MUSICOLOGY: Perfume Is a Symphony. Scent Is a Melody.

“Just like a music composer, I used notes and chords to create perfumes that will bring emotion in people’s heart.”
— Nathalie Lorson, Master Perfumer

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Essential Information

• Brand name: MUSICOLOGY
• Established: 2019
• Founder: Fabien Boukobza
• Perfumer: Nathalie Lorson
• Based in: Paris, France​
• Official website: musicologyparfums.com​

Note: The brand name MUSICOLOGY is said to come from Prince’s 2004 album Musicology.​

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The Founder and the Origins of the Brand

Fabien Boukobza: An Industry Veteran Discovers the Connection Between Sound and Scent

MUSICOLOGY founder Fabien Boukobza has a career spanning around 30 years in the fragrance industry. Through collaborations with several major perfume houses, he accumulated extensive knowledge of the perfume business, from its upstream operations to its downstream activities. According to his LinkedIn profile, he has been based in Hong Kong and Paris as director of his own company, ATELIER BEAUTE COSMETIQUES INTERNATIONAL, since September 2019, and established MUSICOLOGY around the same time.

After nearly 30 years in the industry, Boukobza arrived at a resonance between two seemingly different arts: music and perfume. Both share the vocabulary of notes, harmony, accords, and melody. What connects them still more deeply is their common, invisible medium: air. MUSICOLOGY’s official website describes this concept poetically:

“All the arts resonate with one another, but only music and scent share the same intangible, fleeting vehicle that carries them to the heart. Sounds and molecules travel through space, appearing and disappearing with the same brilliance. Perhaps it is this transience that reveals the true connection between perfume and music.”
— MUSICOLOGY official website​

An ardent music lover with a deep knowledge of fragrance, Boukobza decided to express the musical and olfactory emotions held in his memories through MUSICOLOGY. The brand’s motto is “Perfume is a Symphony; Scent is a Melody.”

A Fateful Collaboration with Nathalie Lorson

Boukobza entrusted the realization of this ambitious concept to internationally renowned Master Perfumer Nathalie Lorson.

Lorson was born in Grasse, France, the center of the world’s perfume industry. Her father was a chemist at the fragrance house Roure, so she grew up surrounded by fragrance materials and bottles. When she began her career in 1980, however, there were very few women in perfumery, and simply forging a path as a female perfumer was a major challenge.

In the 1980s, very few women became perfumers.
— Nathalie Lorson​

After graduating from the perfumery school at Roure Bertrand Dupont, now Givaudan (in Japanese), she worked at IFF (International Flavors & Fragrances) (in Japanese) and Dragoco, now Symrise (in Japanese) before joining Firmenich, now DSM-Firmenich (in Japanese). She has created at least 200 fragrances; notable works include Yves Saint Laurent’s Black Opium, Lalique’s Encre Noire, Gucci’s Flora, and Givenchy’s Gentleman.

Lorson’s style has been described as harmonious and generous, with a consistent roundness, smoothness, and sensuality in her choice of materials. She describes her creative work as follows:

“The simplest formulas are the hardest to create. Yet it is also simple formulas that can result in fragrances with the most distinctive character.”
— Nathalie Lorson, official DSM-Firmenich profile​

She also often quotes Saint-Exupéry: “Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to take away.” This pared-back aesthetic is strongly reflected in MUSICOLOGY’s perfumes.

The meeting of Boukobza’s musical vision and Lorson’s exceptional perfumery skill enabled MUSICOLOGY to give high-quality expression to its unique concept of turning music into scent. A review on the perfume blog CaFleureBon describes their collaboration as follows:

Founder and creative director Fabien Boukobza and Master Perfumer Nathalie Lorson have worked together to express the harmony between music and fragrance.
— CaFleureBon​

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The Brand’s Commitments

A Philosophy of Turning Great Songs into Fragrance

MUSICOLOGY’s defining feature is that all its fragrances are inspired by real classic songs and iconic musical works. Great songs from genres including pop, rock, jazz, and funk are translated into the world of smell, while each fragrance name pays homage to song titles or lyrics.

For example, Fly Me To The Oud takes inspiration from Frank Sinatra’s celebrated rendition of Fly Me to the Moon; The Rose from Janis Joplin; and Close To Midnight from Michael Jackson’s Thriller. This attempt to let people relive the memories and emotions held in music through their sense of smell could be called a synesthetic artistic experience.

