Alberto Morillas: One Self-Taught Nose Behind Three Blue Classics

Acqua di Giò pour Homme, Light Blue pour Homme and Dylan Blue pour Homme belong to three fashion houses and three decades. One company's list credits all three to the same perfumer, Alberto Morillas, who by his own house's account taught himself the trade.

Who is Alberto Morillas?

Alberto Morillas is a Spanish perfumer who has worked for Firmenich, the Geneva fragrance company now part of dsm-firmenich, since 1970. His house's biography says he was born in Seville in 1950. The Fragrance Foundation's 2013 tribute dates his titles at Firmenich: perfumer in 1977, master perfumer in 1998.

Firmenich announced on 9 May 2023 that its merger with DSM was complete. The combined company, which writes its name dsm-firmenich, presents him as a master perfumer on its profile of him. It calls him the very first perfumer honored with the Foundation's Lifetime Achievement Award, and quotes his view of the work:

Perfumery is the mirror of society. I am the artist who interprets these emotions.

Alberto Morillas, quoted by dsm-firmenich, "Fine Fragrance: Meet Alberto Morillas"

He also has a perfume house of his own. Mizensir describes itself as an artisanal house founded in Geneva in 1999 by Master Perfumer Alberto Morillas. According to a 2023 Challenges interview republished by Mizensir, it sold candles first, then perfumes, and by then counted 35 fragrances and 110 candle references. The name plays on the French mise en scène and starts with M, like Morillas, its general manager told the magazine.

Which perfumes did Alberto Morillas create?

His employer's list names 20, from CK One in 1994 to Omnia Crystalline in 2024, including the three blue men's scents. The one-page PDF is headed Major Wins and linked from his profile as "See Alberto's wins". Here is dsm-firmenich's list in date order, with the house and year it gives for each:

Three brands name him on their own pages too. Dolce&Gabbana's 2025 Light Blue article credits the men's Eau de Toilette to Morillas and the women's to Olivier Cresp, which explains why only the men's version, listed as Light Blue Homme, appears on his list. In its guide to six of the group's fragrances, LVMH says Flower by Kenzo was "created by Master-Perfumer Alberto Morillas". Bulgari's page for Omnia Crystalline Eau de Parfum calls it, in French, "une nouvelle composition" by him.

The list is a selection, not a catalog, and it names no co-authors. CK One, its oldest entry, also appears among his creations in The Fragrance Foundation's tribute and in Le Temps; our article on CK One and its 1994 launch tells the rest of its story.

How did a self-taught perfumer start at Firmenich?

He came in through the laboratory, not a perfumery school, and learned to compose on the job. In a 2019 interview with the Swiss daily Le Temps, Morillas says Firmenich hired him at 20 into its scientific research department. The work there was to study natural essences in order to rebuild them synthetically, and step by step, he says, he learned to write formulas.

His house's biography adds the turning points. Without a doctorate in chemistry, it says, he talked Firmenich into a research post, composed perfumes in secret despite a ban and presented his first to the company. Firmenich then offered the young man who "created perfumes without being a perfumer" training in New York.

A magazine set all this in motion. The Foundation's tribute says he was living in Switzerland when an article about the house of Guerlain in French Vogue showed him the job existed:

That this was a real job! Somebody actually had to make the perfumes!

Alberto Morillas, quoted in The Fragrance Foundation's 2013 tribute

Before Firmenich, the Foundation adds, he spent two years at the School of Beaux Arts in Geneva, yet it calls him "mostly self-trained in the art of perfumery". The 2023 interview says Firmenich took him on as a beginner and that he has stayed loyal to the employer that gave him his chance. The other road into the job, a company school with a fixed curriculum, is described in our article on the Jean Carles method.

Where the accounts of his start differ

The sources agree on the outline and differ on three details.

An article on the Guerlain house and a portrait of Jean-Paul Guerlain could be one and the same piece, so the first row may be no conflict at all. The other two are real. The two written biographies say 1998, both interviews point to 1988, and we found no Firmenich record that settles it, so we give both.

Why do three blue men's fragrances share one nose?

They share one because fragrance companies compose for many houses, and dsm-firmenich's list gives all three to the same perfumer. In its 2023 merger announcement, Firmenich described itself as "a leading business-to-business company specialized in the research, creation, manufacture and sale of perfumes, flavors and ingredients". Le Temps describes Morillas creating fragrances for clients while staying with the company.

Those clients send briefs. The 2023 interview says an idea can start from "an image, a color, a few words", like the briefs he receives, and recalls a Bulgari brief that evoked "raindrops falling on a pond where lotuses grow".

The blue, in the houses' own words, is mostly the sea. Years below are from dsm-firmenich's list; the descriptions come from Armani's 2022 story of Acqua di Giò, the Dolce&Gabbana article above and Versace's Dylan Blue product page.

Armani's story credits the idea to Giorgio Armani's own "first intuition", and neither it nor Versace's page names a perfumer; for those two, the credit rests on dsm-firmenich's list. Versace files Dylan Blue in the aromatic family, which our guide to aromatic fragrances covers, and our article on the fougère traces an older family built on lavender.

How many perfumes has Alberto Morillas made?

Nearly 700, by the count in the 2023 Challenges interview his house republished, which calls him self-taught. Earlier sources give lower numbers for their own years:

None of the three explains its method, and the newest figure reaches us through his own house, so we read it as his side's count rather than an audit. The 20 perfumes on dsm-firmenich's list are its choice of major wins from that body of work.

How one perfumer reaches such numbers is partly a matter of pace. The 2023 interview says he always has 15 to 20 projects on the go, and both it and the Foundation describe him writing formulas by hand. "When I write the formula, I can smell the perfume," he told the Foundation in 2013. He is one of the noses in our guide to famous perfumers and the perfumes they made.