Heritage
A house, in its own words
The story of Salle Privée begins in Amsterdam in 2018, when Anna Hegeman and Patrick Munsters established their House of Design. Both founders arrived with backgrounds rooted in fashion and design, bringing a cross-disciplinary perspective to the fragrance industry. Rather than approaching perfumery from a traditional cosmetic or beauty background, the duo applied principles of modernist design to scent creation, treating fragrance as an extension of their broader creative practice. Their debut collection, released the same year as their founding, included multiple fragrances that continue to anchor the brand's identity: Kham-Sin, Le Temps Perdu, Celluloid Heroes, Super 8, and Monochrome all appeared in 2017, suggesting either a pre-launch development period or overlapping release strategies. The House gained early recognition through appearances at international fragrance fairs, including Pitti Fragranze in Florence. In 2019, the brand released Concorde, marking an expansion of their olfactory vocabulary. A notable collaboration arrived in 2024 with The Mind Vaccine, created alongside Dutch designer Ronald van der Kemp. More recently, Salle Privée presented Rialto (2024) and Ai (2025), demonstrating continued activity and evolution within their collection. The brand maintains a presence at events such as the West Coast fragrance fair mentioned in their communications.
Salle Privée approaches fragrance as an exercise in modernist design. Hegeman and Munsters apply principles drawn from their fashion and design practice, treating each scent as a carefully considered composition rather than an exercise in traditional perfumery conventions. The brand's aesthetic is described as refined and unapologetic by its own communications, though the more verifiable observation is their commitment to modernist principles: clean lines, deliberate choices, and an emphasis on contemporary relevance over historical deference. The House positions itself as existing at the intersection of fashion, design, and fragrance, suggesting that their creative process is less concerned with classical perfumery traditions than with pushing the boundaries of what a fragrance collection can represent. This approach manifests in unconventional fragrance names such as Kham-Sin, Celluloid Heroes, and Super 8, which draw from disparate cultural references rather than conventional perfumery nomenclature. The collaboration with Ronald van der Kemp on The Mind Vaccine in 2024 further illustrates this philosophy, partnering with a fashion designer known for his avant-garde sustainable work to create something that exists outside typical industry categories.