Alberto Morillas

Morillas was born in 1950 in Seville, Spain and moved to Switzerland at age ten. He studied for two years at the École des Beaux Arts in Geneva.

He cites as early scent memories his mother's bottle of Rochas Femme and his father's hair tonic.

Firmenich

Mainly self-taught, Morillas began working in perfumery at 20, inspired by a Vogue article about French perfumer Jean-Paul Guerlain. He joined Swiss fragrance and flavor firm Firmenich in 1970 and has gone on to create nearly 7000 perfumes. He established himself with the 1975 creation Must de Cartier, the jewelry company's first fragrance.

Among Morillas's notable creations is CK One, developed with Harry Fremont in 1994 for Calvin Klein fashion brand. In the mid-1990s, CK One had annual sales of about $90 million (USD) and in 2007 still sold about $30 million annually in the United States. In Perfumes: The Guide, Luca Turin gave CK One four of five stars, describing it as a "radiant citrus" that combines "soapy, fresh top notes" with heart and base notes simultaneously, creating a linear effect in which the scent sustains one "chord" rather than shapeshifting over the course of the day: "Time forever stands still at 8 a.m.: the frozen morning of a day full of promise." It is often cited as the first "unisex" fragrance (though historians note that dividing fragrances by gender was itself a relative novelty, a development of 20th-century marketing techniques.)

Other projects

In 1997, Morillas and his wife began a line of scented candles called Mizensir, which grew to offer 80 different candles. In 2015, Morillas expanded the brand to include 17 perfumes. In collaboration with Penhaligon's, Morillas also has a custom perfumery service, Bespoke by Alberto Morillas, based the Salon de Parfum in department store Harrods in London.

Morillas lives in Geneva, after periods in Paris and New York.