The Perfumer Who Thinks Like a Filmmaker: Meet Strangers Parfumerie

Key Takeaways

• Strangers Parfumerie was founded in Bangkok in 2017 by Prin Lomros, a film professor and director who taught himself perfumery and applies a cinematic approach to every composition.
• Where most perfumers start with an accord or a brief, Prin starts with a scene. The strangeness in his work always serves the story rather than existing for its own sake.
• The range draws on Thai childhood memories, Southeast Asian ingredients and Western niche conventions, creating something genuinely unisex and unlike anything else in the market.
• Salted Green Mango is one of the most distinctive entry points in contemporary niche perfumery. There is nothing else quite like it.
• Strangers is still largely under the radar in Australia, which means wearing it carries a genuine insider quality right now.

There is a particular kind of perfume lover who has quietly given up on department store counters. The ones who have smelled so many versions of fresh aquatic and warm woody musk that they have started to wonder if there is something genuinely strange and personal left to find in fragrance. For that person, Strangers Parfumerie exists.

A Filmmaker Picks Up a Pipette

Founded in Bangkok in 2017 by Prin Lomros, film professor, director and self-taught perfumer, Strangers Parfumerie is what happens when someone applies a cinematic eye to the world of scent. Prin's background is not in chemistry or haute parfumerie. It is in storytelling. And that changes everything about how he builds a fragrance.

Where most perfumers start with an accord or a brief, Prin starts with a scene. A thunderstorm over the Scottish Highlands. A late night café where the conversation never quite finished. A childhood afternoon in Thailand with a green mango in hand. He is essentially storyboarding in scent, which is an odd way to work, and it produces odd and often brilliant results. The brand name itself tells you something. Strangers refers to the hidden parts of ourselves: the unspoken, the dreamed, the repressed. The things that only surface in memories, or films, or sometimes in a bottle of perfume.

What Strangers Actually Smells Like

If you are used to European niche, the Strangers aesthetic will feel both familiar and slightly off kilter in the best way. Prin mixes Western niche conventions with Thai childhood memories and his own travels, creating a range that is genuinely unisex and almost defiantly specific in its storytelling.

A few threads run through the line. The comfort and the gourmand: condensed milk, honey, vanilla, roasted nuts, tonka, cocoa. These scents feel like a warm kitchen but there is usually something a little melancholy underneath them. The grit: smoke, peat, tar, whisky, leather, the occasional suggestion of burning plastic. Prin is not afraid to make you uncomfortable. And the tropical memory: salted green mango, guava, star gooseberry, incensey tropical fruits. Ingredients that feel almost impossible to find in Western niche but that snap into focus the moment you smell them. If you grew up anywhere near Southeast Asia, these hit differently.

Three Scents Worth Knowing

Salted Green Mango is probably the easiest entry point and also one of the most impressive things Prin has made. Built around bao mango, star gooseberry, lime, pomelo, green chilli, petitgrain, salty air and vetiver, it smells exactly like checking whether a mango is ripe by pressing your thumbnail into the skin on a humid coastal afternoon. Sharp, salty, peppery green with soft woods underneath. Some reviewers have called it a green chypre. A sense memory in a bottle is closer to the truth. There is nothing else quite like it in the market.

SM Café and the other coffee driven scents in the range are where Prin's love of moody atmospherics really shines. Dark coffee, chocolate, leather, smoke. The scent of lingering in a place past closing time, when the conversation has gone quiet and there is still a cup going cold on the table. These make excellent entry points for anyone who gravitates toward gourmands but finds most of them too sweet or uncomplicated.

Why It Is Worth Your Attention Right Now

Strangers is still largely under the radar in Australia, which means there is a genuine insider quality to wearing it. That rarer pleasure of being asked what is that by someone who actually knows their fragrance. At the same time, despite the conceptual adventurousness, these scents are genuinely wearable. Prin is not being strange for strangeness's sake. The oddness always serves the story.

For collectors who have grown tired of safe sandalwood vanilla combinations, for film lovers who bring the same emotional investment to fragrance that they bring to cinema, for anyone who has ever wanted a perfume to feel like something rather than just smell pleasant. Strangers Parfumerie is exactly the rabbit hole you have been looking for. Come in curious. You will not leave bored.