Heritage
A house, in its own words
The story of Pigmentarium begins in the spring of 2018, when Tomáš Ric, then 24, partnered with visual artist Jakub Hiermann to create a perfume house that would echo the historic Czech pigment shops – places where colour and scented ointments were sold side by side. Their first fragrance, AD LIBITUM, arrived later that year and was praised for its bright citrus opening that recalled the light of a Prague summer morning. In 2020 the house released Paradiso, a scent that combined marine notes with a luminous amber, marking the brand’s first major international distribution. 2021 saw the arrival of Azabache, a darker, mineral‑rich composition that introduced a new “black” colour code to the line‑up. The following year, Oratorio (2023) expanded the narrative to include sacred music motifs, while Genesis (2022) explored botanical purity with a focus on sustainably sourced absolutes. 2025 proved prolific: Paradiso 2025 refined the original formula for a warmer climate, and Brutal offered an aggressive, smoky contrast that highlighted the house’s willingness to experiment. Throughout its first seven years, Pigmentarium grew from a single studio in Prague to a presence in roughly one hundred points of sale worldwide, a trajectory documented in editorial features across Elle, GQ and L’Officiel. The brand’s milestones include collaborations with Czech visual artists for limited‑edition bottle designs and participation in niche fragrance fairs in Paris and Berlin, where it consistently attracted collectors seeking colour‑driven olfactory stories. Pigmentarium views fragrance as a language of colour. The founders translate visual concepts into scent, assigning each perfume a hue that guides both packaging and marketing. Their creative process starts with a colour palette drawn from Czech modernist art, then moves to a scent board where notes are layered to echo the chosen shade. The house emphasizes authenticity, favouring natural extracts and transparent ingredient lists over synthetic shortcuts. Collaboration sits at the core of the philosophy; painters, architects and musicians are invited to contribute ideas, ensuring each release feels like a multidisciplinary artwork. Sustainability informs decisions, from sourcing organic lavender in the Czech countryside to using recyclable glass for bottles. Rather than chasing trends, Pigmentarium seeks to capture moments – a sunrise over the Vltava, the texture of a marble façade, the scent of a historic library – and render them as fragrant colour stories that invite the wearer to imagine beyond the nose.