Fragrance house

KST Scent

KST Scent is a Los Angeles fragrance brand created by Kael Jeong and James Nguyen through LV1 / Level 1 Studio. Jeong grew up in Korea and developed the brand from memories of Korean life, while KST Scent’s public identity centers on Korean cultural sentiment, memory, self-expression, and the joyful spirit of the LGBT community. The brand presents its work as olfactive art rooted in Vietnamese and Korean origins and reimagined through a queer, contemporary lens. Nguyen, a co-founder of the wider LV1 creative project, is credited as the perfumer behind KST Scent’s fragrances. Reference listings date the brand’s earliest fragrance editions to 2024. Hotteok offers its clearest documented fragrance example: the scent interprets a Korean winter dessert through themes of warmth, nostalgia, shared memory, rice flour, sesame, and brown sugar. In 2026, Hotteok was selected as a finalist in the Artisan category of the 12th Annual Art and Olfaction Awards, with James Miju Nguyen credited as perfumer.