Melt Season: Contemporary Chinese Fragrance, Flowing Like Water

“A country’s brands are also part of how that country communicates its culture.”

— Lishi Ni, founder

Born in Shanghai, Melt Season is a fragrance brand that seeks not to line up easily recognizable symbols of Chineseness, but to weave ideas about nature, literature, and the fluctuations of emotion deep into its scents. The words that succinctly convey its world are “Be water, I flow.” Without a fixed shape, water flows gently without losing its essence, embodying the way of life to which the brand aspires.

Melt Season does not yet have the long chronology of an established European or American house. Some parts remain out of sight: the family in which the founder grew up and the schools she attended, the work of the perfumers and material suppliers behind its scents, and the precise order in which its creations emerged. Nevertheless, following her account of her journey, the products, and the stores reveals the outlines of a brand growing as it changes shape like water.

Basic Information
The Founder and the Brand’s Journey
What Defines the Brand
The Fragrance Lineup
Incidentally…

Basic Information

Brand: Melt Season

Based in: Shanghai, China

Established: 2020, the year its parent company was founded in Shanghai and work on the brand concept began. Its first products reached the market in December 2021. For this reason, some media give 2021 as the founding year; approximately a year separates the beginning of preparations from the perfumes’ debut.

Founder: Lishi Ni, known to those close to her as “Ruanruan.”

Operating company: It began as the first brand of Shanghai-based Verse China.

Where the brand communicates: Its brand story page and official Instagram. Within China, its official WeChat mini program has served as the principal sales channel. It brings its fragrances to people in a somewhat different way from European and American brands that use websites on their own domains as the main point of entry.

The Founder and the Brand’s Journey

From Zhejiang to Britain

Lishi Ni was born in 1994 in Zhejiang Province, China. According to the introduction to a podcast on which she appeared, she moved to Britain during her secondary education and studied media and sociology at university. The details of her path, including school names and graduation dates, are not known, but time spent in both China and Britain lies at its beginning.

After returning to China in 2016, she worked in entertainment and consumer-sector investment at Yule Gongchang, then co-founded the entertainment company Kunyin Entertainment. She subsequently reportedly held a senior role in the Chinese operations of the South Korean eyewear brand Gentle Monster.

This was a different route from that of a traditional perfumer beginning with specialist education in fragrance. Investment, entertainment, fashion: in each field, she was involved in work that delivered not just products, but a complete combination of a world, spaces, and stories. Even if it is not possible to trace exactly how long she worked at each company or her detailed responsibilities, this experience across several disciplines closely echoes the origins of the brand.

A Gap Revealed Through Travel

Traveling to at least 30 countries, Ni encountered niche fragrances from around the world. This is also where the podcast featuring her locates the impetus for founding the brand: “I want to create a luxury perfume brand that comes from China.” The ambition that grew on her travels developed into a full-fledged concept during the pandemic in 2020 and led to the establishment of the parent company in Shanghai.

The goal was not simply to create an alternative to imported brands. She wanted to express Chinese olfactory preferences and cultural memories through a contemporary, international sensibility. She also wanted to convey the idea that “there is no single model of success for women’s lives.” The brand Ni discusses on the podcast combines fragrance with an aspiration for a free and inclusive way of life.

“The brand is my rose. In the language of flowers, it means ‘not being defined.’”

— Lishi Ni

This is a metaphor drawn from The Little Prince. To her, a brand was not something finished and placed on the market, with the work ending there. It was something to water, keep tending, and nurture into a form of its own.

Eighteen Months of Preparation

The path from concept to launch was not entirely smooth. Ni and her team spent about 18 months preparing, but reportedly struggled to take the final step toward launch because the result did not meet her idea of “perfection.” Eventually she reconsidered: a new brand could not be expected to possess, from the outset, the same level of completion as a house with decades of history. It first had to enter the world and then be nurtured.

The team supporting those preparations also brought together experience from different fields: a brand director who had been Greater China manager for Hermès’ home division, and a supply-chain adviser who had spent 17 years at a major fragrance company. Their individual names and the fragrance company’s name were not disclosed in reporting at the time, but together they supported both space and materials.

On December 7, 2021, six fragrances launched online under the theme “A Letter in a Bottle.” They belonged to two lines, Classic and Haute Couture, priced at the time at RMB 980 and RMB 1,280 respectively for 100 ml. On December 14, a launch event at Shanghai’s Lifeng Shuangshu combined fragrance sampling with theater, dance, and music, presenting an “olfactory drawing room.”

The First Thousand

The pricing was bold for an emerging Chinese brand. Yet in an interview in 2022, the brand revealed that it had acquired approximately 1,000 customers in the three months after launch, and that the bestsellers belonged to the most expensive line, Haute Couture in 100 ml.

