Welcome to Scentrified Interviews, where I explore the stories, inspirations, and dreams of selected people from the perfume industry, people who have truly dedicated their life to the pursuit of scentual excellence. Happy reading!

Mo, the founder of YLEM. Photo courtesy of YLEM Parfums.

If the cosmos had a scent, it might start here. With three bottles orbiting quietly in space, waiting for you to tilt your head just enough to catch a glint. YLEM is the name of the brand, and also the name of primordial matter. Mo, its creator, knows this well.

“When I found that word, everything clicked”

He had been collecting perfumes for years. Hundreds of them. The kind of collection that spills past logic and starts to resemble a star map. “I had this idea,” he tells me, “that I could turn my hobby into work. Translate galaxies into scent.”

And so he did. Slowly.

Mo had worked in advertising agencies for years. Then he went freelance, and that changed everything. “It wouldn’t have been possible otherwise,” he admits. The last few years were intense. “But perfume is my passion.”

From the beginning, YLEM was built with precision. The logo. The bottle. The weight of the cap. The visual identity took shape in Berlin, but the concept lived elsewhere, on the outer edge of something imagined.

Even the glass bottle holds clues. Etched with the coordinates of a nebula. A label that looks like it’s being pulled through spacetime, Interstellar-style. And the cap? It had to be heavy. The texture of it, slightly ribbed, evokes the feeling of adjusting a telescope. Sharpening the image. Zeroing in.

That same instinct led Mo to perfumer Andreas Wilhelm. He spoke with several other perfumers too, but this one conversation stood out. “The chemistry was immediate,” he says. “He got it. And he never gave up.”

Over the course of a year and a half, they built the debut trio – Soap Bubble, Eastern Veil, and Eye of God. “Andreas never tired of revising,” Mo says. “He was always ready to tweak, try again, keep going.”

“It’s all about patience”

There are more scents on the way. But he's not in a rush. “The perfume world moves slowly. Production, development, even getting stocked in a store… it’s all about patience.” That surprised him at first. “Coming from advertising, everything’s so fast. Here, you learn to wait.”

Even designing the cap took months. “That was the most painful part,” he laughs. “We wanted it to feel good in the hand, to look sharp, but still be manufacturable. Nothing about it was simple.”

Indeed, nothing about YLEM is simple. It’s not supposed to be.

Take Eye of God, the first fragrance they finished. “I thought it would be more masculine,” he says. “But a lot of women love it. That makes me really happy.”

“I don’t believe in gendered perfume anyway”

And Soap Bubble? “That’s the one I’d send into a black hole,” he says, grinning. “It’s the most approachable. I’d want to optimise the odds of whoever finds it… liking it.”

Mo nearly launched YLEW without listing any notes. “Sometimes we read a note and think we know exactly what we’ll smell, but then we’re wrong.” In the end, he included them. But he still prefers a bit of surprise.

When I ask what scent doesn’t belong to Earth, he answers immediately: “Moon Dust, by MiN New York. It smells like burnt stone. Like what I imagine the moon might smell like. Also No Perfume by The Zoo, it’s maybe the darkest thing I’ve ever smelled.”

And what does YLEM really smell like, in the end?
Not answers. Not speed. Not planets.
Just the slow unfolding of a question, drifting in the dark, still forming.

PS. Don’t forget to follow me @scentrified on Instagram! Until Sunday the 21st of Sept 2025, I’m hosting a GIVEAWAY of Soap Bubble. And if you’d like to see your boutique, brand or perhaps yourself on the blog? Send me an email and let’s talk!