Heritage
A house, in its own words
Code Deco emerged in 2013 when Gauri Garodia, a former Unilever perfumer with a postgraduate degree from IIM Ahmedabad, decided to translate her industry expertise into a boutique venture. Garodia’s career began in 1996 at Unilever, where she worked on global fragrance projects and built a network of raw‑material suppliers across Asia and Europe. After a decade of corporate work, she returned to Singapore with a vision: to create a small‑scale house that could experiment freely without the constraints of large‑scale production. The first collection, released in late 2013, featured B Minor, A Minor and Damasc, all referencing musical scales that reflected Garodia’s background in classical piano. The following year, Blanc One arrived, a crisp, citrus‑driven scent that quickly became a reference point for the brand’s clean aesthetic. In 2015, Code Deco introduced Malabar, a warm, woody fragrance inspired by the Indian coastal region, signalling the house’s willingness to draw on personal geography. By 2018 the brand opened its first physical boutique in the Tanjong Pagar district, offering customers a tactile experience of the bottles and the stories behind them. A 2020 collaboration with Singaporean visual artist Lim Wei‑Kang produced a limited‑edition series where each bottle featured hand‑painted motifs, merging scent with contemporary art. In 2022 the house announced a shift to recyclable aluminium caps and glass that incorporates post‑consumer recycled content, aligning its production with broader sustainability goals. Throughout its decade, Code Deco has remained independent, sourcing ingredients from both traditional French houses and emerging Asian farms, and maintaining a small, in‑house team that oversees formulation, testing and packaging. The brand’s evolution reflects a steady commitment to craft, curiosity and a personal touch that distinguishes it from larger, corporate perfume houses. Code Deco’s creative vision rests on the belief that fragrance should act as a personal soundtrack rather than a generic statement. Garodia often describes the house’s approach as "listening to the world and translating those sounds into scent." This philosophy drives the selection of raw materials, the naming conventions and the way each perfume is presented. The brand values transparency, choosing suppliers who can trace the origin of their extracts and who practice sustainable harvesting. It also embraces a minimalist aesthetic, allowing the perfume itself to speak without excessive marketing language. In practice, the house holds regular scent‑workshops where a small group of enthusiasts can experience the development process, offering feedback that sometimes reshapes a composition before launch. Code Deco’s values include curiosity, craftsmanship and cultural dialogue; the house frequently references music, architecture and travel in its narratives, inviting wearers to imagine a scene as they apply the fragrance. By keeping the team lean, the brand maintains direct control over each step, ensuring that the final product aligns with its original artistic intent.