“The material itself is often the design.”
— Niels Strøyer Christophersen
To see FRAMA as a perfume brand is to grasp only part of its identity. Furniture, lighting, kitchens, interior design, publishing, food and drink, skincare, and scent: this Copenhagen design studio treats them not as separate product categories, but as elements that create a single spatial experience.
Its perfumes are not decorative devices for portraying a fashionable persona. The wooden fittings of an old pharmacy, fir trees in a Korean forest, a temple in Bali after rain, the Japanese concept of komorebi, and the deserts of the American Southwest: they translate the light, temperature, materials, and memories accumulated in places into spaces that can be worn.
Basic Information
Brand name: FRAMA
Founded: 2011
Founder / Creative Director: Niels Strøyer Christophersen
Based in: Copenhagen, Denmark
Main fields: Furniture, lighting, everyday objects, interior design, fragrance, body care, dining spaces, and more
Official website: https://framacph.com/
Official Japanese website: https://frama.jp/
FRAMA began in Copenhagen in 2011 with Christophersen at its center. Its name is rendered phonetically in Japanese as Furama. The St. Pauls Apothecary Collection, the brand’s fragrance division, began in earnest in 2016 and has expanded beyond perfume into perfume oils, candles, diffusers, and hand, body, and hair care.
The Founder and the Origins of the Brand
From Flea Markets and Building Sites, Not Design School
Christophersen was born in 1982 in Næstved, about an hour southwest of Copenhagen. His mother was a nurse and his father a mechanic. As a child, he accompanied his mother to flea markets and secondhand shops, looking at affordable Danish ceramics and furniture. He says that his mother valued not a famous maker’s name, but the feeling an object gave her.
He did not, however, receive specialist design training from an early age. After high school, he worked as a bricklayer’s assistant, demolishing old bathrooms, cutting tiles, and carrying materials for concrete and mortar. On those sites, he discovered architectural structure, exposed floors and walls, and the beauty of a space itself, without furniture.
“Furniture matters, but the place that receives it is just as important.”
— Niels Strøyer Christophersen
He later studied marketing and communication at Copenhagen Business College, and during a period in Paris encountered museums, galleries, design shops, and urban life in which different cultures mixed. After returning home, he worked in sales, distribution, public relations, and event planning for department stores and design brands. What he learned was less the technique of designing objects than the way a brand creates a unified experience through products, words, and retail spaces.
A First Collection Born in Six Weeks
FRAMA was not initially a design company with products of its own. Its predecessor was an agency representing international brands. The turning point came in 2011, when it was approached about exhibiting at a design fair in Berlin. The organizers assumed that FRAMA already had a collection, but in fact it had nothing. Only six weeks remained before the fair.
Christophersen asked a ceramicist whom his mother knew to make simple plates and bowls based on some old plastic tableware he owned. Designer Nicholai Wiig-Hansen contributed an idea for a round table made in Sintra, Portugal, using local marble and cork. A drawer-storage unit called Sutoa by a Japanese architect was added as well. There was not even time to make a catalog, so they arrived with a poster of printed drawings and only the most basic display plinths, but the response was strong. This improvised exhibition marked the transition from an agency into a design brand.
“The beginning was very spontaneous. Everything was honest and intuitive.”
— Niels Strøyer Christophersen
This first cross-disciplinary series was named the Permanent Collection. Evoking the permanent displays of a museum, the name already signaled an ambition to create lasting forms rather than seasonal novelty. Many products introduced in the founding year, including Sutoa, the Sintra Table, and Otto Stoneware, have remained in production since.
The Idea of a “House of Design”
What Christophersen envisioned was closer to a “house of design” than a furniture company. His interests in architecture, music, graphics, film, and other disciplines would be connected by a backbone, with different categories gradually added. From tea towels to tables and hand wash, the idea was to set no boundaries between fields as long as the expression remained coherent and authentic.
Collaboration with outside designers is therefore important at FRAMA. Rather than a designer who draws every finished form himself, Christophersen is closer to an editor who assesses materials, natural light, function, and presence, guiding different makers into the same world. He describes his role as “not the person who paints the picture, but the person who prepares a canvas with character.”
