
- Handhandhand Design Workshop, “About,” design-studio overview – http://workshop.handhandhand.com/List.asp?ID=1002&About.html
- BSelection, “handhandhand Fragrance,” early products and materials – https://www.bselection.com/pages/handhandhand
- Handhandhand official website, “Stockist,” stores and retailers – http://handhandhand.com/about.php?id=19
- ADA Cosmetics, “Handhandhand home fragrance is a designer brand,” brand card – https://ada-cosmetics.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/LXB-HHV-002MKBRC-01-SalesSupport-BrandCard-EN-2026-01-HRes.pdf
- Storm Media, “Independent Designer Fragrance Brand handhandhand,” packaging and collaborations – https://www.storm.mg/article/4862636
- MZ Toutiao, “Exploring handhandhand’s New Perfume Collection Through the Spectrum of Scent,” perfumers and series composition – https://mztoutiao.com/index/index/kuaixun_detail.html?id=4134
- NOSE SHOP, “Flash of Blue” — https://noseshop.jp/products/had-pf-ob
- NOSE SHOP, “White Lie” — https://noseshop.jp/products/had-pf-wl
- Handhandhand official website, “Black Sheep” – http://handhandhand.com/product.detail.php?id=123
- Handhandhand official website, “White Lie” – http://handhandhand.com/product.detail.php?id=122
- Handhandhand official website, “Out of Blue” – http://handhandhand.com/product.detail.php?id=121
- Handhandhand official website, “First Blush” – http://handhandhand.com/product.detail.php?id=120
- PR Newswire Asia, “handhandhand Launches the New Perfume Collection The Scent of Time” – https://www.prnasia.com/story/502388-1.shtml
- Handhandhand official website, “Ash to Ash” – http://handhandhand.com/product.detail.php?id=128
- Handhandhand official website, “Santal Nights” – http://handhandhand.com/product.detail.php?id=129
- Handhandhand official website, “Rebel Beige” – http://handhandhand.com/product.detail.php?id=127
- NOSE SHOP, “Rebel Beige” — https://noseshop.jp/products/had-pf-rb
- Handhandhand official website, “Mr.TAM” – http://handhandhand.com/product.detail.php?id=141
- Handhandhand official website, “Tea Rose” – http://handhandhand.com/product.detail.php?id=142
- Handhandhand official website, “Boundless” – http://handhandhand.com/product.detail.php?id=143
- Handhandhand official website, product categories – http://handhandhand.com/
- ADA Cosmetics, “World premiere of exclusive partnership between handhandhand and ADA Cosmetics” – https://ada-cosmetics.com/ada-cosmetics-at-hotel-shop-plus-shanghai-in-hotel-amenities/
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