Soraia de Costa Silva
Soraia de Costa Silva grew up in Rio de Janeiro, where the salt air of the Atlantic and the dense canopy of Brazil's Atlantic Forest quietly shaped her sense of smell. She carries that sensory inheritance into every formula she composes, treating perfumery as a dialogue between geography and chemistry. Trained at ISIPCA, the storied French perfume school founded by Jean-Jacques Guerlain, she absorbed a rigorous classical education before entering the professional ranks of IFF and later dsm-firmenich. Today she holds the title of Senior Perfumer, a position that places her among the most accomplished Brazilian noses working in the fine fragrance industry. She has also spoken at the World Perfumery Congress, sharing her perspective on renewable sourcing and sustainable ingredient development. Her trajectory from Carioca childhood to international creative leadership reflects a generation of perfumers who treat raw materials as living things worth careful stewardship.
The hits
Notable creations
The signature
How Soraia composes
Soraia's signature leans toward luminous, green-floral structures with a transparent, almost watery quality. She gravitates toward violet leaf, cucumber-like aquatic greens, and powdery iris notes that lend her work a cool, architectural elegance. Sweet accents appear sparingly, usually to soften a composition's edge rather than dominate it. She builds accords with technical precision inherited from her ISIPCA training, balancing natural isolates against synthetic molecules to achieve clarity without losing warmth. Her tropical upbringing surfaces in unexpected ways, through sun-warmed fruity facets and breezy marine notes that recall the Atlantic coastline of her childhood. She prefers compositions that breathe, where each ingredient retains its individual voice while contributing to a cohesive whole.
Philosophy
What drives Soraia
Soraia approaches composition as an act of listening rather than declaration. She believes a fine fragrance should reveal itself in layers, rewarding the wearer who lingers with it across a full day. Sustainability runs through her creative process as a guiding principle: she gravitates toward renewable feedstocks, traceable supply chains, and natural ingredients that can be regenerated rather than depleted. She has spoken publicly about the responsibility perfumers carry for the landscapes that produce their materials. Her formulas tend to honor the botanical origin of each note, preserving something of the soil and climate where a raw material was cultivated. She sees scent as a bridge between cultures, a way to carry the brightness of Brazilian flora into bottles destined for every continent.
The houses
Maisons Soraia composes for
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