Inside the Perfumer's Studio: Joey Rosin
A saxophonist turned scent-maker on music, memory, and why he won’t rush to launch a fragrance line
Chances are, you already know Joey Rosin’s work even if you don’t know his name. He’s the nose behind one of my favorite releases of last year, Sable Yong’s now sold out Die Hot With a Vengeance, and he co-created Rite of Way’s Outer Realm with his mentor, Michael Nordstrand. An incense scent with a shape shifting quality. That one took 85 mods (!!) before they cracked the very open-ended brief. He also created Sala for Tsu Lange Yor.
A saxophonist and composer, Joey started teaching himself fragrance during the pandemic. Ordering samples, experimenting with Perfumers Apprentice kits, and eventually apprenticing with Nordstrand. He now works in Nordstrand’s famed Mythologist Studio while also running his own studio, Hoax Parfum.
After a morning in Joey Rosin’s Bushwick studio—blotters scattered across the desk, his perfume organ within reach, a well-edited perfume collection nearby, keyboard and horns leaning in the corners, I left convinced he needs to start his own brand. If only because I’d like to buy and wear more of what he’s making in that tiny space.
The scent I left with on my skin, Rest Your Head, created for his friends wedding, is a bright green fig that hung around for hours, and something I’d add to my collection. The fact that he’s reluctant to launch a brand is exactly why I think he should. But he’s smart and thoughtful so I know it will be worth the wait. As he put it, “Not to get too political, but like, do we really need another white guy saying stuff? Especially in perfume?”
“Not to get too political, but like, do we really need another white guy saying stuff? Especially in perfume?”
Sitting in his Bushwick studio, surrounded by instruments and formulas, Joey’s enthusiasm for everything he’s involved in is infectious. He’s as likely to talk about fig accords as he is about music, community, or how much he loves his fiancée, which makes me think when he finally does put his name on a brand, it will be something special.
Excerpts from our conversation are below. There was so much more I wanted to include but had to cut for length. I fell hard for Hand in Hand, a scent Joey created for a recent performance with his fiancée, Hannah. Built around cedarwood, rhododendron, eucalyptus, and moss. The fragrance is available for preorder now.
Enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think in the comments!
How it started
Christina: Tell me how you got into making fragrance.
Joey: The pandemic. I'd always been into fragrance. I actually wore this one scent for years that I don’t think anyone knows about. I'm about to blow up their spot. It's called Craft by Base, a store in Miami. I wore this for a long time. It was the first thing that I got that I was like, this is my smell.
Christina: Tell me what you liked about it.
Joey: There are certain things that I'm really a perfumer about and there's other things that I'm still a person about. And this, this fragrance, I'm still a person about. It doesn't smell the way that I remember, but it's nice. I don't know who made it. I owe who did it a dinner.
Christina: Because that's the scent that got you into perfume?
Joey: Yes. I was a senior in college in Miami, and I found this one at that store and I was just like, this is super me. They have a few other ones that are quite nice, but I don't know who did them and I've called them and asked. They won't tell me.
Christina: It's so funny to me when brands don't disclose the perfumer.
Joey: They told me they live in New York. They said they don’t do anything else and that they just sort of did this for them. And I'm like, that is such baloney and malarkey. Like I know that it can't possibly be true.
And then from there, it was the pandemic. I was doing my master's in music. So I was in Boston doing my master's and I went home (to Chicago) because the pandemic happened and my walls were so thin that I could hear my neighbors snoring. It was really just abysmal. I didn't even have internet because all of my time I was at school practicing.
But I came home and my mom, she cooks like crazy. She was taking us all around the world. Jewish, Indian, Mexican. And then it was a very open inquiry into smell. I started researching things, got a few samples. I went to Merz Apothecary in Chicago. Then I discovered DS & Durga. I bought a few of theirs. I moved to NY and I started teaching myself how to make stuff very casually.
Christina: Did you learn online?
Joey: YouTube university. And then I just started making stuff and then I got my apprenticeship with Michael.
Christina: How many years has that been?
Joey: Two and a half. It's weird because I go there and I'm the student, but then when I'm here I'm doing it.
Christina: And you have your own clients, and then you have clients you work on together?
Joey: We just have the one that we worked on together. Occasionally at his place, I'll do some evaluating for him. Where he gives me a lot of the work that he's done, and he'll say, go through it. Tell me what you think. And I'll go through everything and give comments and feedback.
He's a genius.
Music and Perfume
Christina: Do you equally do perfume and music?
Joey: I wouldn't say it's equal at this point. Hannah and I, we had a show in May that was a dance and music show. She did all the choreography. I did the music. We have a duet together where I move. And I made a fragrance for it.
