I love scent. It can make a coffee with a friend feel like the start of a new chapter, and turn a small en-suite on a cold November night into something closer to a hotel bathroom than a weekday routine.
Reed diffusers, candles, perfume, essential oils, I don’t discriminate. Chanel Eau Fraîche, a pre-wedding gift from Jason, still smells like new beginnings and slow Cuban honeymoon mornings. Since then my rotation has stayed mostly green and optimistic: Ormaie 18-12, Diptyque Eau de Lierre, Jo Malone Wood Sage & Sea Salt, Byredo Bal d’Afrique, plus a couple of essential-oil blends.
They all sit in the same family: fresh and green with a soft, almost milky warmth. They’re built as skin scents, not room-fillers, with low sillage that stays close enough to feel like a hug. How our home smells matters too. When I can’t wait for something more considered, Zara Home’s Signature Collection II or a wild fig candle will do.
But when you have more time, a custom scent starts to make more sense.
For an individual, it becomes a way of bottling a chapter of your life. For a hotel, a café, a fashion or automotive brand, it becomes something else entirely: a repeatable signal of who you are every time someone walks through the door. The logo is the top note. The way it smells, that’s the dry down.
Luxury loves to talk about “immersive experiences,” but the original immersive technology is biological: the human olfactory system.
Smell is the only sense with a direct line into the emotional and memory centres of the brain. Odour molecules bind to receptors, bypass the brain’s usual relay station, and plug straight into the amygdala (emotion) and hippocampus (memory). That shortcut is why a single note – citrus, smoke, skin, green – can collapse an entire memory into a second.
Scientists call it the Proust Effect: scent-evoked memories are more vivid, more emotional and often older than those triggered by sight or sound. Research goes further. Nightly exposure to varied odours, “olfactory enrichment”, has been shown to improve cognitive function in older adults by 226 percent over six months. Scent doesn’t just preserve memory. It can strengthen it. It can shape mood. It can alter the way we feel inside a space before we consciously register what that space looks like.
This matters for luxury, hospitality and brand-building in a world drowning in visual sameness. A lobby with a discreet thread of cedar or bergamot doesn’t announce itself; it creates an atmosphere. It softens edges, calms the nervous system, primes our judgment of the space without ever asking for our attention. For brands developing signature scents or custom ateliers, the insight is simple: if you can tie a smell to a moment, a place, a ritual or an identity, you’re no longer offering fragrance. You’re building memory architecture – something the brain will revisit long after the product is gone.
Which brings us to Lisbon, and to Karolina Oledzka, the founder of Opar, a small, appointment-only perfume lab that treats bespoke fragrance with the rigour of product development but for one-on-one clients and trade. Originally from Poland, Oledzka holds a degree in Lusophone Science and Culture and moved to Portugal in 2019. She spent years in product development at L’Oréal and Estée Lauder, most recently as director of product development for Kate Moss’s self-care brand Cosmoss, where she led portfolio, formulation and packaging.
The core of Opar’s business is personal: individuals book ahead, fill out a questionnaire and spend ninety minutes building a scent out of preference and memories. Alongside that, Oledzka has built a second arm of the business that works with brands who want to treat scent as a serious extension of their identity, from Netflix activations (think Emily in Paris scent bars) to automotive and hospitality clients, including luxury hotels. For most customers, Opar is the place where they finally find “their” fragrance. For brand partners, it becomes a lab for translating values, spaces and stories into something people can actually smell and take home.
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For senior leaders, Oledzka’s story is less a niche founder profile and more a live case study: what it looks like to build a brand on restraint rather than scale, to use scent as a strategic asset rather than a decorative extra, and to design an experience that people will cross a city, or a continent, to repeat.
Below, our conversation.
Talk me through your career background and how that led to creating Opar.
I started my career in management consulting, but I always gravitated toward product development. I moved into the L’Oréal group and Estée Lauder group, working a lot with UK and American clients. I was responsible for the Cosmoss brand for Kate Moss and then for Luzern in the US, which is very much the OG facialist brand in New York and Philadelphia.
Fragrance was always the hardest part. It can destroy a good formula and completely change how a customer reads a product. We once tested three samples of the exact same moisturiser, each with a different scent. People said one “wasn’t moisturising enough” and another “wasn’t nourishing enough,” even though the base formula was identical. That made me think: if I had my own lab, I could bring people in, let them play, and discover the scent they actually want.