Ni believed that “the first 1,000 people determine a brand’s tone and customer profile.” They chose high-priced 100 ml fragrances rather than 50 ml bottles or candles. Instead of a small bottle that could easily be used up, they wanted a substantial one to keep. The brand saw this response as a sign that its perfumes were being received not merely as consumables but as objects to own and collect. This is also a story about how the creators themselves interpreted their customers’ choices at the time.

Early on, the company received seed investment from Yisan Capital. In March 2022, it raised more than RMB 10 million in angel funding led by Breeze Capital. The money was primarily intended for the supply chain, product development, and store expansion.

Bringing Fragrance into Space

In summer 2022, the first permanent store, Chenjing, opened on Taiyuan Road in Shanghai. The building is a Spanish-style garden residence described as a place where the writer Nien Cheng lived. The brand positioned it not as a conventional sales floor but as an “olfactory drawing room” where people gather through fragrance.

The store reduced visual information, using timber construction, plaster finishes, oxidized brass, and the garden’s dawn redwoods to create an environment where visitors could focus on fragrance in tranquility. Designed by MLKK Studio, the Taiyuan Road space was shortlisted for the 2024 Dezeen Awards.

Online, the scent itself cannot be experienced, and shoppers are more easily drawn into comparing prices. Melt Season therefore adopted a policy of investing in products and physical stores rather than short-term advertising. In 2023, perfume accounted for 70–80% of sales. Ni said:

“I would like people to choose a perfume as their first purchase.”

— Lishi Ni

Returning to Water

In 2023, marking two years since its perfumes launched, the brand adopted “Be water, I flow” and new keywords: “freedom, flexibility, and resilience.” Water changes shape to suit its vessel, becoming ice, a river, or the sea without losing its essence. Melt Season brought together this image of water in Eastern thought and the state of “flow,” in which one can act naturally and with concentration.

“Like water, we want to embrace everything while remaining ourselves.”

— Melt Season brand statement

The same sensibility flows through the brand name. It conveys “a soft, sensitive heart that perceives the changing seasons.” A Chinese industry publication also offers an explanation connecting the founder’s nickname, Ruanruan, with the English word “melt.” This is not her own wording, but it is an intriguing interpretation that links a nickname suggesting softness with the character of the brand.

Flowing Overseas

In December 2023, New Incubation Ventures, The Estée Lauder Companies’ investment arm for emerging brands, acquired a minority stake. This was its first investment in a Chinese perfume brand. The amount and detailed terms were not disclosed, but the involvement of a global cosmetics group marked a milestone for a brand that had begun in Shanghai.

At the time, Ni explained that the brand reflected the emotions, attitudes, and vitality of contemporary China while avoiding superficial cultural symbols and embracing Eastern and Western philosophies like water. Rather than foregrounding recognizable motifs such as Chinese characters, dragons, or porcelain, it sought to convey its Chinese identity through an inner sensibility that might be called shenyun, or spiritual resonance.

In September 2024, it entered DFS’s Canton Road and Causeway Bay stores in Hong Kong. The brand and DFS announced it as the first Chinese perfume brand to be stocked there. In 2025, it participated in the Paris–Shanghai Perfume Show, and from September that year it also appeared for a limited period in Narita Airport’s duty-free stores. In a 2024 podcast, plans were additionally discussed for entering cities including London, New York, and Paris in 2026. These should be understood as destinations envisaged at the time, distinct from an established record of permanent store openings.

What Defines the Brand

Not Reducing the East to Symbols

Melt Season does not view “the East” as a collection of particular fragrance materials and traditional patterns. Drawing inspiration from literature, geography, history, and art, it brings Eastern and Western ways of thinking into contact and aims for fragrances that can be received emotionally across cultures.

“Products with a truly Eastern resonance that also appeal to international markets take time.”

— Lishi Ni

What matters to the brand in fragrance creation is capturing subtle changes in nature through precious materials and depicting a world where opposites coexist in harmony. The details of production are not all visible together, whether the proportion of natural materials, their origins, extraction methods, or the fragrance companies and perfumers involved. Rather than equating “high quality” with specific materials or methods, the first step is to look at the delicate expressions of nature that the phrase is meant to evoke.

Not Defining a Fragrance Too Narrowly

Neither the fragrance names nor their scent profiles are designed to have meanings that resolve at a glance. Gitanjali and Nian, whose origins lie in the East, sit alongside Veil and Pearl, inspired by Western art, leaving room for the recipient’s own interpretation.

This attitude echoes Ni’s own words, “not being defined.” Rather than confining fragrance to a gender, place, or simple story, the brand treats it as something whose meaning changes through the wearer’s memories and on their skin.

