Lukasz Szczesniak of Chemist in the Bottle (his first niche perfume would be Atelier Cologne Rose Anonyme)
I came to this world in a small hospital in a northwest part of Poland. For the first year of my life I lived at my grandparents who were looking after me as my mom was finishing her studies. Soon after she got her Medical Academy diploma we moved closer to more central part of the country, to a city where my dad was assigned to after graduating from Military School.
Lucasz at age 8
I remember having a bright, cheerful and colourful childhood and I really liked my hometown. With 64k of citizens you can’t consider it small but everywhere seemed so close and easy to reach. In 1999 Poland faced a big administrative reform – what was once a capital city of the voivodeship was degraded to a regular one. By the time I was a teenager my beautiful hometown lost most of its shine. Local candy factory shut down, the only cinema in the city went bankrupt. There were no good places for young people to spend their afternoons.
Prada Amber Pour Homme
Together with a friend we decided to go by train to the nearest big city once a month to have some fun – see a movie, walk around shops and get something to eat. At the gallery we used to visit there was also a Sephora & that’s when I had my first experience with perfume. I remember very well the first time I went inside. Prada Amber Pour Homme was a new, highly promoted fragrance back then. Other names didn’t tell me much, Prada did. I put it on my skin and I was in love. From the first moment. I wanted it but could not afford it. I would smell it every time we were in Sephora again. Three years later I got it as a gift (for passing all of my high school final exams). It was the 1st proper perfume that I owned.
In my family nobody used perfume so I don’t have any memories of my grandmother or of my mother having their cosmetic rituals that would finish with applying perfume as some sort of a sacred liquid. Scents entered my life on their own and they were like a promise of a better world, better future.
Baltic Sea coast
Prada Amber Pour Homme initially sparked my interest in perfumery. I started reading Cafleurebon, Now Smell This and Bois de Jasmin, later on. I learned about people called perfumers and I think that’s when I made a decision. If it was written in the stars for me, I decided to dedicate my life to becoming a perfumer. I didn’t know if I had any talent. That’s also when blind fascination with niche came. All of those reviews, announcements I read were much more appealing than what mainstream had to offer. I dreamt of smelling niche perfume thinking that there’s no place in Poland where you could find them. Little did I know. I discovered Perfumeria Quality Missala in Warsaw and that they have a tiny shop in Poznań, a city where I started studying cosmetics chemistry. I would either go to that small perfumery or order some samples online. I was falling deeper and deeper down that rabbit hole but I started like many others, by discovering Annick Goutal and Atelier Cologne.
Atelier Cologne Rose Anonyme
2012 was a year of my fragrant awakening. One day I read bout the release of two new Atelier Colognes – Vetiver Fatal and Rose Anonyme. I was intrigued by the rose but details were nowhere to be found. I sent an email to the brand asking for some more information about Atelier Cologne Rose Anonyme. The person who read my message was kind enough to send me samples of both along with Vanille Insensee (we decided to buy for my mom).
I was as excited as a 5-year-old waiting for a Christmas present when the package arrived. The sample was decanted, in a generic spray vial, but it was my treasure. I smelled Atelier Cologne Rose Anonyme and we instantly clicked. Freshness at the beginning, then a rose of hundred faces – mysterious, dark, sensual and velvety. With hint of oud and gorgeous resins in the base. I just couldn’t resist and I knew that it will be mine as soon as it becomes available in Poland. One Saturday, I traveled to Warsaw to attend a perfume workshop organized by Perfumeria Quality Missala. Just the day before they received Atelier Cologne Rose Anonyme. You guessed what happened next – I came back home with a coffret. 230 ml of goodness. I still have that bottle although it’s reaching emptiness.
Atelier Cologne Rose Anonyme
Fast forward 7 years – in January 2019, during my brief trip to Paris I met the person who prepared and sent me that sample of Atelier Cologne Rose Anonyme. It was our first encounter but it felt as if I knew him for years. Perfume really is connecting people.
2012 was special for me for more reasons – also that year I started my perfume blog, Chemist in the Bottle, created because I didn’t want to keep my thoughts about different fragrances just for myself.
Lukasz Szczesniak at work
After my university graduation in 2014 I started working as a fragrance evaluator for European distributor of IFF. Dream of becoming a perfumer lives on, I make slow steps towards it.
Dream… never don’t doubt it.
Guest Contributor, Lukasz Szczesniak of Chemist in the Bottle
Follow us on Instagram @cafleurebon and @chemistbottle
All photos from Lukasz© unless specified
We celebrate our fellow editors’ bloggers’, vloggers’ and readers’ first niche perfume with our Fragrant Awakenings Series which you can read on Facebook here and on our site here