SINN PURETÉ: From Taking Over a Business to Shaping Daily Life through Fragrance and Containers

Even without changing everyday life dramatically, you can create moments to return to yourself.
Yoshihiro Kozuma (Head and Producer of SINN PURETÉ)

SINN PURETÉ is a Japanese beauty-care brand that places a moment of experiencing fragrance before cleansing and moisturizing. Rather than treating skincare as a daily obligation to get through, it sees it as a habit of turning attention toward one’s own condition. That idea has expanded from products that care for the skin to wearable perfumes and care for the hair and hands.

The key to understanding its present form lies in the experience of the creative company that took over an existing brand. People who had long supported its creative production assumed responsibility for running it, redesigning not only the fragrance but also the order of use, textures, and containers together.

Contents

Key Facts
The Founders and the Origins of the Brand
The Brand’s Approach
References

Key Facts

Predecessor: Sinn, launched in 2012
Business transfer: To Anice Company in April 2020
Relaunch: Online advance launch on June 15, 2021; full renewal on September 1 of the same year
People behind the relaunch: Yoshihiro Kozuma (head and producer) and Mafumi Izumi (director of Anice Company)
Manufacturer and marketing authorization holder: Anice Company; distributor: JIMOS
Official website: SINN PURETÉ

The Founders and the Origins of the Brand

The Company Supporting Its Creative Work Takes Over the Business in 2020

Its predecessor, Sinn, began as cosmetics focused on naturally derived ingredients and Japanese manufacturing, under the company behind John Masters Organics. Practical, functional skincare was the brand’s starting point.

For Anice Company, this was not a brand it had suddenly encountered. The company, which handles creative production in fashion and beauty, had already been involved in its creative work and sales promotion. Looking back in 2021, director Mafumi Izumi described it as a brand to which Izumi felt attached, with a relationship stretching back around ten years.

Anice Company took over the business in April 2020. Izumi recalls being excited by the possibility of continuing the brand, while also recognizing that running a brand in-house involved many unfamiliar areas.

It is also true that we began by feeling our way forward.
Mafumi Izumi (2021)

They moved from accepting creative commissions to taking responsibility for keeping products reaching customers. Encountering the limits of what they could do alone led to relationships with more companies. By autumn 2021, about a year and a half after the transfer, distribution through department stores and @cosme had also begun. It was a process of connecting expressive ability with a structure that could sustain the brand.

In 2021, Fragrance Becomes the Starting Point for Skincare

For the relaunch, ingredients and formulations were reconsidered while preserving the strengths of organic products. The policy was to combine naturally derived materials with science, technology, and ease of use. At the same time, amid the changes to life brought by the pandemic and digitalization, everyday care was reframed as time to engage with oneself.

The new focus was “Mindful Beauty.” Mindfulness here means pausing and returning attention to one’s present sensations. The brand pursued fragrance research with Professor Yasue Mitsukura of Keio University and proposed a sequence of experiencing fragrance and breathing quietly before skincare. Fragrance became the signal that care was beginning.

An online advance launch took place on June 15, 2021, followed by the full renewal on September 1.

On July 15 that year, the brand also released Fig & Fig Leaf, an eau de parfum developed with its ambassador, model SHIHO. Its theme is an invitation to dance together. Fig sweetness is layered with green leaves and bergamot, followed by rose and the milky scent of coconut, before moving into amber and oakmoss. The fruit is expressed through both green freshness and a soft, milky quality, rather than ripe sweetness alone.

The Mindful Fragrance eaux de parfum, including this scent, were developed as portable perfumes for changing one’s mood while away from home. Their setting differs from the fragrances accompanying a quiet breath before skincare, extending the brand’s approach from daily care to a scent worn when going out.

In 2023, Inward-Looking Fragrance Expands into Self-Expression

Yoshihiro Kozuma, who led the relaunch, had accumulated experience in corporate branding and design direction. At SINN PURETÉ, too, Kozuma did not consider the product and its visual presentation separately, but developed the experience of fragrance together with the form held in the hand.

The signature line, introduced on November 1, 2023, extended that direction further outward: from fragrances intended to return attention to oneself to fragrances expressing the wearer’s individuality. Behind its development was a brand survey on “talisman-like items that give confidence,” in which fragrance ranked after cosmetics.

At its center were three eaux de parfum: LOVE UNLOCK, SELF EMPOWERMENT, and OVER THE MOON. The same line also included handwashing and handcare products and later expanded into haircare. Rather than treating a bottle of perfume as a complete experience on its own, the approach is to wear fragrance through various everyday actions.

I want to keep making carefully considered things, one by one, without being satisfied with the status quo.
Yoshihiro Kozuma (2023)

Kozuma’s words convey an unwillingness to fix the renewed brand in a final form. By meeting new users through fragrance, it has broadened its proposals from care habits to self-expression.

The Brand’s Approach

Formulations Combining Naturally Derived Materials with Science

“Hybrid Natural” expresses the brand’s approach to making products. It actively incorporates naturally derived ingredients and organically certified ingredients, combining them with perspectives from dermatology and practical use. In skincare, the texture felt on the skin also matters. Through both experiencing fragrance and working a product into the skin with the hands, the design directs attention toward an everyday act.

