Few people have shaped the way the world smells quite like Alberto Morillas.
Over the past five decades, the Spanish master perfumer has created some of the defining fragrances of the modern era, including Calvin Klein’s CK One, Acqua di Giò, Flower by Kenzo and dozens more.
Yet despite a career that has helped define modern perfumery, the 74-year-old still arrives at his Geneva laboratory every morning to tweak formulas, smell yesterday’s experiments and chase an idea that’s eluded him since childhood: how to bottle a memory.
In London to launch Chiffre Royal, the latest fragrance from his own house, Mizensir, Morillas talks about creativity, why simplicity is harder than complexity, what Gen Z understands about perfume that previous generations didn’t – and why, after 53 years, he still believes that "every day is a magic day."
Esquire: What does your day-to-day job actually look like?
Alberto Morillas: First, I never stop creating. When you have this kind of job, you never really go on holiday because you never stop thinking. All the time you’re thinking, trying to mix one ingredient with another.
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I have a very nice studio in Geneva. I have my place, I have many ingredients and I experiment every day. That’s what I enjoy. You try different expressions, you mix different elements together and you try to make something perfect. It’s a wonderful job because every day you’re experimenting. I’ve been doing it now for 53 years, but I still have exactly the same spirit: to create.
And you’re still finding new things every day?
Not every day. Sometimes I work on the same idea for one or two years. I simply change the proportions.
You don’t find something new every day, but you keep polishing the creation until it smells right from the beginning to the end. That’s the difficult part. I don’t want to do it the lazy way because you have to polish everything. At first it’s very creative, then it becomes very technical.
"Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life." Confucius said that.
You have to enjoy it because if you don’t enjoy it, it’s too boring.
When I work for myself, it’s not so important. I want a beautiful result. I want people to understand it and enjoy it. But when I work for the big companies and the big brands, it’s much harder because the investment is so high.
Don’t forget, I created CK One almost 35 years ago and it’s still almost number one. For me, that’s unbelievable.
I was around when that come out. It felt like a huge cultural moment. Now, a new generation seems to have discovered it.
Yes. That’s very surprising.
Last year I was interviewed by a journalist from The Times here in London. She told me she wore CK One when she was young. Now her son, who’s about 10 or 12 years old, has discovered it and wears it too.
I think that’s wonderful because it’s such a simple fragrance. It’s very easy to understand and it hasn’t become old-fashioned. Sometimes I look at the formula and I still can’t believe it because it’s exactly the same formula I wrote 35 years ago.
When I created it, perfumes were very strong, very heavy and very complicated. CK One was my interpretation of my younger years in Spain. It was simple freshness. Everybody could understand it. And it wasn’t for men or women because, for me, perfume doesn’t have a sex.
Do you think that’s why it has lasted?
Maybe. I never think about whether something will last. I think about the moment. Sometimes I don’t even know the name of the perfume or what the bottle will look like. I only think about the emotion.
When I’m creating for Mizensir, my daughters always tell me, "Don’t think about anything else. Just enjoy creating something new. Create something different. Create something with quality."
That sounds easy, but it isn’t. When you’re creating something for yourself, it’s much more difficult.
Why is it more difficult?
Because first I have to like it myself. After that I show it to my daughters. Nobody sees the formula except me. They only smell the perfume. Sometimes they tell me, “Maybe it’s too green,” or, “Maybe it needs something else.” They never see the formula. Only I do.
Do they tell you honestly if they don’t like something?
Yes. They have to. I’m used to that because it’s the same with clients. You have to understand what they want, and that’s difficult because perfume is very abstract. One person smells one side of the perfume, somebody else smells something completely different.
Do we all smell perfume differently?
I think we all smell in the same way. What changes is how we express it.
Somebody can say, “It’s a very good perfume, but it’s not for me.” That’s normal. And perfume changes on your skin. What you smell in the bottle isn’t exactly what you wear.
How does that work?
That’s the magic. After 53 years I’m still using almost the same ingredients, but they smell different all the time. It’s like playing the piano. The piano is the same, the notes are the same, but the feeling changes everything. Perfume is the same.
What first made you want to become a perfumer?
I always think about Proust and memory. My first memory is from Seville. I remember the smell of water and orange blossom. That’s my first memory. I wanted to capture that feeling, although I didn’t know then whether perfume had the power to do it. When I was about 20 years old, I decided I wanted to become a perfumer.
Was that because of where you grew up?
Yes. I grew up in the city, but Seville is different. Life happens around the patios inside the houses. We spent most of our time there because my parents didn’t want us playing outside. When I was young it almost felt like a prison. But perhaps it was a prison that was good for creativity.
Do you think what you do is some kind of special gift, or is it something that can be learned?
When I started, I learned inside my company. I’ve been with the same company for 53 years and I had somebody who mentored me because there weren’t any perfume schools then. Today there are many schools around the world.
So, it’s easier now?
No! It’s almost impossible now. Many young people want to become perfumers and they try, but there’s so much competition. You need a lot of passion, and you also need a lot of luck.
According to TikTok, teenage boys are spending their Saturday afternoons in Harrods sampling £300 perfumes instead of playing football. How on earth did that happen?
For me that’s unbelievable. Young people will spend three or four hours in a perfume shop simply smelling fragrances and trying to understand the differences between them. They build collections, they ask each other what they think, they wear a different perfume every day. I’m very surprised by that.
