We do not use superficial “Eastern” symbols in our products.
— Xia Su, co-founder of Zhiwuzhi
Translating Chinese plants and classical culture into contemporary perfume: Zhiwuzhi, known in Chinese as 挚物志, is a brand exploring ways to express this through scent. Its medicine-bottle-like containers embody the idea of creating time to care for oneself through fragrance.
Essential Information
Brand name: Zhiwuzhi / 挚物志
Founded: 2022 (as stated by NOSE SHOP; see the note at the end regarding the year)
Founders: Xia Su (夏甦) and Ruan Xiaojing (阮暁晶 / 阮晓晶)
Country of origin: China
Brand introduction: NOSE SHOP (authorized Japanese distributor)
The Founders and the Brand’s Origins
From Brand Strategy to Perfumes of Their Own
Xia Su and Ruan Xiaojing spent at least ten years consulting on brand strategy and marketing, working with major companies and a variety of brands. While nurturing other companies’ brands, they wanted to have one of their own.
For Xia, fragrance had been familiar since childhood. Influenced by older family members through both Western perfume and Chinese incense culture, she became an experienced perfume wearer and a fragrance commentator herself. This personal interest, along with seeing room for domestic brands to grow in China’s perfume market, led her toward founding the business.
The two aimed to create perfumes attuned to Asian olfactory sensibilities and suited to everyday life. Ruan sought to communicate Eastern culture through contemporary expression without confining the brand to the category of being from China.
We want to bring perfume back from being a luxury to being an everyday consumer product.
— Ruan Xiaojing, co-founder of Zhiwuzhi
Turning classical fragrance culture into something used in life today: the materials pointing in this direction include herbs, trees, and plants once familiar for medicinal use. The brand name carries the idea of “objects cherished by the soul,” and the founders value communicating emotion through objects.
Collaborating with MANE Perfumers: Floral Greenness and the Strength of Woods
Perfumers from the fragrance company MANE joined the work of giving the scents form. In Fantianjing, or Abode of Brahma (梵天境), created by Maxime Exler, combining flowers with green notes, scents suggestive of leaves and grasses, is central to the composition.
In Abode of Brahma, I combined floral materials with powerful, mysterious green notes.
— Maxime Exler, on creating Abode of Brahma, 2024
The composition layers jasmine sambac and orange blossom over basil and rhubarb leaves. Rather than depicting flowers in isolation, it retains a strong leafy greenness. An interest in plants appears in the concrete structure of a contrast between flowers and green notes.
Ugo Charron, also of MANE, created Buwangchuan, or Beyond Lethe (不忘川).
Zhiwuzhi’s Buwangchuan is an explosion of woods.
— Ugo Charron, on creating Buwangchuan, 2024
Centered on cedarwood, patchouli, and vetiver, it combines sage, wormwood, and an incense note suggestive of burning incense. In contrast to Abode of Brahma’s interplay between flowers and leaves, Buwangchuan brings the presence of wood to the fore. Even with the shared use of herbs and woods, these are not all made into uniformly gentle scents.
In-Store Experiences and Expansion into Home Fragrance
Zhiwuzhi began with five perfumes. Following a brand pop-up at the end of 2024, it opened its first retail counter in March 2025. Valuing the experience of trying scents in person, the two founders are also expanding into home fragrance and scented care products.
The Brand’s Commitments
Expressing Plants: Depicting Gardenia as a Green Bud
For gardenia, Xia sought the form of a fresh green bud not yet fully open. Osmanthus, meanwhile, had still not been released as of September 2026 because she had not found an expression she was satisfied with. Even with a familiar flower as the subject, the brand does not immediately turn a scent fitting its name into a product. Deciding which form to preserve in scent becomes a creative judgment.
Turning Chinese Culture into Scent: The Seven Sages and a Landscape after Rain
Jade Bamboo Sonata (翠竹雅鸣) takes as its subject the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, who withdrew from worldly affairs to converse together. The perfumer is Diana Zhai. The fragrance overlays this cultural story with the scene of a bamboo grove after rain.
Mint depicts cool freshness, lily of the valley and hyacinth suggest flowers, pine needles bring greenness, and patchouli (in Japanese) and moss, the scent of moss, lead into damp ground. Although named for bamboo, the composition portrays the grove through the surrounding air, flowers, leaves, and earth. It brings the story of people and the nature surrounding them together in a single scent.
Bottle Design Inspired by Medicine Bottles
The medicine-bottle-shaped container gives form to the metaphor of an “antidote for the soul,” a way to care for oneself. Attention also goes to contours that fit the hand and a nozzle that releases a fine mist. Even the small act of applying fragrance is part of the craft.
Note
The authorized Japanese distributor NOSE SHOP gives the founding year as 2022. Ruan Xiaojing, however, looks back on 2023 as the first year of the brand’s founding, so the stated years differ.
References
- 挚物志夏甦、阮晓晶：从20家直营店到巴黎快闪，一个东方香氛品牌的生长路径 — 赢商网 / 品牌数读, September 15, 2026, direct interview with both founders — https://m.winshang.com/news742139.html
- Zhiwuzhi — NOSE SHOP, brand introduction by the authorized Japanese distributor — https://noseshop.jp/collections/zhiwuzhi
- A new creation crafted for the Chinese brand Zhiwuzhi — Maxime Exler’s own post about the creation, August 2, 2024 — https://www.linkedin.com/posts/maxime-exler-55119478_a-new-creation-crafted-for-the-chinese-brand-activity-7225025178903150592-vqYR
- Abode of Brahma 梵天境 — Bloom Perfumery, fragrance name and perfumer — https://bloomperfume.com/products/abode-of-brahma
- BUWANGCHUAN from the brand ZhiWuZhi — Ugo Charron’s own post about the creation, July 19, 2024 — https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ugocharron_new-launch-china-activity-7220047926847287296-a4wE
- Beyond Lethe 不忘川 — Bloom Perfumery, fragrance name and perfumer — https://bloomperfume.com/products/beyond-lethe
- Jade Bamboo Sonata | Sonata of Emerald-Green Bamboo — NOSE SHOP, theme, fragrance composition, perfumer, and product images — https://noseshop.jp/products/zwz-pf-js
- U NOSE SHOP Shinsaibashi, introduction to the brands stocked — NOSE SHOP, medicine-bottle form and spray design — https://noseshop.jp/blogs/blog/u-noseshop-shinsaibashi-lineup
