Heritage
A house, in its own words
The story of Parfums Quartana begins with the career of its founder, Joseph Quartana, who built his approach to fragrance through earlier ventures in retail and creative direction. Before establishing his own perfume house, Quartana founded Seven New York, an influential avant-garde concept boutique that operated as a space for emerging ideas in fashion and culture. This early venture positioned Quartana within a network of experimental creative work that would later inform his approach to scent. Following Seven New York, Quartana created SixScents Parfums in 2007, a fragrance project designed around the belief that scent could function as a medium for artistic expression beyond conventional perfumery. SixScents operated as a conceptual framework, producing fragrances that explored olfactory experiences through partnerships and installations that treated scent as a primary medium rather than a commercial product. The work of SixScents established Quartana's reputation within niche fragrance circles, building an audience for his unconventional approach to composition. Parfums Quartana emerged from this foundation in 2016, representing a formalization of his creative practice into an independent perfume house. The transition from SixScents to Parfums Quartana marked a shift from experimental project to established brand, though the house retained the conceptual sensibility of its predecessor. The 2016 launch collection included multiple fragrances released simultaneously, establishing the brand's range and aesthetic from its inception. Since then, the house has maintained a steady release schedule, developing new compositions while expanding its audience through selective distribution. Quartana's career trajectory reflects a consistent interest in pushing against the boundaries of what perfume can be, drawing from his background in concept retail and artistic fragrance work.
The creative vision behind Parfums Quartana centers on challenging conventions within perfumery through unconventional ingredient choices and plant-based formulations. Rather than working within established fragrance categories, the house approaches each project as an opportunity to explore botanical materials that fall outside mainstream perfume composition. This orientation toward the unusual reflects an underlying belief that fragrance should function as a form of sensory discovery, offering wearers experiences that differ from standardized commercial offerings. The brand's editorial positioning describes its fragrances as daring and somewhat dangerous, suggesting compositions that resist easy categorization or comfortable familiarity. This language indicates an intentional departure from the reassuring predictability of mass-market perfumery. Plant-based materials serve as the foundation of this approach, allowing the house to work with botanical ingredients that carry different associations than synthetic compounds. The emphasis on plant-based alternatives represents both an aesthetic choice and a philosophical stance regarding the materials of perfumery. Each fragrance within the collection operates as a distinct project with its own conceptual framework, avoiding the house-style consistency that characterizes many perfume brands. This approach allows for considerable variation between releases while maintaining an underlying commitment to unconventional aromatic exploration.