Maybe social media has helped. Maybe TikTok has played a part. But I see exactly the same thing in China, in India, in the United States and in England. It’s happening all over the world. Of course it’s good for business, but for me that’s not the interesting part. The interesting part is that perfume has become cultural.
Young people don’t just want a famous brand any more. They want to know who created the perfume. They want to know where it comes from. They want something specific. Sometimes they don’t even buy the big bottle, they buy the small one because they simply want to experience it. For me, that’s a wonderful change.
If I walked into your laboratory, what would surprise me most? Are you messy?
[Laughs.] No. I’m a collector.
I have almost 700 perfumes. I also collect many other things. I collect paintings because I’ve been lucky enough to spend my life being creative, and I like to surround myself with beautiful things. My laboratory is also full of experiments. People think smelling perfume all day must become boring, but it never does because I’m always working on something. I don’t just have one project. Sometimes I’m working on almost 100 at the same time.
How do you decide what to work on when you arrive in the morning?
First, I get up very early because I’m old. [Laughs.] Around six o’clock. I drink my coffee, then I start smelling the samples from the day before because I always want to check the dry-down. Perfume changes overnight, so I smell everything again. Sometimes I smell something and immediately think, "No, no, that’s not good," and I start again.
I still write all my formulas by hand. A perfume formula is really very simple. It’s like a recipe in the kitchen: ten grams of this, ten grams of that. The difficult part isn’t writing the formula, it’s finding exactly the right proportions. If you find that balance, people can still love the perfume 35 years later. That’s the magic. For me, every day is a magic day.
Do you use fewer ingredients now than you used to?
Yes. I try to become more and more minimalist. But if something becomes too minimalist, it’s also much easier to copy. That’s why you still need complexity. Finding that balance is very difficult.
I was going to ask you about dupes. Are they any good?
Some are very good. Some are very bad. But you have to understand that perfume has become expensive. Personally, I think it’s better to buy one very good perfume and wear a little than buy something very cheap. But everybody is free to choose.
These are luxury products. What actually dictates the price? Is it the bottle? The celebrity in the ad? The ingredients?
The bottle can be beautiful, of course, but for me the most important thing is always the creation. I like to work with a very high perfume concentration – around 30 per cent – and that’s expensive. Some companies spend a great deal of money on advertising and promotion. I prefer to spend the money inside the bottle.
For this fragrance I use three different types of oud and a very special sandalwood. Those ingredients are expensive because they’re rare, but they give the perfume its quality. Sometimes my daughters tell me, "Papa, it’s too expensive," because we only produce small quantities. But I’ve always wanted to use the best materials.
Is there one ingredient you’ve always loved but still find difficult to work with?
Sandalwood. Really good sandalwood has become very difficult to find. In my newest creation I’m also using a very special Damask rose from Grasse. Finding that quality today isn’t easy either.
What’s the right way to test a fragrance?
First, smell it on a blotter. Decide whether you like it or not. After that, you need to try it on your skin. Not on your wrist – I prefer further up the arm, because it’s away from your clothes. You can wear two perfumes at the same time, one on each arm, and compare them. Then you wait.
Perfume is expensive, so don’t decide immediately. You have to see how it develops on your skin because it changes with your own energy. Only after that should you decide whether you want to buy it.
People seem much more knowledgeable about fragrance than they were, even a few years ago. What’s changed?
Maybe it’s the internet. Maybe people simply enjoy perfume more today.
When you smell a perfume, you close your eyes and you travel. You create your own film in your imagination. Perfume is memory. Memory is culture.
So much of our world is digital now. Fragrance remains a tangible, real world experience.
Yes.
Today you can discover perfume wherever you are. You don’t need to live in London or Paris. You can see the whole world online and have a perfume delivered to your house.
But the biggest change is that young people don’t just want a famous brand any more. They want something special. They want to know where it comes from. They want to know who created it. People are much more demanding now. They don’t just want a perfume – they want this perfume, from thishouse, by this perfumer. I think that’s very interesting.
Right. When you started, perfumers weren’t famous. Now people recognise you, right? That wasn’t the case 50 years ago.
No. [Laughs.] Now people recognise me on aeroplanes. Sometimes the cabin crew say, “Mr Morillas...” It’s very surprising.
When you smell one of your fragrances on someone, do you ever think, "That's not the person I'd imagined wearing it"?
[Laughs] It’s better to close your eyes.
Once you’ve created a fragrance, I suppose it no longer really belongs to you.
That’s true. But when I think about the millions of people who have worn my perfumes over the years, and how happy they’ve been wearing them, that’s a wonderful feeling.
When people think about CK One, they remember the fragrance, but they also remember the campaign. Kate Moss, the black-and-white photography... it all arrived together.
Yes. It wasn’t just the fragrance. It was a completely new philosophy. It was one of the first fragrance campaigns to show tattoos in a positive way. Before that, tattoos weren’t considered beautiful. Even the packaging was different. It was simple cardboard that you could recycle. Everything was much simpler.
Finally, after 53 years, what still fascinates you about perfume?
When you smell a perfume, you close your eyes and you travel.You create your own film in your imagination. That’s what perfume can do. It can take you somewhere else.
After all these years, I still arrive at my laboratory every morning with exactly the same spirit I had when I started. I still want to create something beautiful. I still want to surprise myself.
For me, every day is a magic day.