The “Infinite Form” Bottle

The bottle design, “Infinite Form,” was inspired by Jorge Luis Borges’s short story The Aleph. An infinite world beyond words is contained within a tiny point. That spatial metaphor is translated into thick glass and a simple silhouette.

The manufacturing journey described by the brand is also a lengthy one. Each component is individually tooled, with eight months of development and around 30 rounds of prototyping. To achieve mirror-like sides, each bottle is hand-polished at least 20 times; reportedly, only four of every ten bottles meet the standard and proceed to filling. A 100 ml bottle weighs about 360 grams. These are all figures supplied by the brand, but they reveal the accumulation of work behind an exterior free of superfluous decoration.

The exterior is predominantly clear or black, its restrained decoration returning attention to the liquid inside. The stance of “simplicity over complexity” is visible in the bottle’s presence. A clean appearance does not, however, automatically signify environmental consideration. What paper is used for the outer box, how much recycled material is incorporated, and how are refills addressed? Such packaging details are not visible from its appearance alone. Visual beauty and efforts concerning materials and continued use each deserve attention in their own right.

The Fragrance Lineup

The perfumes have expanded into three lines: Classic, Haute Couture, and Epic. At launch, there were two lines, Classic and Haute Couture, totaling six fragrances. New creations were added, and Epic subsequently emerged. Differences between early descriptions and today’s lineup also trace the brand’s growing range of olfactory expression.

Classic

The core line treats everyday emotions, nature, and works of art with a relatively light touch. Early fragrances included Youjian / REVOIR and ONE DAY / Kongchan. They were later joined by VEIL / Miansha, PEARL / Zhenzhu Shaonü, PERSONA / Disan Rencheng, and NOBODY KNOWS / Wuren Zhixiao, among others.

Youjian: Retailers describe a composition centered on Japanese yuzu, layered with clary sage, jasmine, oakmoss, and ambergris. Its design does not end with citrus brightness, but leaves traces of bitterness and earth.
One Day: A citrus floral that moves from lemon into Bulgarian rose, Egyptian jasmine, and French mimosa. It is described as depicting the vitality of a bright garden.
Veil: Opens with grapefruit and aldehydes before moving into tuberose and white musk. At its core is a contrast between stillness and sensuality, like a transparent curtain enveloping the skin.
Pearl: Inspired by the image of a girl recalling Vermeer’s painting, it centers on white peony, rice, and sandalwood.
Roaming Wind (Chile): A creation rooted in the ancient northern grassland folk song “The Song of the Chile.” Development took more than ten months, and it also echoed Ni’s own search for inner calm in a time of profound change.
Meri: A cool, woody fragrance listing bergamot, pine, pink pepper, myrrh, iris, cedar, and suede, among other notes.

Haute Couture

An early higher-priced line whose representative fragrances have included GITANJALI / Jitanjiali, HU, MEDOG / Motuo, and NIAN. In later distribution for Japan, SADHU / Xingzhe has also been treated as part of this line.

Eastern stories flow beneath Gitanjali and Nian. Gitanjali in particular begins with Tagore’s poetry collection of the same name. Words that question life and faith are translated into scent, with their meaning entrusted to the wearer. Parts of the story of how each fragrance’s idea developed and the division of work among perfumers remain unseen. Perfume databases sometimes name creators, but these do not necessarily match the brand’s own descriptions.

Epic

Epic depicts larger stories that extend from an individual’s inner world to history, mythology, and forceful figures. This line includes JIBARO / Jibaluo, SIREN / Sairen, and LYCHEE / Feizi Xiao.

Lychee is a contemporary reinterpretation of the story of Yang Guifei, described as combining the sweetness of lychee, the richness of rose, and the depth of patchouli. Rather than treating a historical woman as merely a symbol of tragedy, it seeks to depict someone who retains her identity amid the currents of her time, expressing the brand’s ideal of “softness and strength.”

Perfume databases also list Ethereal, Anitya, and The Untamed as 2026 releases. Their names open up the imagination, but more detailed accounts from the brand are awaited before exploring the stories behind them and the scents they depict. As its number of creations grows, Melt Season’s world continues to expand.

Incidentally…

Rather than the literal sense of “seasons melting,” the brand name emphasizes “feeling the changing seasons with a soft heart.” “Season” is understood not as four static divisions but as something that lets the body sense the passage of time.

What makes Melt Season interesting is its distinction between “looking Chinese” and “coming from China.” Its appearance does not emphasize nationality; instead, an Eastern understanding of life is concealed within the quiet of its scents and spaces. For a first encounter, comparing One Day, which reveals the brand’s brighter side, Youjian, in which the crossing of East and West is readily apparent, and the strongly narrative Roaming Wind on the same skin may make it easier to grasp its range.

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