Esneda Vela
Esneda Vela discovered perfumery the way most great love affairs begin: by accident. In 2000, she joined Procter & Gamble's Perfumes Department in her native Mexico, fresh out of university with a chemistry degree and an open mind. Something about the craft captured her. She went on to become the first Latin American perfumer to complete professional training at the prestigious Grasse Institute of Perfumery in France, a milestone that placed her at the intersection of scientific rigor and the old-world art of French composition. In 2008, she joined CPL Aromas, where she has spent more than fifteen years developing fragrances for the global market. Based in Bogotá and with deep ties to Colombia, Vela has carved out a rare space for herself: equally fluent in the language of mass-market functional fragrance and the more singular demands of niche and author perfumery. Her work for the Colombian house Devier, including the Alma de La Montaña collection, reflects a growing interest in projects that draw on regional identity and sustainable sourcing. She also teaches and consults, sharing her expertise with aspiring perfumers across Latin America.
The hits
Notable creations
The signature
How Esneda composes
Vela's signature rests on a chemist's precision and a storyteller's instinct. Her training at Grasse gave her a deep command of classical French perfumery structure, while her chemistry background means she thinks in terms of molecules as much as impressions. She gravitates toward work that lets regional character speak: Colombian florals, mountain herbs, tropical woods. The Alma de La Montaña collection for Devier showcases this range, drawing on high-altitude botanicals and the sensory memory of the Colombian Andes. She moves comfortably between functional fragrance for global brands and the more personal vocabulary of niche and author perfumery. Her compositions tend toward clarity over complexity, favoring recognizable structures with unexpected details. In interviews, she emphasizes the importance of giving a fragrance time, a quality that shows in how she builds accords: patient, iterative, willing to revise until the placement feels right.
Philosophy
What drives Esneda
Vela approaches fragrance as a discipline of patience. She has spoken openly about the frustration inherent to the work: the hours spent trying to land an accord in exactly the right place, the trial and error that defines any serious creative process. That honesty shapes her philosophy. She treats perfumery as more than mixing raw materials, a point she returns to often in interviews. For Vela, sustainability is not an add-on but a foundational concern, one that informs how she thinks about ingredient sourcing, supplier relationships, and the long-term viability of the materials she works with. She is drawn to projects that connect fragrance to place, particularly the landscapes, biodiversity, and cultural memory of Latin America. Her teaching and consulting work suggest a conviction that the craft should be accessible, that more voices in the room produce better perfume. She operates as both maker and mentor, building infrastructure for the next generation of Latin American perfumers.
The houses