Abstract: Shaping Room’s Nobi Shioya gives some of the world’s top perfumers wide berth in creating unique scents. “I often say that I don’t care about fragrances,” says Shaping Room founder Nobi Shioya, “but I care very much about smell.”
Shioya—a surfer, sculptor, blogger (http://whatwedoissecret.org) and fragrance entrepreneur—has launched a number of novel scents over the last few years, capturing the intangible nuances of love, sex and surfing (not all at once) in a bottle.

And he’s done it by marshalling the talents of some of the world’s leading perfumers, including Christophe Laudamiel, Sophia Grojsman and Alberto Morillas. Taking a cue from his fine art background, Shioya has deconstructed the conventional wisdom of perfume creation, collaborating with these noses in an intuitive, patient process that sits in stark contrast with today’s ever more harried mainstream fragrance business.

Other topics discussed: Creative Process: Capturing the Ethereal, Perfumer Relationships, Constraints and Creativity