Bogue Profumo: Fragrances an Architect Cultivates by Night in a Laboratory of Shadows

“I work at night, because the light does not alter the chemicals, the smells of the day disappear, and space opens up for new experiments in shadow.”

— Antonio Gardoni

Essential Information

Founded: 2012
Founder: Antonio Gardoni
Based in: Brescia, Italy
Official website: bogue-profumo.com

The Founder and the Brand’s Origins

An Architect Born in Brescia

Antonio Gardoni was born in 1972 in the northern Italian city of Brescia. One of Lombardy’s principal cities, Brescia is a historic industrial center situated between Milan and Verona. He grew up there, later attending the Università Iuav di Venezia, where he completed his architectural studies in 1997.

After entering architecture, Gardoni pursued a remarkable career. He worked with sculptor and designer Ron Arad, then founded AG Studio in Brescia in 2001, also opening a satellite office in Beijing. He enjoyed a fruitful collaboration lasting fifteen years with the London interior-design collective Jump Studios, known for designing offices and spaces for prominent companies including Nike’s UK headquarters, Red Bull, and Saatchi & Saatchi. Gardoni himself worked on projects for brands such as Nike, Google, Levi’s, and Red Bull, as well as designing the furniture line Unhappy Family and writing and editing the book Food by Design, published by Harry N. Abrams in 2002.

A Passion for Nature Leads to the World of Scent

“I was never a ‘perfume person.’ I was never obsessed with the perfumes I wore, nor genuinely interested in fragrance. I became interested in perfumery because, at a certain point, I was deeply drawn to plants: trees, shrubs, and flowers. I had fallen in love with nature and wanted to understand it. I entered the perfume world through ‘experimenting with nature.’ As I chopped things up, extracted them, and played with materials, I eventually wanted to try recreating aspects of the scents nature offers using the materials I had at hand.”

His interest in perfume began around 2009–2010. At first, he used only natural materials, attempting to recreate gardens and natural landscapes through scent.

Before long, he began teaching himself organic chemistry to achieve the fragrances he imagined. “I studied from very boring organic chemistry books. But they often gave me answers to my questions. As I studied, I began to see other directions, and sometimes learned indirectly as well. I am still studying. This is a continuing process.”

His earliest perfumes were made as gifts for family and friends. His first “official” creation was Maai, in 2014.

“For a long time, I played only with natural materials. When I pictured pines, roses, and grass in a garden, I could see what I should mix, so it was easy to make a visual connection. I carried out many small experiments and called them ‘landscapes.’ That connected with what is interesting about architecture, because one of its attractions is abstraction. Eventually, the ‘garden’ I was trying to make was no longer a visual garden but an ideal one, and then it became a landscape, an idea, a concept.”

The Birth of the Brand and the Impact of Maai

Bogue Profumo was incorporated in 2012. Its arrival in the public eye, however, came with Maai in 2014.

“To me, it was simply another big experiment. So I was genuinely surprised when emails arrived from strangers all over the world asking, ‘Could I have a sample?’ I wasn’t very conscious of what I had done. Reading people’s reviews and impressions of Maai helped me understand what I had created, in reverse. Through the reviews, I came to understand my own creative process and the meaning of my work.”

Maai is the Japanese martial-arts term for the distance between two opposing things. The structure of Maai, in which tuberose is held in tension with fur-like animalic materials such as civet, castoreum, and hyraceum, seems itself to embody that sense of maai.

Maai received four stars from perfume critic Luca Turin. He reportedly described it as “like sitting in the front row of the Vienna Philharmonic after listening to nothing but ringtones for two months.” That single remark captures Bogue’s world well.

Two Professions, One Balance

Gardoni continues to pursue both architecture and perfume-making today. Living in Brescia and teaching architectural history at a university, he keeps making perfumes at night in his own studio. He describes the relationship between the two professions as follows.

“My passion for perfume can stay alive because I have architecture, and not just for financial reasons. Perfume is like a piece of cloud: immaterial, elusive, extremely difficult to track. But when I walk through a building I have designed, I can see the purely physical structures of heavy steel and concrete. That tangibility brings balance.”

He has also made clear that he does not intend to expand his distribution network or increase production. “I don’t believe in opening two or three new doors just to sell ten, twenty, or thirty more bottles. Distribution is always based on personal relationships.”

What Defines the Brand

A Philosophy of Fragrance: Old Techniques and Contemporary Intuition

Bogue Profumo’s official position is to “create contemporary fragrances with ancient techniques and modern intuition.” Gardoni makes his own solvents by infusing resins, woods, roots, and metals in alcohol, uses them to dissolve rare, high-quality raw materials found on his travels, and extracts essential oils through steam distillation. However, as he himself acknowledges, regulatory requirements, including IFRA and EU safety standards, prevent these experimental homemade solvents from being used in commercial products, so they remain part of his private experiments and research. The actual products use commercially available materials selected on the basis of what he has learned through this research.

His preference for natural materials is also striking. For example, around 80% of Maai’s composition is reportedly natural. Because the quality of natural raw materials varies with the climate where they are grown and the time of harvest, “even when made to exactly the same formula, the scent differs subtly from batch to batch.” Rather than viewing this as a flaw, he accepts it as part of the richness of production. He also favors highly concentrated formulas of 20% or more, saying, “At or below that level, it is hard to achieve the effect I want. Natural materials need a certain quantity to deliver certain effects.”

He uses an architect’s metaphor when discussing the structure of a scent.

“From architecture and design, I learned to build in layers and to think through subtraction. My perfumes are rooms to be discovered, with moods, textures, light, and color.”

He also describes his style as creating “mini clashes” between ingredients. “If you pair citrus with its worst enemies, deep animalic notes or an overpowering flower, and find a balance, something interesting can emerge.” Allowing opposing things to coexist and drawing beauty from their tension is what makes Bogue’s fragrances unique.