Encountering an Old Pharmacy
In its early years, FRAMA was based in a former workshop in Copenhagen’s Nordhavn district. But to express the brand’s duality, encompassing sophistication and history as well as rawness, it needed a space with a stronger story.
It found that space in St. Pauls Apotek, in the Nyboder district of central Copenhagen. The pharmacy had opened in 1878 and retained dark wooden shelves, small drawers, and an ornamental glass ceiling. When FRAMA’s pared-back furniture was placed inside, the old decoration and modern geometry brought one another into sharper relief. The building itself contained the tension between opposites that Christophersen repeatedly discusses: old and new, rawness and refinement, darkness and light.
“FRAMA has always been a place where opposites meet.”
— Niels Strøyer Christophersen
The building was not fitted out as a finished shop. It was treated as an ongoing project, gradually altered as the team came to understand the space over the years. The heavy woodwork and decoration of the old pharmacy were retained, while a cleaner, more contemporary space was created behind it. As the brand renovated the space, the space in turn nurtured the brand’s identity.
From Furniture to “Intangible Design”
Moving into the pharmacy led FRAMA toward scent. Christophersen wanted to create an experience that could not be touched, unlike physical products such as furniture or vessels. His friend and fragrance developer Lena Norling then brought him a scent inspired by the place. The first perfume, St. Pauls, translated the atmosphere of the historic pharmacy into an olfactory experience.
Norling focused on the heavy wooden panels and shelves and the dry smell accumulated in the old interior. She layered these with bright top notes suggesting the vitality of the people gathering around FRAMA at the time. In other words, St. Pauls does not simply reproduce the old pharmacy. It brings the memory of quiet architecture together with the energy of the people working there in the present.
“I am more a storyteller than a classical perfumer.”
— Lena Norling
In 2016, FRAMA introduced St. Pauls Eau de Parfum and Apothecary skincare. Apothecary, which extended into hand wash, lotion, and body care, is a scent centered on sandalwood, cedar, and ylang-ylang. It is not identical to the St. Pauls perfume, but a different formula that adapts its world to everyday care.
The Brand’s Commitments
Thinking of Scent as a Space
Rather than beginning with a persona or clothing, FRAMA’s fragrances are built from the elements that make up a place. They bring together wood, stone, earth, moisture, plants, light, architecture, and memories of travel to create a temporary space around the body or within a room. The brand also officially positions fragrance as an exploration of how scent acts on a space, rather than separating body fragrances from those for interiors.
This is not a different way of thinking from furniture making. Just as wood acquires marks and a sheen over time, becoming an object unique to its user, scent takes on different expressions as it meets each person’s skin. Christophersen says that FRAMA products “become more beautiful the more they are used.”
The Complexity of Natural Perfume Materials
In a 2018 interview, Christophersen described the early St. Pauls and 1917 as perfumes made with 100% natural oils. According to him, this approach makes changes in the scent harder to control and takes longer to bring to completion. He viewed small differences between batches and on the skin as part of the character of natural materials, akin to variations in wood grain.
Norling explains that, rather than representing a flower with a single molecule, a natural essential oil contains hundreds of molecules, so a distinctive complexity emerges when essential oils harmonize. Instead of standardizing perfume materials like building components, she waits for the process in which they clash and then settle into one another. This, too, reveals FRAMA’s approach of not manipulating materials excessively.
The interest in natural materials has continued throughout FRAMA’s fragrance creation. Nevertheless, the description “100% natural oils,” applied to early works, should be distinguished from the individual formulas of today’s perfumes, care products, and home fragrances. For example, the official Japanese website describes Komorebi as a perfume made in Italy using carefully selected materials.
Minimal Forms and Materials
For furniture, the studio uses wood, stone, cork, clay, and metal, limiting artificial coloring to reveal the colors inherent in the materials. Christophersen believes that, just as good ingredients naturally bring a dish together, choosing good materials and not working them excessively creates warmth in a space.
“We design as little as possible and let the materials speak for themselves.”
— Niels Strøyer Christophersen
The same principle carries through to the packaging. Perfumes, perfume oils, and care products use Italian-made glass bottles in subdued custom colors. Labels and shapes keep information restrained, recalling apothecary storage bottles without appearing excessively cosmetic when placed beside furniture. The containers are treated not just as vessels for scent, but as small pieces of architecture that bring order to a washbasin or shelf.
