XERJOFF | Designing the Fragrance and the Object Together

I would prefer to call myself an art director, rather than nose.

Sergio Momo

Imagining a fragrance, working through its direction with perfumers, and developing the object that contains it: this is how XERJOFF co-founder Sergio Momo understands his work. Stone-adorned flacons and sculpted gold caps belong to the conception of the perfume as a whole.

Co-founder Dominique Salvo connects that vision with materials, craftspeople and production. Following their work reveals the decisions behind the house’s elaborate appearance: how a scent and its vessel can become one creation.

Contents

Brand facts
The founders and the development of the house
How the house approaches making
References

Brand facts

Country and home city: Italy, Turin
Co-founders: Sergio Momo and Dominique Salvo
Formal foundation: 2007, following earlier ideas and experiments
Main categories: perfume, home fragrance, body and hair products
Official website: Xerjoff

The founders and the development of the house

A childhood of fragrance and drawing

Fragrance belonged to Momo’s family life. His grandmother showed him the boxes of Lanvin and Coty perfumes she received as gifts; his parents also kept carefully chosen fragrances.

His travelling father brought home incense and scented woods and drew his attention to flowers in the mountains. Drawing was another constant. Encouraged by his parents, Momo studied design and, at seventeen, went from classes to a small agency, joining the business after graduation.

He later moved to London, working with photographers and copywriters at a Soho agency. Back in Italy, he became a creative director. Family memories of scent and a career concerned with images and communication would become foundations for his work in perfume.

Making his own work from the idea of a stone flacon

Momo recalled his unease with design work becoming dominated by price competition. He pursued perfumery and distillation courses in Grasse. Small quartz perfume bottles his father brought from China inspired a vessel of his own; he visited craftspeople in Valenza Po to explore its making.

Momo dates the original idea to 2003. Early experiments included Elle and Homme in special quartz flacons, developed while he continued his design work.

My idea was to combine the finest natural ingredients with Italian craftsmanship, artistry and design.

Sergio Momo

In Moscow, a client’s enthusiasm for the scent and object led to an order, helping turn a personal project into a business. Momo and Salvo formally founded Xerjoff in Turin in 2007, launching the first 17/17 Stone Label collection.

Two roles connecting an idea with a finished product

Momo brought Salvo into the developing venture as a business partner. She describes her role as translating creative vision into tangible products, coordinating materials, craftspeople, suppliers and production schedules.

Momo sets a direction and works with perfumers as a scent is created and adjusted. Composition, art direction and the work of making production possible come together in the finished object.

The name also carries memories of his life: his grandmother’s nickname Joff joined the Sir used by London colleagues. The house’s international presence now includes a boutique within Harrods’ Salon de Parfums in London.

Receiving the history of Casamorati

In 2009, Xerjoff revived Casamorati, whose origins lie in Claudio Casamorati’s perfume business in Bologna. Its double-C trademark was filed in 1888. After the house had closed, Xerjoff acquired the rights and brought it back, retaining its original flacon and logo.

Casamorati’s nineteenth-century history is distinct from Xerjoff’s foundation. Alongside creating new work, this is a way of carrying inherited design and perfume culture into the present.

How the house approaches making

Judging completion through materials and production

For Salvo, an idea alone is insufficient. A perfume must meet requirements for stability, material quality and technical standards, while its story must also be convincing.

We never force the timing.

Dominique Salvo

If the narrative remains unresolved or unconvincing, the fragrance does not proceed. Her decisions keep the original vision intact while balancing aesthetics with the practicalities of manufacture.

Giving a story form through stone and a crown

Salvo designed the signature cap, drawing on Turin’s Egyptian Museum and the form of the Deshret, the ancient Egyptian Red Crown. Local art and history become the outline of an object held in the hand.

In 17/17 Stone Label, which includes Homme, Elle and Irisss, a hand-cut semi-precious stone adorns each flacon. Inspired by displays at London’s Natural History Museum, the collection brings natural material into contact with human workmanship.

Shooting Stars followed in 2009, taking inspiration from the Sikhote-Alin meteorite that fell in eastern Siberia in 1947. With perfumes including Nio and Uden, it turns towards the journey of matter arriving from beyond Earth. The two collections approach nature through different timescales and stories.

Expressing places through combinations of materials

Among the house’s international collections, 1861 was created for the 150th anniversary of Italian unification. Renaissance, Naxos and Zefiro explore the culture and landscapes of Italy.

Naxos, a tribute to Sicily, combines lavender and bergamot with honey, cinnamon, tobacco leaf and vanilla, among other notes. Aromatic herbs and citrus share the composition with sweetness and tobacco. Its interpretation of the island extends beyond the brightness of citrus alone.

Oud Stars turns to the journeys of Ibn Battuta and the cities he visited. Alexandria II moves from apple, lavender and rosewood through rose and cedarwood to a base including Laotian oud.

Fruit and flowers surround the woods. Following the combinations—sweetness and tobacco in Naxos, flowers and woods in Alexandria II—offers a way to understand differences concealed by a shared, elaborate visual language.

Moving from intense fruit towards citrus and spice

Vibe translates moments, feelings and places into fragrance, with Erba Pura, Erba Gold and Accento among its perfumes. Momo describes an approach led by creative ideas rather than market trends.

We have the artistic attitude of creating something new.

Sergio Momo

Erba Gold offers a concrete example. It retains a shared core with Erba Pura while shifting the emphasis from pronounced fruitiness towards citrus and spice. Changing the elements supporting an idea produces another expression. The related names thus contain a particular experiment in composition.

Turning a musician’s memories into fragrance materials

Blends brings perfume into contact with other creative fields, including music. Tony Iommi Monkey Special, made with the Black Sabbath guitarist, interprets what late-1960s rock meant to him through scent.

Iommi shared memories of leather, rum, heat and patchouli colognes from his gigs. The official notes combine rum, leather and patchouli with caramel and vanilla, among other elements. The work lies in shaping these remembered subjects into a perfume that also makes room for sweetness.

Working stone, carrying forward historical designs and listening to a musician’s memories are different activities. At Xerjoff, each can become a specific starting point for making a fragrance and its vessel together.