Antonio Gardoni

About Antonio Gardoni

Antonio Gardoni is an Italian architect and self-taught perfumer who makes small batches of handmade perfumes under the name Bogue Profumo. He sees his two professions as sharing a single sensibility: both, in his view, are about the experience of something.

Career

He came to perfumery not as a fragrance enthusiast but through a fascination with trees, shrubs and flowers, chopping and extracting plants to understand how they smell. When those experiments raised questions, he taught himself organic chemistry from textbooks. Early pieces shared with family and friends led to his first official release. Bespoke commissions for private clients have since become one of the most rewarding parts of a practice that still runs alongside his architecture work.

Creative Style & Philosophy

He infuses resins, woods, roots and metals in alcohol to draw out their scents and steam-distills his own essential oils. As a personal habit, he prefers to work at night, once the smells of the day have faded. Architecture and design taught him to build in layers and refine by taking things away, and he thinks of each perfume as a room with its own mood, texture, light and color. He likes to set ingredients against their opposites in small clashes until they reach a balance, and he enjoys combining naturals with aromachemicals, likening the effect to bringing modern weaponry onto an old-fashioned battlefield.

Signature Works

• *Maai* — his first official perfume, which he links to a long-running struggle with tuberose
• *O / E* — part of Bogue Profumo's core Odors line, alongside *Maai*, *MEM* and *COME*
• *Tyrannosaurus Rex* — created for Zoologist: an earthy patchouli base beneath a balsamic floral layer of ylang-ylang and champaca, with notes of smoke