Designing Time, Not Trends
FRAMA does not regard replacing products every season as a prerequisite for growth. It chooses lasting materials, basic shapes, and surfaces that accommodate repair and aging, keeping its distance from short trend cycles that encourage excessive consumption. To Christophersen, Nordic design is not a white, simple appearance, but a relationship between materials, craftsmanship, function, and durability.
The Perfume Lineup
As of October 2026, the body-fragrance range centers on six scents. All are gender-neutral, with 50 mL eaux de parfum and 10 mL perfume oils as the basic formats. Depending on the scent, they also extend into home-fragrance formats such as candles, essential oils, and diffusers.
St. Pauls
FRAMA’s first perfume and the brand’s signature. It is an herbal, spicy, woody scent centered on lemongrass, coriander, Mysore sandalwood, and cedarwood. Earthy depth and vivid freshness connect the pharmacy’s wooden shelves and colored glass, its old architecture and the presence of people today.
1917
A floral, green, earthy composition of bergamot, lilac, oakmoss, and patchouli. It offers a contemporary reinterpretation of the classic chypre of 1917, a fragrance family built around contrasts involving bergamot, oakmoss, and other materials. Created in collaboration with the Danish art institution Kunsthal Aarhus, founded in 1917, it layers nuances of rose, lilac, and seaweed over the shadows of moss and grass.
Beratan
A spicy, floral, woody scent centered on orange, carnation, cinnamon, and sandalwood. Its inspirations are Bali’s volcanic earth, water lilies, incense, and temples after rain. While staying in Bali, Norling borrowed a perfumer’s studio and translated the warmth, hospitality, colors, sounds, and smells she experienced there into fragrance.
Deep Forest
A floral, green, woody fragrance of orange, white rose, cedarwood, and patchouli. It evokes Korean forests of Abies firs enduring long, cold winters and hot, humid summers. Through damp earth and steam, bark and soft flowers, it depicts the forest from a perspective close to the ground.
Komorebi
A citrus-floral-woody fragrance of yuzu, osmanthus, jasmine, and cypress, inspired by the Japanese word komorebi, sunlight filtering through leaves. Rather than rendering a forest realistically, it turns the sensation of light passing through space and casting shadows on walls and floors into scent. Delicate textures recalling Japanese paper and woven straw also underpin the work’s imagery.
Painted Desert
A creation expressing earth, roots, dew, brightness, and spice, with sage, frankincense, cedar, and sandalwood at its core. Inspired by the Painted Desert in Arizona, it depicts the moment when daytime heat meets the breath of the cool earth.
Its creation has a characteristically FRAMA story of linked coincidences. After seeing a James Turrell exhibition in Paris and learning that Turrell’s land-art project Roden Crater was on the western side of the desert, Christophersen named the fragrance then in development Painted Desert. Only after it was finished, he says, did he learn that the grandmother of the woman who had composed it was a painter who depicted that desert. The purple label recalls the colors of the desert’s geological layers.
“Imagination is a powerful tool. We approach it with passion.”
— Niels Strøyer Christophersen
An Apothecary Beyond Perfume
To understand FRAMA’s fragrances, it is better not to look only at the eaux de parfum. St. Pauls Apothecary also offers care products such as hand wash, lotion, shampoo, and body wash, designed to bring scent and materials into contact with everyday gestures.
In the care products, Apothecary centers on sandalwood, cedar, and ylang-ylang, while Herbarium centers on orange, juniper, rose, and ho wood. Rather than transferring exactly the same perfume formulas to cleansing and moisturizing products, the scents are reworked to suit actions such as washing hands, caring for skin, and washing hair.
For interiors, alongside candles and oils, there is From Soil to Form, in which oil is dropped onto spheres made from Korean soil, and the Sphere Oil Diffuser, which uses candle heat to diffuse scent from a stainless-steel sphere. Making even the vessels and diffusers in the same material language as the furniture clearly expresses the distinctive nature of fragrance created by a design studio rather than a perfume-material manufacturer.
By the Way…
Making Food in the Building That Made the Perfume
In 2020, the small eatery Apotek 57 opened inside the former pharmacy. Looking at furniture, trying scents, eating, and talking to people: for FRAMA, a space is not a backdrop for selling products, but a medium through which the brand’s ideas can be understood physically.
