“The eye has to travel,” the editor Diana Vreeland once said. But sight is not the only sense that can move us. Though oh so elusive, scent has the ability to transport us back in time and reawaken even long-forgotten memories of people, events, and places. Unifrom, a fragrance company founded last year in Stockholm by Haisam Mohammed, is inspired by the latter. The unexpected starting points for his fragrances are the stairwells of Swedish high-rises (which are often home to diverse and multicultural populations), and the various scents that gather in those in-between spaces.
Stairwells are multidirectional public spaces of connection, and Mohammed is interested in bridging cultures, and in notions of home and identity. “Unifrom is a project,” he says, “which tries to center itself on telling a common story about the diaspora.” His self-set challenge was to find away to “showcase my culture, and the expression we have, but still contain some of the abstractness.”
He found an answer in perfume oils; Unifrom’s are vegan, cruelty-free. Though this is traditionally the format fragrance takes in East Africa, where Mohammed has roots, perfume oils, he notes, “are often left out in the conversation about beauty and scents”—until now, that is.
Here, Mohammed talks about Unifrom’s mission, materials, and messaging.
When and why did you decide to focus on scent? Throughout my life, I have always sought after new mediums and formats through which I can express and communicate different cultural messages. I have designed, printed, and created physical experiences for as far back as I can remember. But the one format that always stuck in the back of my head was scents.
Without knowing too much about the industry or the steps needed to start making perfume, I began writing down my life experiences and realized how scent had always been a key element.
My interest in scents started in the stairwells of the high-rises, beginning with the one that I grew up in, and has evolved through all the others that I’ve visited since. The smell of food being prepared, the mixture of spices, and the lighting of incense used to slip through the cracks of the doors of the families that inhabit these high-rises and blend into a special scent that I have carried with me throughout my life; hence, the name Unifrom.
What are some of the scents you have developed and what narratives do they communicate? We wanted to create perfumes that would be easy to wear and suit people from all walks of life. Our debut [collection] consists of three perfume oils—Maghrib, Cassis, and Limbo—developed together with the French perfume trio Maelstrom (Patrice Revillard, Marie Schnirer, and Yohan Cervi).
Maghrib, which means “sunset” in Arabic, is our first creation. It was inspired by the experiences of watching the sunset from the rooftops of the high-rises during summer nights. It has cedarwood and tobacco in it and is the scent that I most clearly recognize from my childhood home—and as I later came to realize—the homes of many more ethnic families as they were cooking, burning incense, and blending spices in their home.
Limbo is inspired by my personal experience of the conflicting emotions that I experienced while commuting between the city center and its outskirts where I live. You either feel like it is an escape or a refuge; therefore, the name Limbo. Limbo is our most complicated scent. It features a very interesting combination of rhubarb, hay, and sandalwood.
Cassis is inspired by the first millisecond of the scent you experience when disembarking a plane at a new destination. Preferably in the south of France. It is a fig scent with elements of sandalwood and coconut.
What’s your creative process? I’d say that it starts with the challenge of making something illusive tangible. Just like culture, which our inspiration stems from, scent is hard to point to and make sense of because it can’t be seen. I mean, it’s always there and affects every aspect of our life, but ask anyone to describe [scent] and the answers most often become very abstract. My mission has been to try to contain some of that abstractness, both in a figurative and literal sense. So the question is always “How do I maximize cultural recognition?”
In a figurative sense we try to do this by manifesting the emotions, feelings, and stories that go as a red thread through diaspora culture via formats such [our] Stairwell Stories [video series]. In a literal sense, it’s about making the bottle a container for our scents and a physical manifestation of the experiences that hold our community together. In the same way that a pair of shoes, a song, or a dish are symbols of a culture, I needed the unifrom [roller] bottle to be a statement piece that catches people’s eyes and intrigues them. I am working toward the goal of being able to not show a logo on the bottle and have it still be recognized based on the silhouette, size, and color.
You’ve written that you want to focus on “commemorating diasporas and places through scents, taking notes from the neighborhoods of mixed cultures.” How did you arrive at that decision? I’d say that it wasn’t really an active decision or a conscious direction. I mean, I’m part of the diaspora and with that comes a frame of reference that naturally involves those elements. [I am one of many] children whose parents, for various reasons, have left their home counties, and have built a whole new culture, language, and way of living off of their parent’s heritage and blended it with the cultures of the countries where they now reside. My inspiration will forever be with the youth of the diaspora and the dynamic mix of elements from which our experiences stem.
I wanted to tell our common stories and I truly believe that people from all over the world will be able to identify with them. Cultures are being mixed in high-rises in every corner of the world. Now it’s time for that to be interpreted in scents.
It seems that you not only want to change the stories that perfumes can tell, but their actual compositions, as you are championing the use of perfume oils, which you’ve said have “often left out in the conversation about beauty and scents.”
Perfume oils, for me, are very much a cultural and personal experience, one that I have shared with my family and friends. I’m very cautious about commercializing a product that has existed for centuries without paying homage to where my interest in scents began.
Perfume oil has been seen as a by-product of spray perfume, and the format has not been appreciated or respected as I believe it should. I think it has to do with a general lack of knowledge about the different ways in which perfume can be worn, and a lack of effort from the perfume houses to highlight its value. Judging by the surge of interest that has come our way, there is definitely not a lack of interest from the public, who, on the contrary, wants to learn more. This has given me a chance to develop and find my niche, but also showcase the benefits of perfume oil and express the cultural aspects of the format.
Our perfume oils are vegan, cruelty-free, and do not contain any alcohol, which can dry out the skin. We use natural raw materials, the most we can, but to highlight the scents and bring out the best of the natural extracts, we need synthetics as well. They give power and artistic effects to the natural raw materials. These synthetic raw materials can be naturally found in nature (e.g., geraniol in roses and vanillin in vanilla), and this is how most perfume houses component their creations.
Have you found the fragrance industry to be exclusionary? If so, what needs to change to make it more exclusive? My first experience with the fragrance industry [revealed a stereotype regarding] both what a typical perfumer should look like, and what background he or she should have. As I don’t tick any of those typical boxes, it was just confusion as to why somebody like me would be interested or eligible to develop something so highly regarded as perfume.
Starting out, I quickly took a different route. Rather than working with the traditional perfumers, I began asking around for noses that were not stuck in old, conservative [ways], but [were] more progressive and who would not undermine me for how I looked or where I drew my inspiration from. That’s when I found the independent perfume lab, Maelstrom, which welcomed me with enthusiasm and listened. I was comfortable leaving my ideas in the hands of those noses.
To be able to create innovation and further an industry, you need more perspectives. That is scientifically proven. You need to be open to listening and trying to understand people who don’t come from the same walks of life as you. Inclusivity should not be seen as a “goodwill” [gesture] or something charitable; it should be a crucial part of any industry or a brand that wants to survive in the future.
In one of the videos you’ve made there’s a line about wearing Unifrom with pride. Is your brand political in any way? As a Black man, the day I am born, my body becomes political. However, Unifrom was never intended to be a political project. It was intended to showcase that where you live, or where you come from, should not decide whether or not you are eligible to create premium high-end products. This was something I wanted to prove to others, but also for myself. So, me being young, Black, and running a perfume house is in some ways political.
My ambition is to one day be in a position of power so that I can change the perfume and beauty industry from the inside. I believe that independence and ownership in the Black community are key factors to furthering our excellence. [We should] not only be used as props in campaigns, or be discriminated against in the workplace based on the color of our skin; but that is not the only reason that we started. First and foremost, we want to make top-of-the-line products for everyone to enjoy.
