Thoo (The House of Oud): A House of Fragrance Where Engineering Meets Art

“A fragrance laboratory is a place where art and engineering can come together.”

— Andrea Casotti, co-founder of Thoo​

Basic Information

• Founded: 2016​
• Founders: Andrea Casotti, Italy; Mohammed Abu Nashi, Jakarta, Indonesia​
• Name change: Rebranded from THE HOUSE OF OUD to Thoo on December 13, 2024​
• Official website: https://thoo.it

The Founders and the Brand’s Origins

Andrea Casotti: A Perfumer with an Engineering Background

Thoo’s story begins with Andrea Casotti, a man born in Milan, Italy.​

“Two souls have always coexisted within me: dynamism and methodology, art and curiosity. Earning a degree in engineering allowed me to direct my concentration and determination toward an intellectually stimulating field. At the same time, my great passion, my love of art, remained entirely undiminished.”

— Andrea Casotti​

Casotti earned a degree in nuclear engineering from the Politecnico di Milano. His entry into the fragrance industry happened by chance.​

“I studied nuclear engineering and entered the artisan-perfumery business entirely by chance. I became involved in 2006, initially as part of a corporate organization project intended to establish an Italian chemical hub for fragrances, although the project itself never came to fruition.”

— Andrea Casotti, from an interview in Lampoon Magazine​

Casotti subsequently became CEO of CFF, Creative Flavours Fragrances, considered one of Italy’s youngest and most important fragrance manufacturers. He later also co-founded Moresque, a niche brand inspired by Moorish culture, establishing himself as an independent perfumer and brand builder.

Casotti is also a street artist. Living simultaneously with three identities, engineer, artist, and perfumer, he leaves traces of all three throughout the brand.​

Meeting an Oud Hunter

As his career developed, Casotti traveled extensively for work.

“Being in the fragrance business also means being in the business of travel. You go around the world looking for clients and suppliers. In this industry, seventy percent of raw materials come from outside Europe, mainly Asia. That is how I met Mohammed Abu Nashi. He is like a Piedmontese craftsman, far removed from large factories and mass production. He brought me into the world of oud.”

— Andrea Casotti, from an interview in Lampoon Magazine​

Mohammed Abu Nashi is an oud producer and supplier based in Jakarta. Casotti calls him an “oud hunter,” and the two are known to have traveled together to sources of the finest oud in Indonesia, India, Myanmar, and elsewhere.

“He opened the door to a country with a fragrance culture different from ours. He spends much of his time in Jakarta and has access to plantations where oud is harvested every year, as well as small local plantations that are unsuitable for mass production but sufficient for the niche world.”

— Andrea Casotti, from an interview in Lampoon Magazine​

The Brand’s Birth: From a Christmas Gift to the World

Following their meeting and years of mutual trust, THE HOUSE OF OUD was born in 2016. Casotti recalls, however, that he had not intended from the outset to launch a brand.​

“The House of Oud is the culmination of fifteen years of encounters and work. We had come to handle everything, from packaging to changes in the market. We wanted to make something for ourselves: a Christmas present for friends, something that told the story of our world and our experiences. We started with a batch of two hundred, trying to distill the best of everything we had learned. It did not begin as a brand, but as a gift for the people we love.”

— Andrea Casotti, from an interview in Lampoon Magazine​

The brand went on to develop fragrances by Casotti himself as well as working with talented perfumers such as Cristian Calabrò and Maurizio Cerizza.​

From THE HOUSE OF OUD to THoO

On December 13, 2024, the brand rebranded from THE HOUSE OF OUD to THoO. Rather than announcing the brand’s disappearance, this declared its evolution in a more contemporary, eclectic direction.​

“To pursue this adventure further, I turned toward a new direction, THoO, bringing together the things that move me most: styles of every kind, painting, and art. My aim is to make my journey more multifaceted and my olfactory creations more interesting. THoO is like a book in which I wander as I please, drawing new creative inspiration from every element of life.”

— Andrea Casotti, from the official website​

The Brand’s Commitments

What Is Oud? Thoo’s Philosophy of the Material

Oud, or agarwood (in Japanese), is a rare material formed when trees of the genus Aquilaria, native to Southeast Asia, are injured by external factors. Resin accumulates in the wood as a defensive response and matures as the tree decays. Long prized in the Middle East and Southeast Asia for religious ceremonies and everyday scent, its price is said to have risen by five hundred percent over the past twenty years.

Casotti says that working in the Middle East fundamentally changed his view of oud.

“Working in the Middle East influenced my vision. Their use of fragrance is conceptually different from ours. We look for oud in a perfume, but for them oud is an oil to apply to the skin. Only afterward does it become fragrance. They also burn it at home, enveloping their clothes in oud smoke before spraying perfume on them. (…) In the Middle East, perfume is a ritual, like coffee in our lives.”