When did you open Opar and how has the business evolved since launch?
We opened to the public in June 2023 in a small lab, and then scaled into the current space. Now we’re opening a third space focused mostly on B2C. The business has been very bootstrapped and that was intentional. I’d had a previous venture that didn’t go well because I tried to replicate a model I’d used with big brands, but without funding and without the team that had delivered those results.
This time I wanted to bootstrap and focus on three key things: first, customer service, we want time only for you so you feel really special, because we know how hard it is to find your scent. Second, you need your own headspace, which is why we work by appointment only. And third, the quality of raw materials, we work with the finest ingredients we can get so you can smell the difference. All the scents are unique and everything is customised for you. The third location will be a retail “factory lab,” with a factory inside that you can actually be part of. It used to be a pharmacy, which I love. We’re in the construction phase now and I’m hoping we’ll open before Christmas.
In terms of B2B, where are most of your clients based and what kinds of brands do you work with?
Right now we work mostly in Europe. Though we do have a lot of US B2C customers who reorder their fragrance because once they make it, they want to keep it forever. On the B2B side it’s mainly European and mostly hospitality: hotels, restaurants, even cars, car brands like BMW and Porsche.
We also work with niche brands that share our values: interior design clients, one beauty retailer that’s about to launch, and other partners we really see eye to eye with. The process is long and time-consuming, so we’re quite picky. Since opening we’ve made over a thousand fragrances.
How do you catalogue and manage all of those custom fragrances behind the scenes
There’s a whole dimension our customers don’t see. We have software that supports everything we do. It helps us stay compliant, fragrance is heavily regulated, and it allows us to keep your formula on file. If you want to revisit a fragrance from two or three years ago, we have it “in the books.”
We were also invited to be one of the top experiences in Lisbon for the launch of Airbnb Experiences, which has been fantastic.
You’ve made the booking process intentionally quite selective. Why design it that way?
Everything is very intentional. We want you to have the most out of the session, so it’s private and by appointment only. People sometimes complain that it’s hard to book, and we do that on purpose. We want you to be someone who genuinely wants to do it because the process takes about an hour and a half and it can be tiring. If you’re not dedicated, you might feel like you wasted your time, and then it’s not a good match.
Currently, we are fully booked. People on holiday want to spend two or three hours with us; locals gift sessions to parents, partners or as wedding presents. We’re now getting requests to be part of wedding events, because it all ties into the sensory experience of the day.
What does the name Opar mean and how does it reflect your philosophy?
In Portuguese, “Opar” is a play on a word that means “a couple.” For an hour, we’re a couple: you and us. You are the perfumer. We want to flip the traditional industry model where there’s a “nose” and an audience that has to follow. Here, you’re the nose. In retail, fragrance can feel very transactional.
We want to redefine the niche by putting you at the centre, not the counter.
As you open the factory, how do you see the customer journey evolving? Will people get closer to the manufacturing process?
We always want you to be part of it. We’re very far from hiding anything. If your fragrance has a colour, we explain why, and there’s no colourant. We don’t use phthalates or binders. We explain that your fragrance might be slightly different because we avoid a lot of materials typically used to achieve certain “benefits,” and we believe we can get close enough through time, craft and really knowing you. Our customers are joining us on that journey and trusting that this is the right way. The biggest achievement for me is the volume of reorders. That’s the true proof.
Did you expect that level of loyalty and reorders when you first started?
Not at all. Honestly, I expected nothing. I’ve been in the industry for more than 12 years, and I know that the things you expect to perform brilliantly at launch sometimes don’t. The products you don’t bet on can become OG icons you never want to remove. I’m humble enough to know you don’t know until you test in the market. If marketing were that predictable, we’d just repeat one formula forever, but people change, the economy changes, and in the current climate nothing is certain. That uncertainty should keep us as founders and marketers on our toes, always following the customer. The reorders are very humbling. We now ship to Australia, Saudi Arabia, the US, Argentina, Norway, the UK, Germany, France, the Virgin Islands and so many more locations.
Fragrance as a category is exploding and can feel like a Pandora’s box. For someone with a decent budget who wants quality, what should they look for in a fragrance house? Any red or green flags?
