Meet the New Fragrance Brand Giving Perfumers Creative Control

There’s a new fragrance brand launching and it’s heading straight to Sephora. Set to arrive on 14 September, Anecdotes by Artists is a fragrance house that hands full creative control to perfumers, with each collection built around their own memories, emotions, and experiences rather than the standard brand brief.

Founded by Maesa’s Chief Blue Sky & Innovation Officer, Dana Steinfeld, the brand will spotlight a different perfumer with each drop and document the development of their fragrances along the way. First up is FiFi Award-winning perfumer Patricia Choux, who has previously created scents for Jo Malone, Nest, and Marc Jacobs.

Choux has turned three personal stories into the brand’s debut eaux de parfum, beginning with Wild Cousin. The warm gourmand combines rum-soaked cake, crème Chantilly, davana flower, and aged oakwood, but its inspiration is a dessert she wanted nothing to do with as a child.

“I hated being told to be a good girl. One of my most vivid childhood memories was being forced to eat a dessert I couldn’t stand: French baba au rhum cake. With Wild Cousin, I reimagined that cake on my own terms. A rum-soaked gourmand that’s defiantly addictive,” says Choux.

The Villainelle is Choux’s take on being misread. Iced juniper gives the opening its cool edge before vanilla resin, vanilla crystals, and incense smoke bring in the warmth.

“I’ve always been misunderstood. People often read me as cold and unfriendly, but I’m actually pretty warm and open. With The Villainelle, I wanted to create a vanilla inspired by that feeling of being misunderstood, and use one of my favorite ingredients in a way nobody expects. This is the new vanilla gourmand I’ve always wanted to create,” she explains.

Then there’s Painted Petals, a fruity floral sparked by a painting Choux felt had reached a standstill. After splashing the canvas with paint to give it new life, she translated that moment of transforming the ordinary into something vibrant and dynamic into fragrance using pink rhubarb, strawberry leaf, tuberose milk, and jasmine absolute.

Each fragrance will be available in a 100ml bottle for $140 and a 10ml size for $30, while an $18 discovery set will include 3ml samples of all three. Anecdotes by Artists launches exclusively at select Sephora stores and sephora.com in the US on 14 September, with no word yet on a UK launch.