Award winning perfumes

Key Takeaways

• In niche and independent perfumery, awards are blind-judged on the liquid alone, making them a genuinely reliable signal of quality rather than a measure of marketing budgets.
• Connection Parfumerie stocks a significant number of award-winning fragrances across the Art and Olfaction Awards, the Fragrance Foundation FiFi Awards and Fragrantica Readers' Choice.
• The Art and Olfaction Awards are widely considered the most prestigious honour for independent perfumery. Judges do not know the brand, the price or the perfumer when they vote.
• Several of the award stories in our collection have layers worth knowing, including a formula rescued from a retired perfumer and a Polish brand winning the most demanding fragrance market in the world.

In the world of commercial fragrance, awards are often just a measure of marketing budgets. Who bought the biggest billboard? But in the niche and independent sector the awards are different. They are rigorous, often blind-judged and focused entirely on the liquid in the bottle. At Connection Parfumerie, we stock a significant number of these gold medal scents. Here is a breakdown of the specific winners on our shelves and, more importantly, why they won.

The Official Perfume Winners

*Zoologist Cockatiel won the 2019 award under its original name, Powder and Dust, by SP Parfums.

The Brand Awards

The Art and Olfaction Winners

The Art and Olfaction Awards are widely considered the most prestigious honour for independent perfumery. The judging is completely blind: judges do not know the brand, the price or the perfumer when they vote. Think of it as the Sundance of the scent world.

Mekha Aranya by SIAM 1928 took the 2025 Artisan category. This scent from the Thai house represents the rising power of Southeast Asian artisan perfumery, winning for its complex, spiritual composition that blends traditional Thai incense notes with a lush, jungle-like humidity.

Ierofante by Parfums Quartana won the 2023 Independent category. Part of a collection exploring poisonous themes, it won for its daring rocket fuel accord. Perfumer Luca Maffei combined a gasoline-like suede note with nutmeg and styrax to create something that smells dangerous, leather-clad and addictive. It pushed the boundaries of what a leather scent could be.

Saskia by Grandiflora took the 2022 Independent category and remains a landmark win for Australian perfumery. Created by Saskia Havekes and Christophe Laudamiel, it is a hyper-realistic interpretation of a flower shop, capturing not just the petals but the stems, crushed leaves and the cool humid air of a cool room.

The Fragrance Foundation Winners

The FiFi Awards are the industry standard, comparable to the Oscars of perfume. The category to watch is Perfume Extraordinaire, the only category where major luxury houses compete against niche brands on scent alone through blind judging.

Squid by Zoologist won the 2020 Perfume Extraordinaire award. It smells of blue ink, salty ocean depth and ambergris, and won because it took a genuinely strange concept and made it hauntingly beautiful. It proved to conservative industry judges that a perfume could be experimental and wearable at the same time.

Experimentum Crucis by Etat Libre d'Orange took the 2020 UK Perfume Extraordinaire prize. Inspired by Isaac Newton and the theory of gravity, it is a massive rose and Akigalawood composition that won for its technical performance: enormous projection and sillage while remaining chemically fascinating and thoroughly modern.

Poppy Soma by Parfums Quartana won the 2017 Perfume Extraordinaire award. Inspired by the opium poppy and part of the Les Potions Fatales series, it won for its intoxicating, narcotic quality, using Sichuan pepper and curry leaf to simulate the sharp, dizzying effect of the flower before settling into a deep sedative floral.

The Insider Stories

Some of the most interesting awards in our collection are not immediately obvious because of name changes or unusual category histories.

Cockatiel by Zoologist carries a story worth knowing. The bottle says Cockatiel and dates from 2022, but the formula inside is actually the 2019 Art and Olfaction Award winner called Powder and Dust. The original creator, Sven Pritzkoleit, retired and closed his brand. Victor Wong of Zoologist loved the scent enough to purchase the formula and save it from disappearing. He renamed it Cockatiel, but the award-winning DNA remains exactly the same: a dry, dusty, fruity yellow floral that earned its recognition entirely on its own terms.

Red Wine Brown Sugar by Bohoboco won Niche Fragrance of the Year at the Beautyworld Middle East Awards in 2024. The Middle Eastern market is arguably the most demanding in the world for fragrance performance, strength and gourmand profiles. For a Polish brand to win there confirms that this scent delivers exceptional longevity and projection by any standard.

Bain de Midi by Maison Matine won a prize the French Fragrance Foundation created specifically in 2020: the Prix de l'Audace, or Audacity Award. It was given not because the scent was the most expensive or technically ambitious, but because it was the most joyful. Coconut and tiare flower, a sunny afternoon in a bottle, the kind of carefree creativity the stiff French industry felt was missing. It remains one of the most honest awards in the room.