Heritage
A house, in its own words
Marissa Zappas began working as a freelancer in 2017, building her independent perfumery practice alongside scent design projects. Before establishing her own brand, she developed her palate through anthropological study, which informs how she thinks about fragrance as a cultural practice rather than purely a commercial product. Her earliest fragrance memories trace to her bat mitzvah, when she received YSL Baby Doll, a juicy 2000s-era scent that she says sparked an early obsession with how scent and identity interact. In the years that followed, she studied independently and began developing her own compositions, drawing inspiration from early twentieth-century avant-garde perfumes and their willingness to take creative risks. She eventually connected with Courtney Rafuse, another independent perfumer, and the two founded Gumamina as a collaborative side project. The partnership reflects Zappas's broader interest in community over competition within independent perfumery. Her brand gained recognition through social media attention and in-person events, including appearances at retail locations where her collection found an audience drawn to her unconventional naming conventions and emotionally specific brief. Zappas approaches perfumery as a form of storytelling. Her anthropological background gives her a framework for understanding how scent functions within cultures, communities, and personal narratives. She has spoken about the power of not knowing in creative work, suggesting that uncertainty opens space for discovery rather than limiting it. Her perfumes tend to evoke specific scenarios or emotional atmospheres rather than ingredient categories. Annabel's Birthday Cake and Honey Rose suggest edible, nostalgic imagery, while titles like The Pink Bedroom and The Sun Card point toward intimate domestic spaces or symbolic imagery. Flaming Creature and Tragedy Oil lean darker, referencing underground film and theatrical tragedy respectively. This range demonstrates a philosophy of fragrance as a vehicle for narrative and sensory memory, not merely a vehicle for pleasant smell. Her work runs from irreverent gourmands to more atmospheric compositions, but everything she creates carries a sense of personality and specificity that distinguishes it from more generic offerings. She treats her perfumes as extensions of her writing and poetic sensibility, integrating text, imagery, and concept into how each fragrance exists in the world.