A FASHION STUDENT

FUGAZZI started in Amsterdam in 2018, but it was never meant to be a perfume brand. Founder Bram Niessink studied Fashion Management, not perfumery. Then came a trip to Egypt with his grandfather. Bram came home with around a dozen fragrance oils and started experimenting. Soon his student room held 200 to 300 of them, which he mixed with a pipette after learning how on Google. The push to build a brand came from strangers in bars asking what he was wearing.

THE FIRST 300 BOTTLES

The very first perfume was simply called Parfum 1, because it was the first one. Bram started the company with about €10,000 of borrowed money and ordered his first professional batch: five kilograms of fragrance concentrate. The first 300 bottles were filled by hand. To close them, he used a homemade tool attached to a power drill in his garage.

THE FIRST BELIEVERS

Amsterdam concept store FOUR was one of the first retailers to believe in the brand. On his first sales day in a store, Bram sold just ten bottles. Dutch niche perfume retailer Skins then encouraged him to turn his single fragrance into an entire collection.

THE ICONS

Angel Dust is built on quiet confidence, not on being the loudest perfume in the room. It is Bram’s personal all-time favorite, and it centers on Cashmeran, one of his favorite materials. Angel Dust Red Gold followed to celebrate five years of the original, with a saffron-inspired twist. Vanilla Haze combines vanilla, coconut milk and burnt crème brûlée, and its Extrait goes richer with caramel and saffron. Orange Crush pairs fresh orange with modern woody notes, including Iso E Super. Magic Mango blends mango with saffron, leather and woods.

CONTRASTS THAT WORK

FUGAZZI loves a pairing you don’t expect. Goudh sets bright grapefruit and blackcurrant against deep oud. Passionfroudh brings tropical passionfruit together with oud, inspired by contrasts between Brazil and the Middle East. Pomegranoudh is pomegranate meets oud. Cloudh Nine, created by perfumer Jordi Fernández, gives oud a softer, airier side with musks and modern woody notes. Names can mislead too: Sugardaddy combines citrus, blackcurrant, warm spices and a woody base, and Nocologne is an Extrait de Parfum with 30% concentration. It took 24 versions to get it right.

STORIES IN A BOTTLE

Some fragrances start with a person or a song. Nicocello was inspired by the limoncello that Bram’s father, Nico, has been making at home for years. In Love With The Cocos was named after a song and celebrates coconut. Workaholic runs on coffee and Bulgarian rose. Thirsty mixes crisp apple, bamboo and fig. Miauw Miauw is creamy, playful and a little mischievous, with roasted almond, milk and tuberose. And FUGAZZI doesn’t stop at perfume: the brand also makes scented laundry detergent, hair mist and dry shampoo.

OUR OWN SPACES

Bram made his first Esxence perfume fair visit in Milan in 2022, together with his sister. When FUGAZZI opened its first flagship in Amsterdam’s Nine Streets, it launched an exclusive fragrance called Oudh Zuid. The store is more than a perfume shop: a bar is part of the experience. A flagship in Tokyo’s Shibuya area followed. MATCHABUYA, a mix of “matcha” and “Shibuya” with notes like Japanese hinoki wood and seaweed, is the tribute to that city.

COLLABS WITH A TWIST

FUGAZZI teamed up with Korean fragrance house BORNTOSTANDOUT on two perfumes, with the brands’ names deliberately swapped. It started with a slightly hungover FaceTime call from Bram to founder Jun Lim. Why two perfumes? Jun’s answer: “To confuse people.” One was created by master perfumer Quentin Bisch, with notes of milk, grapefruit, incense and suede, and the pair was presented as a forbidden love affair. For Liberty London’s 150th anniversary, FUGAZZI made PURPLE, a fully molecular perfume. For HEMA’s 100th birthday in 2026, it created the limited-edition pear perfume Heerlie de Peerlie, and Bram became Creative Director of HEMA’s fragrance collection.

NOT YOUR USUAL LAUNCH

To celebrate the Sephora Europe launch, FUGAZZI organized an actual FUGAZZI × Sephora-themed wedding in Paris. Before that came a bachelorette party in Barcelona, because every wedding deserves one. For the launch of Vanilla Haze Extrait, the team threw a morning bakery rave, complete with a custom pastry inspired by the perfume..

A NAME THAT CONFUSES

The name is a playful take on “fugazi”, a word associated with something fake, mysterious or illusory. Even the spelling has a rebellious twist, partly inspired by Cyrillic lettering. And how do you pronounce it? According to Bram, it doesn’t really matter. The mystery is part of the point.

PLAYFUL LUXURY

FUGAZZI calls its approach playful luxury: luxurious fragrances without taking the world of luxury too seriously. You can see it in the names, the collabs and the launches.

NO LABELS, JUST STORIES

Every FUGAZZI perfume is genderless, because the brand doesn’t believe fragrance needs a male or female label. What matters is the story, so FUGAZZI even has its own word for it: “storysmelling”. Every fragrance is meant to tell one.

THE NUMBERS

In 2025, FUGAZZI shipped more than 100,000 online orders to over 50 countries. Revenue tripled that same year, after years of rapid growth from a very small start.

THE SEPHORA RUN

FUGAZZI is Sephora’s fastest growing niche brand and won an award for it. In 2026, the Sephora rollout covered 565 stores across three continents in just seven months.

THE AWARDS

In 2026, Vanilla Haze was a finalist at the Fragrance Foundation Awards, in a category alongside fragrances from Chanel, Burberry and Yves Saint Laurent. Vanilla Haze Extrait won the Dutch Beauty Award in the Made in NL category. Angel Dust received Who What Wear’s Best Second Skin Fragrance recognition, and Bram was named a Scentbird Rising Star Honoree.