Fragrance house

19-69

The Swedish brand 19-69 was founded in 2015 by artist and perfumer Johan Bergelin with his wife and co-founder Catharina Bergelin. After a 24-month creative process with artisans in Scandinavia, France, and Italy, its first five perfumes launched at Colette in Paris in 2017. The name combines Bergelin’s birth year with the freedom, tolerance, and counterculture associated with the 1960s and 1970s. Drawing on Bergelin’s work in photography, fashion, and visual arts, 19-69 develops gender-neutral fragrances in which scent, names, packaging, and cultural references are considered together. Its olfactory narratives translate eras, places, music, art, and countercultural episodes into fragrance. Female Christ, the brand’s first scent, drew on a 1969 performance by Danish artists Lene Adler Petersen and Bjørn Nørgaard, while Purple Haze pays tribute to Woodstock, the hippie movement, creativity, and freedom. In 2025, 19-69 formed an ongoing creative partnership with actor Kevin Costner; in January 2026, their first collaborative fragrance was still in development.