Fragrance is so personal that there’s no absolute right or wrong. There’s a constant battle between “natural” and “synthetic,” especially around hormone disruptors. Scientifically, endocrine disruptors are tested on rats, not humans. In the EU, and I can only speak for the EU there are expert panels behind this, and unless something is proven toxic they can’t call it toxic. These ingredients have a function; they give you that “body” in a scent you’re used to. Without them, if you smell something on a blotter in retail, it might feel flat. There are pros and cons to everything. We choose not to use them because we have very sensitive customers and we want you to really understand what you’re smelling, even if the result is less commercial. If you understand why and you’re happy with it, we bottle it. If not, that’s okay too.
A red flag for me is anyone trying to sell you something by telling you another fragrance is “wrong.” There’s no moral right or wrong in scent. Naturals can be more expensive and rarer because of the resource and processing, but you might not care, you might care about longevity or price instead. The key is your priorities, not their script.
Do you use AI in the business, whether in the lab, the software or your process?
Our customers use AI more than we do. They use ChatGPT a lot for naming their fragrances. I was honestly surprised when someone told me that if you ask ChatGPT where to do custom scent in Portugal, we come up as an option. That’s been amazing for us. People also come in with AI-generated ideas: “These are the notes I want to smell.” It’s a nice guide, but we don’t know until we test it on your skin. We see AI as helpful for naming, for setting a direction or for language around the scent.
On our side, we focus more on analysing data. This business looks like pure romance from the outside, but there’s a lot of data behind it.
What kind of data are you collecting and how does it influence your decisions?
Because you have to book with us, we collect your email, phone and preferences. It’s done in a playful way so it feels like talking to someone who’s planning something for you. Our goal is to understand you better, but the byproduct is that we can see patterns: American customers tend to go for certain notes, Portuguese customers for others, and so on. We see it in what we actually put into the formulas.
The more we analyse, the more we realise everyone is different. So it’s helpful, but it doesn’t replace intuition.
How have you approached marketing Opar so far, especially as a bootstrapped brand?
From the beginning I wanted to bootstrap marketing and grow organically and slowly. I don’t want fast growth driven by recognition. I want a product you cherish and come back to, and a business that’s sustainable for me and for the team, where everyone is well paid and we can maintain them. I had the privilege of working with a Polish brand called Dr Irena Eris, a very old-school skincare brand founded by an incredible woman in her seventies, one of the richest people in Poland now, whose products are global. Her work culture was amazing and she never lost focus. She follows her own path and is critical in the right way.
That’s what I’d like to build: staying in your lane, knowing your guardrails and not being distracted by competition.
In the beginning, marketing was about discovering ourselves. You have branding and an idea, but the brand needs to evolve. We had a marketing team, then a bad hire for a month, and I decided to see what would happen if we did almost no marketing. We focused on core things: customer service, good partnerships, retail, and preparing for the factory. We didn’t want to communicate just for the sake of it. Otherwise it’s noise. Of course you need to feed the algorithm, but honestly, this quieter approach has been working. We still have our creative director, who makes sure everything we do is on brand. She comes from fashion, not beauty, which I love.
You’ve mentioned looking outside your own industry for inspiration. Where do you draw from?
I really believe you shouldn’t look for inspiration in your own industry because you’ll end up copying. I read about a US jeweller, Brent Neale, whose work and community I love. She started by repurposing heritage jewellery, like a diamond ring from your grandmother that you never wear – without losing the feeling of it. She said the best advice she got was to never look for inspiration in your own field. That really stuck with me.
Our inspiration is hospitality. That’s our DNA. You can see it in the way we host people and design the experience. On claims, we follow clean beauty, but we don’t shout about it. We want it to become the norm. We’ll educate you, but you don’t come to us because we’re a “clean brand”; you come to us because you want a fragrance.
Clean is part of the craft, not a checklist.
Where do you go to feel inspired and to reset? What does travel look like for you?
Travel keeps me grounded. London is one of my constant sources of inspiration. Through my partner I’ve been rediscovering Indian heritage and Asia. We recently spent a month in India smelling raw materials at the source, which was incredibly beautiful, and I’m repeating that next year. I’m very lucky, through my background and the industry, to have access to places like the best sandalwood forests, which are still quite hermetic. We also travel a lot to Japan because my partner and I own a restaurant in Lisbon that’s in the Michelin Guide, and Japan is a huge source of inspiration for us. This year I’m going to Marrakesh to stay at a beautiful farmhouse called Farasha Farmhouse, it’s the kind of place where you reset and get inspired. Overall, I feel it’s a good year to revisit things, reset and stay very grounded, even though everyone is stressed.
