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Alberto Morillas

Alberto Morillas
Born	1950 (age 73–74) Seville, Spain
Nationality	Spanish
Occupation	Perfumer
Years active	1970–present
Employer	dsm-firmenich
Notable work	Calvin Klein CK One Giorgio Armani Acqua di Giò Marc Jacobs Daisy Fragrance One Office for Men
Awards	Prix François Coty
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Alberto Morillas (born 1950) is a Spanish perfumer. He is a master perfumer at Swiss fragrance and flavor firm dsm-firmenich, where his notable creations have included Calvin Klein CK One, Giorgio Armani Acqua di Giò and Marc Jacobs Daisy. He has an independent line called Mizensir.^[1]

Morillas was born in 1950 in Seville, Spain^[2] and moved to Switzerland at age ten.^[3] He studied for two years at the École des Beaux Arts in Geneva.^[2]

He cites as early scent memories his mother's bottle of Rochas Femme and his father's hair tonic.^[3]

Mainly self-taught,^[4] Morillas began working in perfumery at 20,^[3] inspired by a Vogue article about French perfumer Jean-Paul Guerlain.^[4] He joined Swiss fragrance and flavor firm Firmenich in 1970^[4] and has gone on to create nearly 7000 perfumes.^[1] He established himself with the 1975 creation Must de Cartier, the jewelry company's first fragrance.^[4]

Among Morillas's notable creations is CK One, developed with Harry Fremont in 1994 for Calvin Klein fashion brand.^[5] 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.^[6]InPerfumes: 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."^[7] It is often cited as the first "unisex" fragrance^[4] (though historians note that dividing fragrances by gender was itself a relative novelty, a development of 20th-century marketing techniques.)^[8]

In 1997, Morillas and his wife began a line of scented candles called Mizensir, which grew to offer 80 different candles.^[4] In 2015,^[9] Morillas expanded the brand to include 17 perfumes.^[4] 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.^[10]

Morillas won the Prix François Coty in 2003.^[4]

Morillas lives in Geneva, after periods in Paris and New York.^[11]