Heritage
A house, in its own words
Michał Szulc entered the design world in 2005 with the IAPAN collection, establishing himself within Poland's creative community during a period of significant growth in the country's fashion and design sectors. Fashion documentation from around 2010-2012 shows Szulc working alongside other Polish designers, including collaborations with Mari JJ Design, the Stockholm-based brand founded by Maria Joanna Juchnowska in 2010. This positioning placed him among a generation of Polish designers building international connections while maintaining roots in Central European design traditions. Szulc's transition into fragrance began with Sale Perfume 01 in 2011, a debut that reflected broader artistic interests beyond apparel. By 2020, he revisited and remade his original fragrance, releasing Sale Perfume 01.1 alongside a new companion piece, Sale Perfume 02 Ribes oud. This return to perfumery after nearly a decade demonstrated continued engagement with the medium, though his fragrance releases remain infrequent and tied to specific creative impulses rather than seasonal commercial cycles.
Szulc approaches fragrance as he approaches fashion design, with attention to form, material, and conceptual coherence. His limited fragrance output suggests a belief that scent should be purposeful rather than prolific. The Sale Perfume series title itself carries implications about accessibility and value, potentially challenging the exclusivity structures of the broader fragrance industry. By remaking his original fragrance in 2020, Szulc demonstrated an interest in revisiting and refining past work, treating perfumery as an evolving creative dialogue rather than a series of discrete product launches. His visual consulting work and fashion background inform a cross-disciplinary sensibility, where boundaries between design disciplines remain permeable. This approach treats fragrance as one voice within a broader artistic conversation rather than a standalone commercial category.