Christina: It's gorgeous. Tell me about this one.
Joey: This show is called Hand in Hand and it has two pieces. The first one is called In Each Passing Moment. It's our duet. It's about time passing and impermanence, but also the enduring aspects of the human spirit, the way that we leave marks on each other. And the other one is called Continual Becoming, and it's about growth and change.
It’s a very human focused show.
So we wanted to use the fragrance as a tool to shift people into our world. There's a lot of rhododendron, there's eucalyptus, there's moss, cedarwood. In my head it's this giant cedarwood tree. Like a huge one that bears fruit, the ground is laden with moss. And it has eucalyptus leaves in there. So there's this cooling fresh element.
Rarely do I get something that's like 1A is the finished mod. This is 1A, this is the first pass. The right inspiration was there. Something opened up in me and this one came out. This expressed the feeling of the show really nicely.
Christina: Do you think there's any similarities between music and fragrance?
“Fragrance is the fine tuning of the nose, which is also a sense that you can never turn off.”
Joey: Endless, endless. You know, when I'm playing music, it's fine tuning of the ears, which is a sense that you can never turn off. Fragrance is the fine tuning of the nose, which is also a sense that you can never turn off. So they're these invisible mediums and when I work on a formula, it feels so much like I'm playing something on piano and working out the details of a composition. You have to have intent. But it's these symbolic, gestural art forms, you know? Where it's like, what does this sound mean? What does this combination of molecules mean. They're super tied.
Christina: Do you feel the same way when you're making music and making perfume?
Joey: They create the same feeling in my brain. The only difference, and this is what kills me, is that there's no performance of perfume.
Christina: What do you mean? Like you just don't have that experience for perfume? It's a very solo experience in a lot of ways.
Joey: Yea. And it's really intimate, which is amazing. In a way that music could never be. I really enjoy the performance aspect of music. And getting to play music and feeling that like, oh shit, we're doing it.
Desert Island Scents
Christina: What Accord or note are you most excited about right now?
Joey: The whole summer I've been doing tuberose stuff, so, you know, I was really digging into tuberose and fougères.
Christina: Tell me your top three fragrances made by someone else. Your desert island scents.
Joey: I'm gonna give you four.
I'm a huge fan of Dominique Ropion, Vetiver Extraordinaire is one of my all time favorites. It’s so elegant.
Michael Nordstrand has that Patchouli that I really, really love. It's unreleased. He won the British Society of Perfumers Award for it. It was a competition based on patchouli.
Fischersund No 23. I found it years ago. Upstate at some little store. And I got the solid one. I don't like solid perfumes, but this one is just so good. Jónsi is a visionary artist. His approach to perfumery is so cool.
Absinthe by Headspace. Nicolas Beaulieu is the perfumer of that one. He's got this immaculate sense of balance. That's really inspiring to me. The way that he does green and wood is very interesting.
But there are so many perfumers that inspire me like Christine Nagel. I love H24. She's also got this very clear style to her.
Bertrand Duchaufour, Olivier Cresp, John Pegg of Kerosene,
There's just so many perfumers that I admire. And all of my peers here in New York. Like, a lot of times when we hang out we’ll just look at formulas.
Christina: Is that like Trey, Noah, and Bryson? You guys hang out and nerd out on perfume?
Joey: We'll smell stuff. Yeah. We'll get together and we'll look at formulas. I just love beating up formulas. And getting my formulas pulled apart.
Everyone's formulas look so different. Everyone is very different. Bryson's cooking his own soup, man. He has figured out his own way of doing things. And it is such fun.
Christina: What's your comfort smell?
Joey: Honestly, and I don't wanna smell like this, but when I come home and there's food being made, that's the comfort for me.
Christina: Yeah. It's like the smell of being taken care of.
On launching a brand
Joey is both ambitious and cautious. He wants to create a brand that holds space for seriousness and silliness, something flexible enough to cover themes of impermanence and intimacy but not too lofty for dad jokes. He also cares deeply about sustainability, pointing out the ecological costs of perfumery and hoping both indie makers and big houses push toward better practices including refills, less waste, more accountability.
Christina: So how close are you to starting your own brand?
Joey: You know, the more people ask me to start a brand, the more I'll be like, I gotta do it. It's just such a big investment upfront. So much of my time has been making things for clients, which is exactly what I want to do.
What’s not been said? Not to get too political or anything, but like, do we really need another white guy saying stuff in perfume?
Thank you for taking the time and showing me your studio, Joey! You can follow Joey on instagram here and here.
This was sooo interesting and fun to read
University of Miami School of Music reprazent! 🎶