Lyubov Kovalenko
Lyubov Kovalenko grew up in St. Petersburg, where the scent of birch and river water shaped her earliest memories. After earning a master’s degree in cognitive neuroscience at the Higher School of Economics, she joined a research team that paired facial‑emotion recognition software with scent exposure. The project, described in a 2022 LinkedIn post by Vadym Kovalenko, gathered hundreds of spontaneous reactions and proved that subtle shifts in expression could predict preference for specific aroma families. Inspired by those results, Lyubov turned the data into a laboratory of her own, setting up a modest studio in 2017. She recruited volunteers, recorded their micro‑expressions while they sampled raw absolutes, and fed the patterns into a custom algorithm. The first formulation, a quiet amber‑spiced blend, earned praise at a private showcase in Moscow and marked her entry into the perfumery world. Since then she has consulted for niche houses, always insisting that a fragrance must echo the wearer’s authentic emotional state rather than a marketing narrative.
The hits
Notable creations
The signature
How Lyubov composes
Lyubov’s signature technique blends scientific rigor with artisanal intuition. She favors natural extracts that produce clear, reproducible facial responses—lavender, violet leaf, Siberian pine—while avoiding overly synthetic accords that mask genuine reaction. In the lab she layers notes in micro‑increments, recording each addition with high‑speed cameras and emotion‑analysis software. The data guide her to a precise balance, often resulting in compositions that feel both transparent and emotionally resonant. She also experiments with temperature‑controlled diffusion, allowing a fragrance to reveal different facets as the skin’s heat changes throughout the day. This method yields scents that evolve with the wearer, mirroring the shifting emotional landscape she maps.
Philosophy
What drives Lyubov
Lyubov treats fragrance as a mirror of the mind. She believes that scent can trigger measurable emotional cues, and that a perfume should be calibrated to those cues rather than imposed from above. Her creative process begins with a hypothesis about a feeling—calm, curiosity, resolve—and she tests it by presenting candidate notes to participants whose facial muscles are tracked in real time. When a note consistently elicits a relaxed brow or a lifted cheek, she records it as a “positive signal.” The final composition emerges from a collage of signals that together paint the intended mood. For Lyubov, the ultimate reward is watching a wearer’s face soften as the scent unfolds, confirming that the chemistry has spoken the language she intended.
The houses
Maisons Lyubov composes for
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