Shogo Sekine
Shogo Sekine is a Japanese illustrator, graphic designer, and photographer based in Tokyo, a multidisciplinary creative whose eye for color and form has carried him into unexpected corners of the beauty world. Working fluently in both Japanese and English, Sekine has built a portfolio that spans editorial illustration, commercial design, and visual storytelling, with a personal fondness for coffee, dogs, and the quiet poetry of everyday objects. His entry into fragrance came not from a laboratory or a perfumery house, but from a collaboration with Osaji, the Japanese skincare and fragrance label. There, Sekine lent both his illustrative sensibility and what appears to be his compositional instincts to a scent project, reportedly handling the packaging design and visual identity that gave the final release its distinct character. The collaboration suggested a designer who understands scent as something visual as much as olfactory, a creator who thinks in palettes, textures, and mood boards before he thinks in notes. His own work has drawn comparisons to Andy Warhol, an artist who, like Sekine, began as an illustrator before expanding into broader cultural territory, a parallel the Tokyo-based designer has acknowledged with characteristic understatement. Sekine continues to work across illustration, photography, and design, treating each fragrance commission as an extension of his visual practice.
The hits
Notable creations
The signature
How Shogo composes
As a designer stepping into fragrance rather than a trained perfumer building from raw materials, Sekine's signature lies in the visual and conceptual framing he brings to a scent. His work with Osaji revealed a sensibility drawn to Japanese aesthetics: clean lines, restrained palettes, and a fondness for botanicals that read clearly on the nose, citrus and green notes that photograph well and feel equally at home in a skincare routine. He has referenced Warhol, an artist who understood how repetition, color, and pop culture could become something quietly profound, and the comparison hints at a taste for the graphic and the immediately recognizable. The result is fragrance presented as a complete object, where bottle, illustration, and scent are designed to feel like a single thought rather than three separate decisions.
Philosophy
What drives Shogo
Sekine approaches fragrance the way he approaches a page: as a surface to be composed. Rather than working from a traditional perfumer's brief of top, heart, and base notes, his instinct is to think in imagery first, building a world of associations before any formula takes shape. The Osaji collaboration, for instance, was shaped as much by the illustrations he created for it as by the juice itself, a reflection of his belief that scent and image are inseparable emotional carriers. He gravitates toward projects that carry warmth and approachability, qualities he has described as central to his outlook, and his social media presence reinforces a worldview that prizes the small, beautiful things in daily life. There is an emphasis on accessibility without dilution of craft, an idea that good design, whether on a canvas or on skin, should feel inevitable rather than precious.
The houses
Maisons Shogo composes for
In the same league
