Olle Hemmendorff
A Swedish Stora Skuggan co-founder who turns myths and sensory contrasts into fragrances.
Sweden
About Olle Hemmendorff
Olle Hemmendorff is a Swedish perfumer and co-founder of Stockholm’s Stora Skuggan. His multidisciplinary background includes images, music and programming, and his fragrances develop individual narratives around mythology, unusual phenomena and sensory contrasts.
Career
Hemmendorff became interested in perfumery through his friend and fellow founder Tomas Hempel, an introduction he describes as immediately compelling. Within Stora Skuggan’s five-person collective, he works in a setting where scents, bottles and artwork are developed together rather than handed to separate outside agencies. His practice has grown through this independent studio and its collaborative experiments, with repeated smelling helping the group decide when a composition is ready.
Creative Style & Philosophy
He sees smell as a sense capable of presenting unfamiliar experiences throughout adult life, even after many visual colours and musical tones have become familiar. Among his favourite materials are ionones, the family of violet-like aroma molecules that he uses to connect honey with heady floral notes. He also values giving each perfume its own narrative rather than making every release conform to a single, narrowly defined brand story.
Signature Works
- *Silphium* — Co-created with Tomas Hempel, it imagines a vanished ancient plant among spices, incense, woods and leather.
- *Thumbsucker* — Honey, violet and narcissus evoke nectar, set against Himalayan cedarwood and styrax balsam.
- *Azalai* — Inspired by a desert caravan route, it connects blood orange and saffron with amber and a soft musky warmth.
