Aitana López de Carrión
Aitana López de Carrión began her relationship with fragrance in an unexpected place: the pharmacy. Trained as a pharmacist before she ever set foot in a perfumery lab, she approached scent through the lens of molecules and mechanism. That scientific grounding shaped everything that followed, including a stint at ISIPCA in Versailles, the storied French school that has produced generations of noses, and an internship under an independent French perfumer where she first learned to translate raw chemistry into something wearable and emotive. In 2016, she joined CPL Aromas, working her way up through the fine fragrance division. Today she serves as Fine Fragrance Development Manager at CPL Aromas Spain, a role that places her at the intersection of brand vision and olfactory construction. Her portfolio spans both international houses and smaller niche labels, and she has extended her expertise beyond the lab, leading olfactory training workshops at the European Institute of Design in Barcelona. More than a decade into the craft, López de Carrión occupies a particular niche: part formulator, part educator, part translator between commercial expectation and creative instinct.
The hits
Notable creations
The signature
How Aitana composes
Her technical foundation shows in the precision of her compositions. Structures tend to be clean, with each ingredient asked to earn its place. She works comfortably across olfactive families but shows particular fluency in fine fragrance briefs that call for restraint, radiant florals, well-judged ambers, and modern gourmands where the sweetness is tempered by something drier or more mineral. Her pharmacy training translates into a materials-first sensibility: she tends to know her raw materials inside out, both their behavior in formula and their behavior on skin. That depth of knowledge allows her to handle tricky briefs, the kind where a client wants something recognizable and brand-consistent, yet still alive. The result is work that reads considered rather than constructed.
Philosophy
What drives Aitana
López de Carrión speaks about perfumery as storytelling, a way to carry a brief, a mood, or a memory into something a person can wear against their skin. Her pharmaceutical background lingers in how she thinks: respect for raw materials, patience with process, curiosity about how structures behave over time rather than just how they smell at first spray. She gravitates toward briefs that ask for nuance over noise. Working across both established international brands and independent niche projects has given her a wide vantage point on what different audiences want from scent, and she tends to filter those expectations through her own instinct for what feels honest. Teaching at IED reinforced her belief that olfaction can be trained, demystified, and shared, and it pushed her to articulate the choices she makes at the bench.
The houses