Welcoming ~ Stora Skuggan

Swedish for “the big shadow”— Stora Skuggan handcrafts unisex perfumes with mystical backstories. The Stockholm-based studio began as a DIY initiative founded by five multidisciplinary artists while still in design school. After years of experimentation, the niche parfumerie officially launched in 2015. Dubbed “scented stories,” each perfume triples as a conceptual project, a wearable artwork, and an aesthetic object.

Perfume is a highly challenging product to market, with so few of us truly exercising our sense of smell, consumers have a hard time having a frame of reference when buying perfume, especially when buying online. In such a challenging landscape many fragrance labels respond through the language of industry buzzwords touting their “natural” or “clean” formulations, or by marketing fragrance as a wellness product with mental health benefits. That's where Stora Skuggan differ.

The creative process Stora Skuggan undergoes with each new scent is an intuitive one, one based off gut decision. Anna Barkne, one of the five co-founders behind the Swedish perfume brand describe how they "usually circuit around a myth or a phenomenon that’s maybe real or not. These become like small worlds or universes that the scent grows in, like a tiny baby."

At the heart of the brand are these stories, conceptualised through fragrance and art, creating a small and unique universe for each perfume. Scents are a way to communicate, tell stories and experience them.

Stora Skuggan has 5 beautiful scents in its collection, starting with Fantôme de Maules, launched in 2015, and including most recently Thumbsucker, launched at the end of 2020. Both are based on myths — the former a ghostly figure from the Swiss village of Maules, the latter the Hindu story of King Yuvanashva, who accidentally drinks a potion meant to make his wife pregnant, though it also references Freud’s theory of thumbsucking as a sign of oral fixation. With fragrances firmly built from mysticism, each scent is something more than just a fragrance.

Modernist Scandinavian design characterizes the label’s packaging, with minimalist line drawings, sleek glass bottles, and oversized stoneware orb caps — so not only do the fragrances smell great, they also look damn good too.

Shop Stora Skuggan here.