Visionary of
Fragance
Anahita Mekanik, Cosmetics and Fragrance Marketing and Management MPS ’11, uses AI to develop scents
ANAHITA MEKANIK
“Design is design. It comes from the same brain. Only the materials change.”
What is your vision for the future?
A world where every human has the opportunity to realize their full potential. To explore, develop and share back their unique gifts. Supported by community.
– ANAHITA MEKANIK
By Raquel Laneri
Anahita Mekanik believes everyone is an artist.
Mekanik is the head of scent design for ScenTronix, a start-up perfumery she launched with artist-technologist Frederik Duerinck. The pair dreamed up a machine called Algorithmic Perfumery that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to design unique scents tailored for each of their customers—who can then tweak their formulas or imagine entirely new ones.
“The philosophy is that everyone is a creator,” Mekanik says. “We wanted to invite people into this medium of scent, which is not really accessible, and to experience that feeling of making something—which is really powerful.”
Mekanik herself stumbled into scent. Born in Iran, she studied translation in France and worked in retail before landing a job in the U.S. as a project coordinator at the Swiss fragrance company Firmenich. She had a knack for it. “The funny thing is, you’re doing translation work,” she says of interpreting abstract concepts into perfumes.
In 2016, she met Duerinck, who was part of a Dutch collective of artists doing multisensory installations and experiences. The two collaborated on a machine that emitted smells based on computer-generated music performed in real time. (If the music was mysterious and dark, for example, the AI in the machine would choose a scent that matched that vibe.) Duerinck built the machine, and Mekanik worked on the scent palette it would draw from to conjure its perfumes. “The experience transformed me,” she recalls. “It reignited my long-rooted desire to get into a more artistic expression.”
Two years later, the duo launched the start-up ScenTronix, parent company of the perfume brand EveryHuman. They now have more than a dozen Algorithmic Perfumery machines all over the world, including in their lab in Copenhagen, the Museum of the Future in Dubai, and The Fragrance Shop in London. They also take machines to events like festivals, parties, and corporate retreats.
This is how the machine works: A customer fills out a survey—either online or in person—with questions about their personality, their aspirations, and their style. It’s more a poetic, artistic exercise than a scientific one. “We don’t ask people, ‘What scent do you wear?’” Mekanik says. “That would have made it too easy.” The results are analyzed by AI to produce three different fragrances, pulling from a palette of 54 building-block scents: from sandalwood to apple, tuberose to “rice and milk.” For $50, the customer receives three 5-milliliter bottles of their custom fragrances along with their formulas, which they can later access and tinker with through their online account, and with the help of a consultant such as Mekanik.
So far 180,000 people have tried the service, and Mekanik says that the company has a 90% to 95% success rate. “Most people like at least one of the scents they’re given,” she says.
Beyond giving people the ability to create their own personal fragrance, the process encourages expression and connection.
“One of my favorite moments was a couple of summers ago, on Mother’s Day. We had a family come into our store in the Netherlands—a father, two kids, and their mother—and they were doing the questionnaire all together,” Mekanik says. “They were saying her answers out loud, and it was such a beautiful, bonding moment.”
Another time, in New York City, a man did the questionnaire and then fell silent when he took a sniff of one of the results that came out of the machine, Mekanik recalls: “I didn’t know if he hated it, but then he said that it reminded him of his father who had passed away six months earlier.”
“That’s the incredible thing about scent,” she says. “It connects you to time, space, all of that—you never know where it’s going to take you.”