Long before anyone had heard the term “skin scent”, the story of Geza Schoen began. In 2006, he broke with everything perfumery had stood for until then and created a fragrance from a single molecule: Iso E Super. No floral bouquet, no fruit cocktail, no ten ingredients vying for attention. Just one woody, velvety substance that bonds with the skin and, as a result, smells different on everyone.

At the time, many thought it was mad. Today, Molecule 01 has a devoted following that includes Kate Moss and Beyoncé, as well as my Kreuzberg friends. With Escentric Molecules, Geza has become what you might call an artist’s artist: a master of his craft, a darling of the scene, one of the most successful niche perfumers, and yet approachable, unpretentious, cool. Anyone wearing Molecule 01 today can be sure of being stopped on the street and asked about it.

It’s not an overbearing, generic, off-the-shelf scent, but one that continuously unfolds on you. Schoen himself once said that Molecule 01 works almost like a drug: you smell it and immediately want more. And now, twenty years on, there finally is more: Schoen and his team have opened the brand’s first permanent store on Auguststraße: Escentric Molecules.

The store was designed by creative director Paul White and architect Sophie Berianidze, co-founder of Valesque, my new favorite bag label, and Schoen’s partner. The result is not a classic retail space but a cross between gallery and stage. Anodized aluminium plinths on which the flacons are moved in choreographed sequences, with drawers above that open to reveal entire fragrance families.

Video screens show patterns of molecular movement, accompanied by pared-back techno. At night, the products almost disappear from view, and the space becomes a glowing installation, with large-scale projections onto the street offering a rotating program of art and film. What began in 2006 as a radical reduction to a single molecule is carried through the space itself: a distillation to what matters. Only this time it’s cast not just in flacons but in aluminium, light and sound.

Text: Laura Storfner / Photos: Courtesy of Escentric Molecules

Escentric Molecules, Auguststr.62, 10117 Berlin–Mitte; map

@escentric_molecules