— Andrea Casotti, from an interview in Lampoon Magazine​

Thoo respects these traditions, yet does not believe oud should dominate. According to its official description, oud is never used to reign as the star, but as a bridge between other ingredients, giving the fragrance character and depth. This philosophy produces contemporary, richly layered scents that are approachable even for consumers in Europe, North America, and Japan who are less familiar with oud.​

OUD in the brand name has another meaning: it also stands for Our Unique Devotion.​

The Bottle: An Upside-Down Egg Inspired by the Palm of a Hand

Thoo’s fragrance bottles invariably make people stop and look. Their egg shape is said to have been inspired by the gesture of holding a perfume and spraying it. Casotti explains:​

“We took inspiration from the shape of the palm and the gesture of spraying perfume. It looks like a stone, but has a bodily form. The bottle is upside down to express a material as special as oud. (…) A craftsman in Varese applies the paint, using a technique called Life is Color that is very close to marbling. Every bottle is different.”

— Andrea Casotti, from an interview in Lampoon Magazine​

In this inverted-bottle design, the gold stand supporting the upside-down vessel is actually its cap. The construction also symbolizes a philosophy of looking at things from a new perspective. Italian artisans in a Varese workshop carefully paint each bottle by hand, and no two patterns are identical. Collectors are even said to buy pairs, one to use and one to display, appreciating their sculptural beauty as art objects.

Casotti’s encounter with this glaze-like technique has a characteristic story of its own.

“While I was in Canada, I once met a Russian cake designer. She glazed cakes using exactly the same technique that we use for our bottles. She taught me another approach to gourmand scents, those sweet fragrances that evoke food: not through the classic methods of sugar or chocolate, but through macerating fruit. Keep Glazed came from that, using a sweet note obtained from mango rather than traditional vanilla.”

— Andrea Casotti, from an interview in Lampoon Magazine​

A Philosophy of Creation: Color and Scent as Parts of the Same Message

Casotti pays as much attention to choosing a bottle’s colors as he does to its fragrance formula.

“Fragrance notes that work are those that allow consumers to visualize the scent. This applies to color too. When we choose a bottle color, we never choose just one. We always make ten, fifteen, or twenty attempts. Color and scent must be part of the same message. It does not matter whether they are complementary or contrasting. Fragrance is cunning: you cannot see it, but its memory is the strongest of all the senses.”

— Andrea Casotti, from an interview in Lampoon Magazine​

The Fragrance Lineup

Thoo consists of several collections, each with a different theme and world of its own. Production is handled by HIC, near Milan, at Via Privata Cadore 10, San Giuliano Milanese.​

Desert Day Collection

The brand’s first collection, available since its founding in 2016. Under the theme of twenty-four hours spent in the desert, four fragrances portray its changes over a day: dawn, midday, dusk, and night. Representative creations include Blessing Silence (2016), a serene interpretation of the classic pairing of oud and rose, and Breath of the Infinite (2016), which evokes dawn in the desert.

Klem Garden Collection

Also launched at the brand’s inception, this collection expresses the four seasons of the desert and the pleasures of the Arab world through images of abundant fruit and gardens. Representative creations include Dates Delight, with the sweetness of perfectly ripe fruit, and Almond Harmony, dedicated to the almond blossom, one of spring’s first flowers.

Arts Collection, Formerly the THoO Collection

Introduced as a new direction in 2018, this collection explores cross-pollination between art, music, style, fragrance, painting, beauty, pastry chefs, nature, and life. It is an ambitious lineup that travels with creative freedom as its map. Its three representative fragrances, The Time, Live in Colors, and Just Before, remain especially popular.

Collaborations with artists distinguish this collection. Each Other, with a bottle designed by Milanese graffiti writer and rapper KayOne, Marco KayOne Mantovani, was created as an homage to Milan’s street-art culture.

Keep Glazed, born from a collaboration with Canadian pastry chef Ksenia Penkina, is known for uniting the sweetness of macerated mango with the visual beauty of cake-glazing techniques.

Royal Stones Collection

Inspired by the British royal family’s jewels, this collection interprets the qualities of each gemstone through scent. It includes Ruby Red, Emerald Green, Sapphire Blue, and White Pearl. Ruby Red, for example, is said to have been inspired by the love story of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip. Its combination of ginger and floral notes creates an oriental-floral fragrance.

The Crop Collection

Of all Thoo’s collections, this special line engages most directly with oud in its original form. It could be described as the philosophical heart of the brand. Produced in limited editions each year, it continues an experimental approach of pairing that year’s finest harvested oud with one other exceptional raw material. The perfumes use one hundred percent natural ingredients and are created by distilling materials of the highest quality together.​

The theme changes each year. Past pairings have included mint, licorice, palo santo wood, coconut, cocoa in 2021, Arabian coffee in 2022, and cannabis in 2023. Production quantities also vary: two hundred and fifty bottles worldwide in 2021, and five hundred and seven in 2023. Sequential numbers are engraved on the bottoms of the bottles, attracting considerable attention among perfume collectors as genuinely limited editions.

By the Way…

• The fact that it began not as a brand but as a gift seems to capture Thoo’s character particularly well. The first batch consisted of just two hundred pieces, made for Casotti to give to friends. That small-batch spirit lives on in the Crop collection, whose annual production is limited to a few hundred bottles.​
• Casotti’s artistic name, or nickname, is Thero, as his friends call him. The two letters of the brand name Thoo also blend this nickname with THoO, the abbreviation of THE HOUSE OF OUD, showing how inseparable the founder’s personality is from the brand.