What Kozuma also entrusts to fragrance is the opportunity to return to one’s own senses. Rather than adding many new steps, Kozuma seeks to change how people experience the time they already spend cleansing and moisturizing. This way of organizing daily life offers a key to understanding the brand’s fragrance-making.

LOVE UNLOCK: Layering a Bouquet with Memories of a Person

The signature perfumes, launched in 2023, treat fragrance as invisible fashion. The first three works take different memories as their subjects: the remembered presence of someone no longer seen, the absorption of childhood curiosity, and a moonlit evening with a loved one. Affection, individuality, and happiness find distinct expressions in a bouquet, conifers and herbs, and sweet flowers with vanilla.

LOVE UNLOCK depicts affection for someone important and the impression that remains in memory even when that person can no longer be met. Carnation carries the idea of innocent, profound love from the language of flowers. Jasmine and rose join it in a bouquet expressing respect and affection.

Orange flower and bergamot open the fragrance with the bitterness of ginger. The central carnation has both sweet and spicy facets; patchouli accompanies the flowers before leather, cedarwood, and amber emerge. The movement from flowers to leather and wood brings together the brightness of a bouquet and the remembered presence of a loved one.

SELF EMPOWERMENT looks back to a childhood spent playing wherever curiosity led, taking the rediscovery of one’s individuality in adulthood as its theme. Rosemary and thyme open with black pepper, followed by the coniferous impression of cypress and juniper berry.

Vetiver, frankincense, and moss form the base. Alongside dry spice come impressions of damp wood, moss, and smoke. Where LOVE UNLOCK evokes a bouquet given to another person, this fragrance turns inward through smoky woody notes.

OVER THE MOON takes its name from the English expression for great happiness. Its subject is time spent under moonlight with a loved one, talking about the days shared together. Tuberose is combined with peach, mandarin, and bergamot, opening with the sweetness of fruit and flowers.

Iris, gardenia, and jasmine follow, leading to vanilla, musk, sandalwood, patchouli, and vetiver. This oriental gourmand supports powdery flowers and soft sweetness with woody and root-like notes. Among the three works, it focuses less on stirring oneself into action than on lingering over quiet happiness with someone close.

Bringing Creative Experience to Container-Making

The LOVE UNLOCK container pairs rounded, transparent glass with a silver-colored spherical cap. Its thick base and light-reflecting cap form a shape perceived together with the liquid.

Another company run by Kozuma has a business manufacturing cosmetics and fragrance containers, and SINN PURETÉ’s containers have been developed there. The freedom to build a world from its shape, rather than merely selecting an existing container, supports the products’ expression.

Translating a Collaborator’s Aesthetic into Fragrance and Packaging

Announced in October 2024 with fashion brand AMERI, BLACK STONE brought the same fragrance to a perfume and a multi-use oil. Naoko Kuroishi, who leads AMERI and directed the collaboration, sought elegance and strength that could complement fashion-forward clothing while retaining a natural impression. For Kuroishi, Ameri VINTAGE’s CEO and director, perfume is inseparable from memory.

Bergamot and creamy fig lead into black tea and rose, settling into cedarwood, vetiver, and musk. Unlike the coconut-accompanied sweetness of Fig & Fig Leaf, it gives tea and wood a smoky character. The name also echoes Kuroishi’s own surname. She later revealed that she had given the oil and perfume to guests at her wedding, carrying the idea of preserving a special day through scent into her own life.

In December 2025, the brand introduced Powder & Smoke with WILDSIDE YOHJI YAMAMOTO. This fragrance was used in a hair and body oil and a hand serum.

The powdery sweetness of iris is combined with the warmth of cashmeran and the smoky depth of sandalwood and patchouli. The packaging uses black and weathered textures to reflect the collaborator’s aesthetic of “imperfection.” The oil’s irregular, asymmetrical labels are applied individually by hand. The floral fragrance also connects to the iris graphic on the outer box. It is an example of giving form to a collaborator’s world across fragrance, a product touched by the hands, and packaging seen by the eyes.

In 2026, SWEETNESS TURNS INTO OBSESSION became the signature perfumes’ first collection line. Its subject is ripened emotions: the increasing sweetness of ripening fruit is set alongside innocence turning into temptation and sweet memories becoming obsession. Separate from collaborations with outside brands, this release connects two perfumes through one theme. Advance sales began at Isetan Shinjuku on October 7, followed by the general launch on October 14.

BANANA FOG combines banana sweetness with cinnamon and green notes. Banana and caramel intensify at its heart, interrupted by tobacco and patchouli. Bringing the familiarity of confectionery toward smoke and bitterness, it explores the meeting of childhood innocence and adult temptation. Vanilla, sugar, tonka bean, and woody notes form the drydown, allowing sweetness to remain to the end.

CHERRY SMOKING explores a sweet obsession that persists despite attempts to forget. Almond, red fruits, and cumin open the fragrance, followed by candied fruit, liqueur, and coffee. Cherry-liqueur sweetness meets amaretto-like almond bitterness and coffee, before woody notes including oud and vetiver, together with leather, grow more prominent. Where BANANA FOG casts a tobacco shadow over sweetness, this fragrance joins fruit with alcohol and bitterness before moving toward leather and wood.