Tomas Hempel
Tomas Hempel grew up in the suburbs of Stockholm, attended school, completed his military service, and tried his hand at different jobs before finding his calling in perfumery. He describes himself as self-taught, though he readily acknowledges the mentors who guided him along the way. Hempel eventually co-founded Stora Skuggan, a Swedish niche fragrance house built around the marriage of scent and storytelling. The brand operates with a handcrafted ethos, producing small-batch eaux de parfum that reject mass-market conventions in favor of something more personal and atmospheric. With roughly six fragrances to his name, Hempel has cultivated a following among collectors drawn to the brand's mysterious, fog-laden aesthetic. His work channels the fog-covered waterfronts and unexplained sonic phenomena of Scandinavian folklore, transforming them into wearable olfactory narratives.
The hits
Notable creations
The signature
How Tomas composes
Hempel favors dark, atmospheric compositions rooted in Nordic landscape and mystery. His signature work for Stora Skuggan leans toward foggy aquatic notes, smoky undertones, and an undercurrent of the uncanny. Mistpouffer draws directly from unexplained sonic events over Swedish waterways, while Moonmilk channels something more dreamlike and elusive. His palette tends toward the unexpected: resinous woods, lactonic nuances, and herbal contrasts that keep his fragrances from settling into comfortable categories. The result is an olfactory style that feels both intimately personal and expansively strange.
Philosophy
What drives Tomas
Hempel approaches fragrance as a storyteller first. His creative process begins not with raw materials but with an image, a mood, or a fragment of folklore, building compositions around narrative coherence rather than trending accords. He values the handmade and the handmade quality of his output reflects a deliberate resistance to industrial scaling. Influenced by mentors but ultimately charting his own course, Hempel seems driven by a desire to capture moments that resist easy explanation, translating the unclassifiable into scent.
The houses
Maisons Tomas composes for
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