My first interview of 2026 is with artisan perfumer Shawn Maher, founder and perfumer of Chatillon Lux and Maher Olfactive. I first heard of Shawn’s brands in 2020. Fragrance writers and perfume lovers spoke highly of them, but for one reason or another, I never succeeded in sampling the scents.
Five years later, Shawn got in touch with me, generously offering to send me his complete sample collection, along with selected full bottles, and sharing much about his creative journey and process.
Both Chatillon Lux and Maher Olfactive express Shawn’s love for nature, the outdoors, and music, but each has its own distinct identity and narrative to share.
Shawn mentioned that Chatillon Lux came about almost by accident. He first started making beard balm, blending shea butter with essential oils, and after sharing it with a few people, a good friend convinced him to start selling it. Over time, he realized he enjoyed creating perfume more than skincare products, so he purchased textbooks and read multiple sources about materials and perfume-making.
“Chatillon Lux is the intersection of what I love about independent and artisan perfume and what I love about Saint Louis”, said Shawn. “There are many great artists and an outstanding culinary scene here, but you don’t get a ton of hype or glitz or glamor or investor backing that takes away from the substance. It’s honest and forthright, which may not attract as many eyeballs, but it’s something that I find is a more direct connection to the artist”.
The Chatillon Lux fragrances are Shawn’s way of sharing his love for Saint Louis at an accessible price point. Some of my personal favorites in the collection include Lost Valley, evoking a meadow filled with wild honeysuckle and jasmine plants, Sunrise on LaSalle, a beautiful garden floral with a prominent geranium note, and Weinstrasse, a sparkling wine-centric fragrance with a dry and mossy dry down. I also enjoy Treget, a minimalistic woody fragrance that can be used as a passe-partout– Shawn himself wears it at his office job every day. Explore the Chatillon Lux collection here.
A more elevated collection within Shawn’s vision in perfumery is Maher Olfactive, which was released five years after Chatillon Lux. The price point of the collection is a little higher and the bottles look sturdier and more rounded, but the fragrances are equally inspired and beautifully blended.
I love the use of orris in several Maher Olfactive creations. The common denominator is the way orris comes through in three of the fragrances, blending the poise and restraint of olden times with the earthy and grounding scent of the outdoors. Waking Dream is a haze of sheer orris deepened by the thickness of sandalwood. Orris Forest highlights buttery soft orris in a damp and aromatic setting. Tempo Rubato is filled with stone fruits (plums and apricots), heady narcissus, and prickly green notes, rounding out as supple orris, leather, and resins peek through and add warmth.
My other personal favorites are Nefertiti, a smoky, gothic, and lightly sweet mix of incense, oud, and honey and Treachery, a velvety gourmand with oaky whiskey and dark cacao, emboldened by tobacco and spices. Learn more about Maher Olfactive here.
Shawn is also one of the minds and noses behind Smelling the Bouquet: Plants & Scents in the Garden, an exhibition in view at the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis, through March 31, 2026. Visitors can enjoy reconstructed scents that mimic the distinctive aromas of the Garden’s plants, along with the ingredients (extracted from the plants) used to make fragrances. (Read more about Shawn’s involvement in the exhibition in the interview below).
Thankful to Shawn for gifting me the fragrances.
Interview
Shawn told me about his path to perfumery, his palette of ingredients, his involvement in the Missouri Botanical Garden exhibition, and his thoughts on the future of the perfume industry.
What do scents and perfumes mean to you? What is your first or favorite childhood memory?
Growing up, nobody in my family or in my friends’ families really wore perfume, other than my dad’s Old Spice. So, I came into things with a fresh perspective, largely unencumbered by scent being tied to memories. While, as a child of the 90s, I wore CK One, Tommy and Aqua di Gio, I didn’t really love those perfumes. I thought they smelled nice and were very functional. However, I have always loved the scents in nature. Growing up, I would often smell flowers, trees, wet stones in a creek, and other intriguing scents while hiking and camping. I was also infatuated with the smells of freshly cut lumber, especially red cedar, when I visited my dad at his job at the lumberyard or on construction sites. Later in life, when I discovered the large world of perfumes, especially artisan, niche and vintage perfumes, it blew my mind out of my skull. I was completely and utterly unaware that perfumes could be so emotionally driven, so rich and complex, and so artfully constructed. As someone who played music for years, it affected me much in the same way that a great song does. And much like my musical tastes, it was the underground, the less popular, the classics, the types of fragrance full of heart and soul that truly influenced me.
The Maher Olfactive fragrances are packed with natural materials and feel like real odes to nature’s power. How did you become interested in these materials? Do you use any synthetics?