Bottle and Packaging Design

MUSICOLOGY’s bottles are weighty crystal flacons. Each carries an amulet shaped like a vinyl record, visually expressing the brand’s fusion of music and fragrance.

Another notable detail is the Braille on the presentation boxes. This attention to detail offers a glimpse of an inclusive design philosophy: enjoyment through smell and touch, without relying on sight. The packaging also reflects environmental considerations and an awareness of sustainability.

Beyond Gender

All MUSICOLOGY fragrances are unisex. The brand aims to offer something anyone who loves music or fragrance can enjoy, regardless of gender.

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The Fragrance Lineup

MUSICOLOGY’s collections currently comprise two lines: the Song Collection and the Rhythm Collection.

Song Collection, Formerly Initiation to Solfège

The brand’s debut collection comprises seven eaux de parfum (EDPs). A discovery set containing seven 2 ml samples is also available, subtitled “An Introduction to Solfège,” a foundational method of music education.

Fragrance	Olfactive identity	Principal notes	Inspiration
White Is Wight	Fresh musk	Cotton, jasmine, white woods	Michel Delpech’s Wight is Wight / the Isle of Wight Festival
Fly Me To The Oud	Woody oriental	Black pepper, sandalwood, oud, patchouli	Frank Sinatra’s Fly Me to the Moon​
Close To Midnight	Amber	Jasmine, coffee, tonka bean, ambergris	Michael Jackson’s Thriller
I Belong To U	Floral oriental	Pink pepper, tuberose, patchouli	―​
Sun Goddess	Floral amber	Orange blossom, frangipani, heliotrope, sandalwood, vanilla	Earth, Wind & Fire’s Sun Goddess​
The Rose	Gourmand rose	Peony, Damask rose, violet, vanilla	Janis Joplin
‘Cause I’m Happy	Citrus amber	Bergamot, ambrette, ambergris	Pharrell Williams’s Happy​

​Fly Me To The Oud is arguably one of the most distinctive fragrances in the Song Collection. CaFleureBon’s senior editor reviewed it as follows:

“In MUSICOLOGY’s Fly Me To The Oud, Nathalie Lorson and Fabien Boukobza abstract the essence of the oud experience, amplifying its beauty while keeping other elements restrained, to create a fragrant, unforgettable tune that anyone could hum.”
— Gail Gross, Senior Editor, CaFleureBon​

Rhythm Collection, Launched in 2025

This second line, introduced in 2025, offers fragrances at a higher concentration as extraits de parfum.

Fragrance	Principal notes	Imagery
Vanilla Groove	Chantilly cream, jasmine, vanilla, heliotrope, tonka bean, sandalwood, cedarwood	The groove of jazz, funk, and R&B​
Funky Cherry	Black cherry, bergamot, violet, patchouli, amberwood, incense resinoid	A funky jam session​
Oud Melody	Ginger, cardamom, cypress, oud, cypriol, resins, amyris, patchouli	Oriental melodies of the Middle East, with the sounds of the oud and darbuka

Where the Song Collection takes individual songs as its motifs, the Rhythm Collection could be seen as an attempt to translate the more abstract feeling of rhythm itself, groove, funk, and melody, into fragrance.

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Incidentally…

• The roots of the brand name: MUSICOLOGY takes its name from American musician Prince’s 2004 album Musicology. Released at a time when music had become overly commercial, the album carried a message of returning to the essence of music itself, echoing Boukobza’s pursuit of essential beauty in the world of scent.
• The name of the discovery set: The Song Collection discovery set is called Initiation to Solfège. Solfège refers to the Do-Re-Mi method of reading music, a foundation of musical education. As though the seven fragrances corresponded to the seven notes of the musical scale, the set serves as a gateway to learning how to “read” fragrance.​
• An unexpected side of Lorson: Although she has created at least 200 fragrances, Lorson says she has “no interest at all in creating a fragrance for myself.”​

“I do not do this work for myself. The real goal is to touch people’s hearts. (…) I am neither a movie star nor a painter posing beside her canvas. Rather, I think of myself as a writer who quietly disappears behind her words.”
— Nathalie Lorson​

• Close To Midnight in the Japanese media: Japanese fashion magazine FUDGE has also featured MUSICOLOGY, introducing Close To Midnight as a fragrance paying homage to Michael Jackson’s Thriller.​

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