Thomas de Monaco Artist Collection – futuristic flowers in bloom
Thomas de Monaco has always treated fragrance as an invisible art form, so it feels fitting that his latest chapter should be titled the Artist Collection – a trio of perfumes that push beyond prettiness into something more provocative, more dreamlike, more daringly modern. Flowers for Future, the name of this debut edition, imagines a garden not of remembered blooms but of blossoms that might exist tomorrow, grown from molecules and emotion rather than soil and nostalgia. These are perfumes as future relics, composed to linger on skin like afterimages of light.
Before founding his fragrance house, Swiss born Thomas de Monaco spent over two decades shaping the visual language of some of the world’s most prestigious luxury brands, working as a photographer and creative director between Paris, New York and Zürich. That sensibility – cinematic, meticulous, emotionally charged – now infuses his perfumes, which he speaks of as “images born out of thin air”, translating light, texture and atmosphere into scent. From the beginning, his work has prioritised depth over speed, with fragrances conceived as personal art projects rather than products pushed to market.
The house itself grew from a single, intimate gesture. Thomas first composed a perfume as a gift for friends, and their insistence that it deserved a wider audience led to the formal birth of Thomas de Monaco Parfums. Today, the fragrances are developed and produced in a former factory in Zürich designed by Gustave Eiffel, a space that mirrors the brand’s blend of engineering precision and free wheeling artistry. Every detail, from raw material sourcing to bottling, is overseen in house, reflecting an ethos of slow luxury where emotion is the signature and craftsmanship the quiet promise.
The debut Private Collection introduced the house through intensely worked Extraits, created in close collaboration with perfumer Maurus Bachmann to establish a distinctive, long lasting olfactory identity. Those perfumes are rich, textural compositions that defy the idea of ephemerality, deliberately stretching moments of sunshine, skin and shadow across hours. With the Artist Collection, Thomas widens the circle of collaboration, inviting a new generation of perfumers to explore his universe while allowing their own obsessions and questions to take centre stage.
Flowers for Future is the first “edition” under the Artist Collection umbrella, a conceptual triptych that asks what flowers might become when freed from the constraints of botanical reality. Rather than re crafting familiar florals, each scent here behaves like an imagined species – impossible yet strangely believable on skin, like a dream you are certain you have already had. This is where the house’s visual roots and olfactory ambitions entwine most clearly, with each perfume conceived almost as a moving image: a scene, a gesture, a flash of metal or colour that refuses to fade.
In the Artist Collection, Thomas de Monaco gives free reign to the dreams, memories, and bold future visions of the perfumers he worked with, allowing the compositions to truly tell their stories – coming alive as they settle on skin and wrap you in your own inspirations. Let’s explore…
FLEUR DANGER by Ugo Charron
A metallic blossom that feels forged as much as grown, Fleur Danger opens like light glancing off sharpened steel, that cool mineral shimmer quickly pricked by pink pepper’s sparkle and a lick of spiced rum heat. Saffron threads and raspberry lend a jewel toned glow, yet the fragrance never tips into prettiness; instead, suede like notes, balsamic resins and creamy sandalwood create the sense of a petal armoured in metal, a flower that defends as fiercely as it seduces.
JADE AMOUR by David Chieze
Jade Amour imagines a flower that nature forgot to scent, gifting it at last with a breath that feels both tender and luminescent, like light filtered through green stained glass. Yellow mandarin and bergamot paint soft citrus halos around a heart of ylang ylang and jasmine, their languid creaminess entwined with the fantasy note of Liane de Jade to suggest waxy petals and cool stone in equal measure. Vanilla, vetiver, musks and sandalwood wrap the base in a close, skin like hum, as if this once silent bloom had finally leaned in to whisper against your neck.
NEO EDEN by Augustin Lemiere
Neo Eden feels like stepping into a garden rendered in pixels and pollen, where nothing behaves quite as expected and yet your senses instantly adjust to its altered gravity. The first impression is a jolting freshness – rhubarb’s tart crunch and the chill of “frozen” peach over a mist of magnolia and mimosa – before soft woods and airy modern musks tilt the composition into something gentle, almost virtual. Sheer, luminous molecules and a gauzy cream accord lend a curiously tactile warmth, so that this most futuristic of florals ends up feeling uncannily intimate, like a memory imported from a world you have not yet visited.
Written by Suzy Nightingale
