To Define | Emotion, Scent and Form

To Define Once 50mL bottle against blue-grey and champagne paper forms
2026.10.21

I have been trying to express the local cultural core with diverse styles.

Simin Xu

To Define (寓义) is a fragrance brand based in Ningbo, China, connecting emotions and memories with scent and visual expression. Co-founder and art director Simin Xu considers not only a fragrance’s story, but also its lettering, bottle and paper texture. Poetic names and bold graphics meet in a question: how can a product express the feelings of the person using it?

Basic Information

  • Brand: To Define (寓义)
  • Based in: Ningbo, Zhejiang, China
  • Co-founder and art director: 徐宾粟 (Simin Xu)
  • Fields: perfume and home fragrance
  • Official Japanese retailer: NOSE SHOP

The Co-founder and the Brand’s Beginnings

From Home Fragrance to Perfume

The business began with scents for the home. Brand head Geng Ying recalls discovering an opportunity in home fragrance during a period of housing-market growth and entering the field experimentally. Online sales and trial sizes helped establish its first customers, with familiar references to hotel scents. The brand subsequently brought in international perfumers and expanded into fragrance worn on the body.

A Designer Who Starts with the User

Co-founder Simin Xu learned design at university and had eight years of professional experience by 2022. He considers users’ lifestyles, reading habits and colour preferences before developing a design, then examines budget, materials and production. His purpose goes beyond making an unusual-looking object memorable.

To let consumers clearly understand your design and products.

Simin Xu

His work extends from graphics to product concepts and brand planning. In 2023, he was selected for the Type Directors Club’s Ascenders. His role is distinct from a perfumer’s: he brings stories into forms that can be held and read.

Observing Emotion Before Developing a Collection

The brand chooses themes by observing how people relate to themselves, form relationships and live with uncertainty, rather than deciding on a fragrance family first. I KNOW ME addresses self-understanding, Love Actually explores intimacy, and The Hours considers small everyday emotions.

Its Urban Nomad Project began in 2023 and developed into the Scent Resonance Project in 2025, extending fragrance stories into spaces where visitors could experience them and share an emotional response.

The Brand’s Approach

To Define sees digitalisation and the growth of AI as contributing to mental weariness. That observation led to The Hours (时时刻刻), a collection intended to capture small everyday pleasures through light scents.

A Shared Character Across Scent, Story and Form

Design and scent, product and story, must share the same character.

Simin Xu

A fragrance spray redesigned in 2021 used circles and triangles to represent the moment of spraying, with the product category prominent on the box. Numbers and scent names occupied different sides of the bottle, revealing information as it turned. Storytelling entered the sequence of reading and handling the object.

I KNOW ME: Designing How to Read and Open

I KNOW ME grew from a period when the pace of society abruptly slowed and uncertainty turned people towards self-exploration. 月亮从未落山 considers the self and where its ideals might find a place in reality; 所有我尽欢 takes living in the present as its theme. 孤独生长 moves from a sense of distance towards warm sandalwood, expressing a reconciliation with solitude.

I KNOW ME packaging silkscreen-prints Chinese and English story titles around the bottles. Different angles reveal different words, while light can cast their shadows. The theme of self-exploration extends into looking at the object.

The outer box reveals forms through successive stages of opening. Shipping packaging and samples carry the same elements and printing standards. This is collaborative work, with Xu’s art direction and contributions from designers including Yang Xiaotian.

Once and Dolce Far Niente: Different Moments Within Love

Love Actually (爱的黄金时代) considers how people form relationships after coming to know themselves. Its subject extends beyond romantic love to different kinds of intimacy through which people recognise their needs and change. Within it, Once looks back towards youth, while Dolce Far Niente explores time spent doing nothing.

Once | 少年游

The Chinese name 少年游 connects the fragrance to a ci poem by the Southern Song poet Liu Guo. The wish to drink with old companions, without being able to return to the freedom of youth, becomes a starting point for a spirit that can endure with age. Rather than recreating the past, the fragrance focuses on the youthful heart that continues to move a person forward.

Bergamot and citron join blackcurrant leaf, juniper berry and pink pepper. Gin and white tea sit at the centre with iris, peony and cardamom, supported by cedarwood, oakmoss, nutmeg and tonka bean. Citrus, tea and alcohol are layered with flowers, spices and woods. The osmanthus mentioned in the poem is not among the fragrance’s published notes.

Dolce Far Niente | 浪费风起的时候

The Italian name refers to the pleasure of doing nothing; the Chinese name adds the image of letting time pass as the wind rises. An uneventful moment can become a memory of affection when shared with someone. Maté, peach and flowers express that shared time.

Maté, peach and bergamot lead into iris, jasmine, osmanthus and heliotrope, over cedarwood, galbanum and musk. Where Once combines white tea, gin and tonka bean, this fragrance pairs maté and peach with osmanthus and heliotrope. Both use a tea motif, but their fruits, flowers and foundations differ.

Other Forms of Intimacy in Love Actually

The collection’s fragrances introduced in Japan also explore the first stirrings of attraction, the choice of another person, everyday companionship and letting go of the past. The following five, together with Once and Dolce Far Niente, are seven fragrances offered in Japan, not a count of the entire collection.

Flipped | 某某 explores an excitement so intense that even saying someone’s name seems impossible. 某某 leaves that person unnamed. Grapefruit, rhubarb, blackcurrant and cucumber open the composition, followed by mint, orange blossom, iris and pink pepper. Oakmoss, vetiver, patchouli and cedarwood carry its fruit and green notes towards woods and moss.

Palpitate | 涉过深海而来 imagines another person’s inner world as a deep sea. Its story is about offering sincerity first, to move beyond doubt and defences. The composition presented in Japan layers bergamot, basil and bitter orange leaf with seawater, orchid, lily of the valley and jasmine, then cedarwood, juniper berry, musk and ambergris. The sea represents emotional distance rather than simply a landscape.

I Prefer | 偏爱 expresses the decision to choose a person, rather than search for a flawless ideal. Linden, bergamot, lemon and melon lead into mimosa, lily of the valley and ylang-ylang, supported by vanilla, musk, cedarwood and amber. Flowers and fruit meet a sweet foundation in a fragrance about the reassurance of being chosen.

Gezelligheid | 光与光 connects the comfort of time with loved ones to light. Bergamot, bitter orange blossom, cardamom and mint lead to lavender, orange blossom and nutmeg, then vetiver, woody notes and thyme. Unlike the peach and flowers of Dolce Far Niente, citrus, herbs and spices give form to quiet companionship.

Sonder | 笑忘录 concerns the recognition that strangers have lives of their own, and the act of letting go of the past to begin again. Its Chinese name comes from the title of a Milan Kundera novel. Lemon, coriander, rhubarb and ginger lead into rhubarb root, dried mandarin peel, clove, cinnamon and pepper. Vetiver, birch, cedarwood, patchouli, sandalwood and musk form the foundation, moving the composition from citrus and spice towards woods.

Reconsidering Packaging to Deliver the Story

Xu describes adjusting products and collections in response to feedback, while improving packaging structures. Appearance is only part of that work.

Reducing unnecessary material costs and the risk of products being damaged in transit.

Simin Xu

The coffee-themed home-fragrance collection UTOPIA combines pour-over funnel and cup forms, dark wooden bases, silver finishes and variable letterforms. An olfactory theme becomes something to hold and read. Practical materials and strength for delivery remain part of the same design work.

References