The First Permanent Overseas Store Is in Tokyo
In September 2025, FRAMA’s first permanent store outside Denmark opened at Shibuya PARCO. The brand had already built relationships in Japan through wholesale distribution to around eighty stores and the supply of amenities to restaurants, boutique hotels, and other venues. Starting with a small shop focused on fragrances and body care rather than the full furniture range was another characteristically FRAMA choice: first creating an entrance that reaches the senses.
“Nordic Minimalism” Is Not Enough
FRAMA’s bottles and spaces appear quiet at first glance and are often described as Nordic minimalism. Yet their essence is not making objects look white and sparse. A modest home in Næstved, hunting for old objects with his mother, exposed materials on building sites, multicultural encounters in Paris, the old pharmacy’s ornament, and landscapes seen on journeys: the point is to hold the transitions between disparate things in a single space without unnecessary processing.
The perfumes work in the same way. St. Pauls places old wood beside new vitality, Komorebi places light beside shadow, and Painted Desert places heat beside cool air. Trying a FRAMA fragrance may be less about receiving a finished story than about continuing that space with one’s own skin and memories.
Additional Note
Accounts of the move into St. Pauls Apotek differ even among interviews with the founder, giving 2013, 2014, and 2015. What they share is the sequence in which the old pharmacy became the brand’s base in the mid-2010s and the fragrance collection grew from that space. Apothecary skincare and St. Pauls Eau de Parfum were introduced in 2016.
References
- Studio Visit: FRAMA（SLEEK Magazine、interview with the founder）– https://www.sleek-mag.com/article/frama-studio/
- About – FRAMA Japan（overview of the brand and St. Pauls Apothecary）– https://frama.jp/?mode=f1
- Frama’s Niels Strøyer Christophersen Makes Things That Last（GOODEE、interview with the founder）– https://www.goodeeworld.com/blogs/stories/frama-s-niels-stroyer-christophersen-makes-things-that-last
- Frama-stifter Niels Strøyer Christophersen: “Vi stod med helt skrabede podier og lignede et skoleprojekt”（ELLE Denmark、interview with the founder）– https://elle.dk/kultur/frama-stifer-niels-stroeyer-christophersen-vi-stod-med-helt-skrabede-podier-og-lignede-et/
- Frama Showroom · Copenhagen, Denmark（IGNANT、interview with the founder）– https://www.ignant.com/2018/01/05/the-evolutionary-aesethetic-of-frama/
- In Conversation With: FRAMA Founder（Rikke’s Space、interview with the founder）– https://rikkesspace.com.au/design/frama-niels-stroyer-christophersen
- A sense of scent（ARK Journal、contribution and interview by Lena Norling）– https://www.ark-journal.com/a-sense-of-scent/
- Fragrances / Fragrance Finder（FRAMA official, fragrance approach）– https://us.framacph.com/collections/fragrances / https://us.framacph.com/collections/fragrance-finder
- FRAMA official「The Fragrance Guide」– https://framacph.com/blogs/stories/the-fragrance-guide
- A talk with Frama（Mutina、interview with the founder）– https://www.mutina.it/en/journal/talks/a-talk-with-frama
- Komorebi Eau de Parfum 50 ml（FRAMA Japan official product page）– https://frama.jp/?pid=165762844
- Painted Desert Eau de Parfum 50 ml（FRAMA Japan official product page）– https://frama.jp/?pid=188041126
- [Perfume Series, Vol. 28] What Are the Fragrances Created by Danish Design Studio FRAMA?（FASHIONSNAP、interview with the founder）– https://www.fashionsnap.com/article/fragrance-vol28/
- FRAMA, a Care Line from a Historic Nordic Pharmacy: The Founder’s Aim for Value Beyond a “Lifestyle Brand”（WWDJAPAN、interview with the founder）– https://www.wwdjapan.com/articles/2248535
- FRAMA official「Hand Wash | Apothecary | 375 mL」
- FRAMA official「Hand Wash | Herbarium | 375 mL」
- FRAMA official「Sphere Oil Diffuser | Beratan」
- FRAMA official「From Soil to Form Oil Diffuser | Deep Forest」
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