Fragrance house

NINETEEN

NINETEEN is a Swedish fragrance label founded by artist and product developer Johan Bergelin. He and his wife and co-founder Catharina decided to build the label in 2015; after two years of development with artisans in Scandinavia, France, and Italy, its first five fragrances launched at Colette in Paris in 2017. The name 19-69 refers to Bergelin’s birth year and to 1969, a cultural period associated with freedom, tolerance, and counterculture. His work in photography, fashion, and music informs an approach to perfume as social commentary and cultural storytelling. The brand’s gender-inclusive fragrances draw on eras, cultures, places, art, and music, with each scent presented as a narrative or fragrance journey. Purple Haze references Woodstock, John and Yoko’s peace bed-ins, and the hippie movement, while Female Christ draws on a 1969 performance by Danish artists Lene Adler Petersen and Bjørn Nørgaard at Copenhagen’s Royal Stock Exchange. The first five fragrances reportedly sold out within minutes of their Colette launch.