Small-Batch Production, Entirely Handmade

Every creation is made entirely by hand in small batches. This is extremely rare in the increasingly industrialized modern perfume industry, but for Gardoni it is part of the form of expression itself. The first batch of the collaborative fragrance DOULEUR! consisted of just 300 bottles. Rather than aiming for large profits as a brand, he prioritizes bottling the results of each new exploration.

Packaging Design

Detailed official information about the packaging is limited, but the packaging of the three main existing fragrances, Maai, O/E, and MEM, was refreshed alongside the brand’s Japanese relaunch in February 2026. Descriptions also mention a travel set with four vials arranged in a custom case bearing a silver-foil logo. Overall, the straightforward style, free of excessive decoration, seems to reflect Gardoni’s position that the fragrance itself is the work of art.

The Perfume Lineup

MAAI — 2014

Genre: Chypre, Floral, Animalic

Bogue’s starting point and signature creation. A core of lush florals including tuberose, rose, jasmine, and ylang-ylang is layered with several fur-like animalic materials, civet, castoreum, and hyraceum (fossilized hyrax secretions), alongside oakmoss, sandalwood, and dried fruit. It could be called an homage to the grand chypre perfumes of the pre-IFRA era of the 1970s and 1980s, but it was also the result of chance.

“I was surprised when people told me Maai resembled the great vintage chypres. I thought I was doing something new. At the time, I didn’t know that much about classic perfume. It was almost an accident that it resembled such an old style.”

Critic Luca Turin reportedly gave the fragrance four stars, describing it as “like sitting in the front row of the Vienna Philharmonic after listening to ringtones for two months.” The name Maai also comes from the Japanese martial-arts term referring to the distance or space between two opposing entities.

O/E — 2015

Genre: Citrus, Aromatic, Woody

Beginning with fresh citrus notes including bergamot, grapefruit, lemon, and neroli, it moves through herbaceous spices of clove, black pepper, rosemary, thyme, and camphor, then a variety of woods including Lebanon cedar, juniper, pine, and hinoki. It finally settles into a smoky, animalic base of vetiver, benzoin, tobacco, resins, and sandalwood.

It is described as a fragrance in which contradictory elements coexist: digital and analog, past and future, artisanal and industrial. Despite being a citrus perfume, its structure is so complex and multilayered that it has been called a grand architectural creation that releases a hidden “inner beast.”

MEM — 2017

Genre: Floral, Oriental, Fougère

Another masterpiece representative of Bogue. Four kinds of lavender, petitgrain, jasmine, Damask rose, ylang-ylang, champaca, and other floral materials intertwine with animalic materials including civet, castoreum, ambergris, and Siam benzoin.

“Not since Aimé Guerlain created Jicky in 1889 has a perfumer offered such a radical interpretation of lavender.”

So says the text from Luckyscent. Luca Turin awarded this fragrance five stars in the 2018 edition of Perfumes: The Guide.

“Lavender, jasmine… MEM is by far the most complex and ambitious creation Antonio Gardoni has made. In its balance, texture, and symphonic richness, MEM occupies exceptionally rare territory. It would be an extraordinary achievement for any perfumer, and all the more so for someone whose main profession is architecture.” — Luca Turin

LiTA — 2020

Genre: Smoky, Floral, Oriental

A collaboration with DUO, the musical duo project of Luke Pritchard, vocalist of the British indie band The Kooks, and his wife Ellie Rose. LiTA takes its initials from “Love in the Afternoon.” It is a rich, smoky creation built around patchouli, ylang-ylang, and tobacco, layered with jasmine, amber, civet, myrrh, vetiver, and other notes.

“Music and perfume have much in common: notes and structures, and the ability to create and convey moods. Using DUO’s music, I wanted to make something that responded to their dark, smoky, sensual sound.” — Antonio Gardoni

COME — 2026

Genre: Green, Woody, Smoky

First unveiled in Japan in February 2026 as the first entirely new creation since the brand’s Japanese debut in 2020, this fragrance explores every aspect of “green.” Starting with bergamot, helichrysum (immortelle), and fig leaf, it gains depth from labdanum, oud, benzoin, black tea, jasmine, civet, patchouli, vanilla, and tonka bean.

The official text describes it poetically: “COME vibrates between contrast and harmony. The resinous sweetness of benzoin and the earthy intensity of oud paint a rich, forgotten emerald green.” It is a highly conceptual attempt to deconstruct and reconstruct a single color, green, through the full vocabulary of fragrance materials.

A Few More Details…

A “Valkyrie” Perfume and the Smell of the Screen: Maai was chosen as the perfume worn by the female protagonist, an homage to Elizabeth Taylor, in the Institute for Art and Olfaction’s revival project for the 1960s “Smell-O-Vision” scented film Scent of Mystery. This led Gardoni to become friends with the institute’s founder, Saskia Wilson-Brown, and to serve as a judge for the Art and Olfaction Awards over several years beginning in 2016.

“Pain” Sold: DOULEUR!, French for “pain,” was a 2019 collaboration with tattoo artist Freddie Albrighton. At its launch, Gardoni himself was doubtful, wondering who would buy something so strange, but the initial 300 bottles sold out quickly. This led to DOULEUR!2, with a slightly adjusted formula, although production was later discontinued.

An Interpretation of Tyrannosaurus Rex: Tyrannosaurus Rex was created for Zoologist Perfumes in 2018. Gardoni conceived its scent as “a very gentle continuous sound”: the sound of a jelly-like substance dripping from leaves, the intense rush of river water tumbling into a waterfall, different sounds of water heard from far away. “It’s actually visual,” he says with a laugh.