May 22, 2025 |
There’s a secret power in smells. Each of us has a scent-cyclopaedia of distinct notes we’ve collected over the years that have the power to evoke distant memories and bring them rushing back to the fore once you get a whiff. For me, the smell of jasmine always reminds me of holidaying on the Greek island of Spetses as a child, bubbling yeast and allspice recalls my baking aficionado granny, while one whiff of Hugo Man evokes memories of my dad wearing his signature fragrance.
As a beauty editor, I’m always looking for newness and innovation. While idly scrolling TikTok for anniversary-gift ideas for my boyfriend one evening, I came across a perfume-making workshop offering an intimate opportunity to learn more about him and the smells that make up his nasal universe. Booking immediately, we arrive one Saturday afternoon at the lab of Opar Perfumes in Lisbon’s leafy Lapa neighbourhood, which was near where I was living at the time. The founder, Karolina Oledzka, personally took us through the workshop, an unexpected treat for those turning up at the right time. “The whole idea behind it was to bring a more democratic approach to fragrance,” Oledzka told me. “You become the nose and my team is here to guide you as a perfumer.”
To stop you feeling like children let loose in a sweet shop, Oledzka and her growing team of on-site noses, who guide you through the session, offer a gentle hand to lead, backed up with the knowledge of years working in the industry. Over the course of a few hours, you’re put in the driver’s seat, sniffing, sizing up and selecting the scents that will make up your own bespoke fragrance to take home. It’s a novel idea brought to life by a savvy beauty consultant who has previously worked on product and brand development for L’Oréal, Inglot and Kate Moss’s wellness venture, Cosmoss. But it was Oledzka’s upbringing that initially led her to pursue beauty. “I have loved cosmetics since I was a kid, I was obsessed,” she says. “I’m Polish and we have a very strong culture of taking care of yourself.”
Oledzka’s boutique in Lisbon’s Lapa district
But how does it work on the day? A short questionnaire filled out pre-workshop features a variety of innocuous questions – “What is your happy place?”, “What’s your favourite dessert?” – to give Oledzka and her team a starting point for your fragrance. Alternatively, you can take the lead (“I want to smell floral, fresh and fun”), go in a more esoteric direction (“Give me a scent that is mysterious”), or bring along your own favourite fragrance as a blueprint. We opted for the latter, taking along Byredo’s Bal d’Afrique, as it’s clean, but sexy, while my boyfriend brought a bottle of Robert Piguet’s Casbah, which is smoky and heady with incense.
Staff nimbly reach for various midnight-blue bottles on the shelves that line the store, with each attendee being given a collection of 15 to 20 ingredients. It’s a smörgåsbord of just about every scent you can think of: ground coffee, tobacco, Ambroxan (a velvety, woody scent), frankincense, dry wood, amber, bergamot, sea foam, driftwood. All sourced from Grasse, the fragrance capital of the world, quality is paramount to the experience. “We want to give you the best raw materials we can, so you can really see how vanilla or wood smells and actually have access to it,” the founder tells me.
Then, it’s over to you. You sniff each of the aromas and whittle them down your favourites while feeding back to her team so they can understand why one scent trumps another: “too sweet”, “too sharp”, “not that”, “this reminds me of XYZ”. It’s a chance to learn more about your own relationship with scent, as well as that of your workshop companion. “It should be fun,” says Oledzka of the experience. “How often do you have a chance to sit with a stranger for a few hours and tell them about your memories? Someone will tell me that a smell reminds them of their granny or a cake that their aunt used to make. When you share those memories, I get to know you and you get to know me. It’s beautiful to create this connection.”
Karolina Oledzka, founder of Opar Perfumes, in Lisbon
A magnet for avid TikTok scrollers like myself, Opar’s clientele is a mix of tourists, locals and fragrance fanatics from all over the world all in search of creating their own bespoke scent. “When we opened with this idea, I didn’t know if people would be interested in it because it’s so niche,” she says. “The biggest complaints that people who visit have of the commercial scents is that they get headaches from them or they don’t fit into the box of ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ fragrances so they don’t know what to buy.”
After choosing our final ingredients, my concoction had elements of its inspiration like white musk, leather and sea breeze, with unexpected additions like cooked rice, cut grass and ISO E Super, a synthetic compound that brings a velvety quality to fragrances. After some minor tweaks to the measurements of the ingredients – and cutting out an unwanted rogue element, cassis – I called my final formulation Celebrity Skin, taking its name from Hole’s 1998 album. It smells like your skin, but on a very good day. Musky and leathery, with salty undertones and the tiniest hint of comforting rice in the background, it has quickly become a staple in my scent wardrobe, and it’s a guaranteed compliment magnet.
Many of Opar’s visitors regularly rebuy their own scents, which are stored on the shop’s database. “It makes me so happy that people like their fragrances, because they have a choice and they choose to wear theirs,” Oledzka says. “We have people who never wear fragrances come and buy another bottle because it’s the only one that fits them.”
Visitors to Opar create their own scents from a cocktail of 15 to 20 ingredients
The lab only opened in 2023, but Opar’s immediate success comes as no surprise. With its approach touching on wider trends emerging in the beauty industry right now – a bespoke one with a focus on self-care and community – the growing demand culminated this summer with the opening of a second outlet, a retail store off Lisbon’s bougie shopping boulevard Avenida de Liberdade. “I approach it as a service industry or hospitality,” the founder says of the brand’s ethos. “We want you to feel comfortable and empowered to make your fragrance and discover what you like. When you pay for something, you want to feel like it was worth it. While a product can be hit or miss, the feeling when you leave is the long-lasting one.”
The brick-and-mortar space offers more workshops, but they’re fully booked weeks in advance, so Oledzka recently introduced Opar’s own fragrances for those unable to try their bespoke service or visit in person. It’s a tried and tested formula, but the founder is steadfast in keeping the brand’s heart at the forefront of its offering. “This is how I can touch people and make their lives slightly better,” Oledzka concludes, talking about the unique power of beauty. “I’m not a doctor or a firefighter, but through beauty I’m so happy that people are choosing this and loving what they’ve created.” Smells like she’s onto a winner.
Photography courtesy of Opar Perfumes. Taken from 10 Magazine Issue 74 – MUSIC, TALENT, CREATIVE – on newsstands now. Order your copy here.
Visitors to Opar create their own scents from a cocktail of 15 to 20 ingredients
