AOIRO

Where are you based

We are based in Berlin and Tokyo.

What is the story of your brand and how would you like it to evolve

Soon after we started working together we had an urge of developing a different way of using scent and for an olfactory experience in space.

For Hakudo we rated to ourselves if there can be a different way to experience fragrance to perfume but also to the usual way of “room fragrance”.
The sense of smell has such an impressive capacity for our mind and soul, and we wanted to create a ritual, a different way of using scent in order to create awareness of the personal impact of the sense of smell.

What inspires you and helps you get into a creative flow

For our own product series it just happened over the time, as we found more time to work on the concept when travelling in Japan, also being away from the usual daily routine helps, as in such circumstances, we get to experience many essential impressions and sensory elements with a purer attitude again.

At the same time, it can be the ingredients itself which inspire us. often we encounter very different and complex “personalities”, depending on the essence we receive and that makes us realises each time, that we are working with an absolutely living material. In comparison to this, most synthetic fragrances can be literally “inanimate” for us, a reason why we find it more interesting and challenging to work with natural scent materials.

What is the message that you want to express through your product/service

To experience the olfactive sense for yourself as a ritual.

Based on a philosophy derived from Kōdō, – the Japanese ceremony of appreciating a subtle and exquisite fragrance – we are trying to to create a personal ceremony which is inviting to “listen” to the scent, leading to a ritual-like experience which is more holistic. This process or the state of “listening” itself connects very much to the classical meditation and it allows to experience the olfactive sense with one's inner being.

What does the word beauty evoke for you

Beauty is versatile, but for us it can be an intangible and invisible experience when it comes to a scent. We can relate to the moment when the scent becomes part if a holistic atmosphere in space with all the other senses.