Are there specific brands you’re loyal to, and how does that connect to how you think about craft?
I’m very into jewellery. I don’t wear a lot, but I love collecting it. There’s a British brand I adore that I’ve followed since they were just two sisters with an online shop, and I’ve been buying from them for about ten years. I’m extremely loyal; once you “get” me, I stick with you. I also love the American designer Brent Neale and, in India, a jeweller named Viren Bhagat whose pieces are now being acquired by the V&A.
I gravitate towards craft that’s intentional and not shabby, good basics with real workmanship. For luggage, I used to be obsessed with Rimowa, then I had an affair with Paravel, which sadly went bankrupt. Now, in Japan, there’s this chain called Don Quijote that sells extremely cheap but brilliant luggage, and I’m switching from fancy suitcases to these very practical Japanese ones. It all comes back to craft with purpose: things that are well made and actually work.
As a founder, have you ever felt like walking away? How do you think about exit strategies and the reality of building in beauty right now?
Of course. Recently I had a moment where I felt so tired I thought, “I’m done” business-wise. But then I realised I can’t just close because we have these customers reordering from all over the world. I have to keep going for them.
From a business perspective, I now think young brands should consider exit strategy from the start.
But I also think we can focus on it too much. An exit only happens if your brand is successful. Between launch and exit there’s a tornado. If you obsess over the exit, especially in a time when raising capital is hard and beauty is saturated, you can lose sight of the fundamentals. Many brands are closing because founders jump in without the right team, or don’t understand their P&L or supply chain. There is a cream for everything already. Innovation doesn’t have to be a new ingredient; it can be rethinking how you serve the product, or even just pouring a huge marketing budget behind it.
For me, this period is good because it forces everyone back to basics: right price, right point of sale, the right product and a realistic way to reach the customer. If you keep those foundations and stay in your lane, you can build something strong.
What are some of the more unusual or memorable projects you’ve worked on recently, and what are you personally wearing right now?
I wear the most random things. It’s the shoemaker with no shoes. My rule is that one day a week I work in the shop alone while my team is off, so I keep that direct connection with customers. Recently I had a client with an amazing nose who loved geranium, which I adore. It smells like geranium, but it’s extremely hard to work with because it can take over. We scaled her sample up and it was way too much. We adjusted her final formula to her taste, but I was left with 100ml of this geranium-heavy batch. In front of her, I started adding other elements I thought would work, black tea, bergamot, incense, ginger, a sugary cotton-candy note over creamy sandalwood, and ended up with something I loved.
That’s what I’m wearing now. It smells like autumn in Lisbon when it’s not cold yet: happy, very sophisticated. Beyond that, we’ve done some big brand activations. We created a scent bar for Netflix for an Emily in Paris launch, one in Paris and one in Kraków. Guests could choose to smell like a “French croissant” crossed with tobacco and tuberose, or an “Italian croissant” with pistachio pastry, bergamot and basil.
Everything was custom, even though Netflix already had a fragrance franchise agreement. We also created a “stress-less balm” as a New Year gift for a creative agency that works with Vogue, Apple, Netflix, Martini and others. It has essential oils like frankincense, cedar, sandalwood, mimosa and peppercorn. People are now running out of it and asking where to buy more, so we’re thinking about launching it. As you can see, I’m constantly surrounded by these little experiments.
A scent’s power is a biological strategy. And, increasingly, it’s measurable. A recent study summarised in Yale Scientific, “A Scent-sational Memory Boost” (yalescientific.org), found that older adults exposed to different fragrances nightly for six months improved cognitive capacity by 226 percent. The implications run far beyond wellness. They point to a future where scent is a functional tool for sharpening memory, influencing mood, and enhancing how people experience spaces.
For brands, hotels, retailers and anyone designing “moments,” this shifts the conversation. Scent is a neurological asset. Capable of anchoring emotion, deepening brand recall, and turning a single hour in a lab, lobby or atelier into a memory that can be summoned instantly with one inhale.
And for the rest of us, travellers, perfume lovers, people chasing experiences that feel a little more human, we can ask ourselves: What smell do I want to remember next year? And what story do I want it to tell when it brings me back?
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