Judged blind: the 2026 Art and Olfaction Awards
Every fragrance award I had come across before this one measured something adjacent to the perfume. Sales, or reach, or how much a house spent on the launch dinner. The Art and Olfaction Awards hand a coded vial to a judge who has no idea whose work it is, and the judge writes down what they smell. That is the whole proposition, and it is why the list of winners looks nothing like the shelf at a department store.
Luca Turin called it the only fluff-free fragrance contest in the world, which is a blunter way of saying the same thing.
Where it came from
Saskia Wilson-Brown started the awards in 2013, out of the Institute for Art and Olfaction, a nonprofit she runs in Los Angeles. Her background was film festivals and she built this on that template. Keep the entry fee low enough that a perfumer working out of a spare room can afford to enter. Judge blind, in multiple rounds. Assemble a panel from enough different countries that no single scene's palate wins by default. Judges recuse themselves from anything they recognise or have money in.
The categories are where the real thinking shows. Artisan is for brands where the person who wrote the formula owns at least 35 percent of the company and made the thing in-house. Independent is for houses that commission an outside perfumer but are not owned by a conglomerate. Splitting those two stops a well-funded indie with a Givaudan budget from being measured against someone macerating in a kitchen. In 2015 they added the Sadakichi, named after the critic Sadakichi Hartmann, for scent work with no commercial bottle attached to it at all.
Most years the shape is the same. Two winners in Artisan, two in Independent, one experimental, plus honorable mentions and whatever discretionary awards the year calls for.
2026
The twelfth edition was announced on 11 June 2026 at the Gazarte Cultural Center in Athens.
Artisan went to Aethi Opum by Maya Njie in the UK, and to Death by Vanity by Rivendare, which is David Clarke working in Australia. Independent went to Ici, le pas s'arrête by TERRA•T, composed by Kaiwei Hsieh in Taiwan under Terrence Chen's direction, and to Nuit Élastique by Première Peau, Ugo Charron in France.
Water Moon by Oneiros took Newcomer, Anh Ngo composing for Thanh Dang in Vietnam. The Sadakichi went to Goavve-Geabbil, the Hyundai Commission that filled Tate Modern's Turbine Hall, with Nadjib Achaibou building the scent for the Sami artist Máret Ánne Sara. Grant Osborne took Contribution to Scent Culture for Basenotes. L'Osmothèque took the Visionary award, which feels overdue for an institution that exists to keep dead perfumes breathing.
People's Choice went to Verdant by Ilé Olomu on the independent side and Dandelion Butter by Clue Perfumery on the artisan side.
The ones I have
I did not set out to build an awards shelf. I bought these because I wanted them, and then noticed how many of them the judges had already found.
Ici, le pas s'arrête, TERRA•T. Independent winner this year. Kaiwei Hsieh took Taiwan incense cedar from the high forests around Yushan and rendered one tree whole, cool and dry, with cigar leaf sitting in the middle of it. It smells like standing still somewhere that absorbs sound. Of everything on this list it is the one I reach for when I want to be left alone.
Death by Vanity, Rivendare. Artisan winner. David Clarke built it around the poisonous lead powders that noble women painted onto their faces in the sixteenth century, which sounds like a concept that would collapse under itself. It does not. Heliotropin and old nitromusks press against skin and go slightly rotten in a way that keeps pulling you back. Mine is one of forty bottles, so it goes out at 2 ml only.
1747, Rivendare. Clarke's Artisan finalist from 2025, and the reason I went looking for Death by Vanity in the first place. Dry cocoa and carob over saffron-dusted orris, then oud and oakmoss and Yemenite ambergris underneath. Numbered, so it goes out at 1 and 2 ml.
Eclipse, Ermetiche Fragranze. Artisan finalist. Raffaella Meccheri set two roses against each other, centifolia dewy and lit from above, damask sunk underneath into suede and tobacco and choya ral. Rose is the note I know best and this one still surprised me.
Vanitas, LVNEA. Artisan finalist. April Lea works all natural out of Montreal, and this is a still life in resin, beeswax and rice and cocoa and frankincense arranged like fruit that is one day from turning. The all-natural constraint usually costs you projection. Here it buys texture instead.
Crème de Menthe Café, Statik Olfactive. Independent finalist. Hez Binkowitz rebuilt the after-dinner mint as an extrait, peppermint and frothed cream over Kona coffee and cognac and chocolate syrup. Gourmands lose me quickly. This one has depth of field, which is the thing most of them are missing.
Bad Lily, TALE Parfum. Independent winner in 2025, the year before this one. Michael Nordstrand planted a poisonous meadow, datura and lily of the valley over nettle and galbanum, and the green underneath is what makes it work. Pretty flowers, bad intentions.
Nightchild, Epichron. Nordstrand again, honorable mention this year in the Independent category, and in a completely different register. Gentian and chrysanthemum, bitter and dry, going down into labdanum and spruce and cade. Smelling this next to Bad Lily is the closest thing I have to watching a perfumer think.
Why any of this matters
An award is only worth the process behind it. Most of them are worth very little. This one asks a panel to smell something with the label taped over, in a category built so the comparison is fair, and then publishes the result whether or not the winner can afford a booth at Esxence.
The 2026 shortlist ran through Taiwan, Vietnam, Australia, France, Italy, Canada, China, Korea, Thailand, the UK and the USA. Not one of those houses has a fragrance counter. That is the part I keep thinking about.