As I mentioned before, I grew up spending a ton of time outdoors, so finding my first love of scent in nature is what drew me to appreciate and have reverence for natural materials. Factors that influence how each natural material can differ, things like weather, terroir, and extraction methods, also really speak to me. It adds a lot of character. I also am a huge coffee nerd, chasing single origin coffees from great roasters around the world, so there’s a lot of overlapping there, as well.
However, when I conceive of a perfume, I don’t want to approach it beholden to a certain set of constraints. Many times, I have heard that naturals are the skeleton and synthetics are the muscle, tendons and flesh that form the body of the scent. I fully believe that. Perhaps I may be inspired by certain natural materials, but to ignore all the useful tools out there to achieve the vision that I have simply in the name of dogma would be selling my ideas short.
There are many out there who compose amazing all-natural perfumes, so I do not mean to disparage what anyone else believes. There is no one right way to do things. I just never want to shut myself off to any possibilities in life. I have always preferred saying “yes” to saying “no.”
What are your favorite ingredients to work with and why?
Woody materials are certainly something I love. I also love anything that features ionone molecules, like violet, orris, and carrot seeds because of their dreamy, melancholy beauty. I love to wear my Waking Dream perfume when I want to feel cozy. The iris accord includes a lot of ionones, perfectly blending with sandalwood and amber. It feels like slipping on my favorite sweater.
You recently collaborated with the Missouri Botanical Garden to create Smelling the Bouquet, a scented exhibition that is on show until March 2026. Can you talk about this project?
This is one of the best things that has ever happened to me. Nezka Pfeifer, the director of the Sachs Museum at the Missouri Botanical Garden, approached me in late 2021 to discuss a special exhibition. We spent the next three years smelling materials and ingredients before and after hours, including wading in the reflection pools to smell water lilies, madly rushing to the garden when flowers were in bloom, and pondering what ingredients could create a scent we were drawn to.
I was honored to work alongside a super talented St. Louis perfumer, Weston Adam of Phronema Perfumes, who also has a background in music.
The exhibition came together spectacularly, and it was mind boggling to see how fascinated people were about the science behind scent. So little is widely known about the molecular composition of scent, headspace and GCMS analysis, and how natural perfume materials are extracted and cultivated. We have been told it was one of the most well-received exhibitions ever in the museum, and I am proud to have been a part of it.
We also created scents to accompany dance, vocal, and poetry performances. It was so exciting to help interpret the artists’ visions and create a multisensory artistic experience. I am now really intrigued using scent in performance art.
I learned so much from being pulled outside of my comfort zone, forced to create more photorealistic reproductions rather than taking poetic license, as well as learning about materials and molecules that I had never used before. I widened my horizons and made me think more deeply about perfume theory. And it really made me fall in love all over again with perfume. In fact, Envoi by Chatillon Lux is inspired by a dying gardenia that I smelled while working on the exhibit, and Lost Valley by Chatillon Lux was kind of a direct result of smelling honeysuckle so often and then deciding to reproduce it much in the same manner that I worked on scents for the Garden, although Lost Valley is more than just a soliflore.
Do you have a favorite among your fragrances?
Nefertiti in the Maher Olfactive line was special because it is named after Nefertiti by Miles Davis, one of my favorite pieces of music. Treget in the Chatillon Lux line is probably what I wear the most at work. It’s designed to be easy wear, and the woody notes are right up my alley. Waking Dream is super cozy, but I don’t wear it as often because it’s one of my fiancée’s favorites. She wears it regularly in the winter, so I can enjoy it even if I’m not wearing it.
What are your thoughts about modern perfumery and what does this industry need more of?
It’s difficult to speak of perfumery as a unit because there is so much going on with it. What I love is that there is something for everyone, but I wish there was more honesty. I write blog posts and record videos describing exactly why I created a formula, what materials I used, and why I used them. I believe that keeping secrets is part of the reason why there are misconceptions about perfume, and maybe why many are afraid of it. Frederic Malle, for example, has increasingly been more honest about their creative process. I also love how perfumer Christoph Laudamiel is encouraging people in the industry to be forthright and insightful about the poor practices employed by many. The viewpoint of someone so accomplished is invaluable in growing a greater understanding of perfumery and breaking down the walls between those who create and those who wear the perfume.
Things are certainly at an inflection point. I worry about large corporations cosplaying as small niche firms, diluting the honesty of independent and artisan perfumers and devaluing the work many of us do with fragrance. I find that is the lowest common denominator, often dressed up to appear as thoughtful and artistic.
I don’t have any answers, but I believe that with any overcorrection, there is eventually a redirection back towards the right path. There are many wonderful people out there like yourself who have honest, trustworthy voices. Eventually, those who are trying to make a quick buck or are in it for the wrong reasons will be seen as who they are. I try to focus on what I love and what makes me happy, anyway, because that’s all that truly matters in the end.
