Heritage
A house, in its own words
Anne Serrano-McClain began her career as a natural perfumer and aromatherapist, drawn to the expressive potential of raw botanical materials. Rather than enter the industry through conventional channels, she traveled to Grasse, France, to study at the Grasse Institute of Perfumery, immersing herself in the techniques and traditions that have defined fine fragrance for centuries. She returned to Brooklyn and founded MCMC in 2009, operating initially from her apartment in Greenpoint before moving to a dedicated studio. The brand remained a one-woman operation for years, with Serrano-McClain handling every aspect of creation and production. In 2012, she partnered with designers Lance McGregor and Alan Iwamura to create a limited run of 168 handblown glass vessels for her Amara fragrance, a collaboration that demonstrated her willingness to push beyond conventional packaging. As demand grew, her younger sister Katie joined to help manage the business, transforming MCMC into a family operation. The brand caught the attention of influential retailers, eventually landing on the shelves of Paris's Colette and Tokyo's Asoom, while maintaining its commitment to small-batch production and original formulations over commercial viability. Serrano-McClain approaches fragrance as a form of storytelling rather than trend-following. She has described perfumery as a way to capture memory and emotion, constructing scents that feel immediate and lived-in rather than aspirational. Each fragrance in the MCMC catalog operates independently rather than as part of a cohesive collection, a deliberate choice that allows each work to pursue its own logic without dilution. This philosophy of singular vision extends to the brand's stance on accessibility. The original mission centered on making high-quality fragrance available without the markup typically associated with luxury positioning. The house resists the industry's emphasis on celebrity launches, limited editions, and narrative spectacle, trusting that considered scent creation speaks for itself. The absence of a house signature or house style might seem like a gap, but for MCMC it represents freedom. The catalog spans woody masculines like Hunter, warmorientals like Phoenix, and green florals like Garden, unified only by their handcrafted origin and the specificity of their authorial voice.