Music and perfume are the best way to remember things. I read this quote recently and it couldn’t be more fitting for the fragrance brand Buchart Colbert. Created in symphony by Sean Colbert and Sean Cavenaugh, at the core of the brand is the idea of taking single notes to create something musical. Colbert, a violist and engineer, creates every fragrance in-house by hand while Cavenaugh builds the world around each collection. The two makers are in synch and sat down with Beauty News NYC to answer a few questions about building a fragrance brand.
Tell me how the idea came about to create a fragrance brand.
Sean Cavenaugh: Sean Colbert is a self-taught perfumer and a classically trained musician. He experiences the world through a musical lens, and I’m the one who adds wheels to an idea. Between his nose and ear, and my instinct for asking why, we began to see sound, scent, design, and storytelling as different expressions of the same creative impulse. We thought, why not take the risk and build something we couldn’t find anywhere else?
What is the connection between music and fragrance? How do the two intertwine and relate to each other?
Sean Colbert: Perfume is like chamber music to me. Both are built from independent voices that hold their own identity through counterpoint, tension, and harmony. But what moves me most isn’t the structure. It’s how scent and sound can reach us before we have words for what we’re feeling. Both can return us to places we didn’t know we remembered, and sometimes evoke places we’ve never been.
Is there a comparison you can draw between finding the right notes in music and scent?
Sean Colbert: Absolutely. It isn’t a coincidence that we call them “notes.” I am a violist. In an ensemble, the viola rarely carries the melody. But remove it and the entire texture changes. I approach fragrance in the same way: the materials you notice first aren’t necessarily the ones doing the most work. Finding the right note is really about finding the right relationship: what supports, what creates tension, and what resolves it. The trick is in how the notes are played. Some are abrupt, some linger and transform, while others barely make an appearance.
How do you create your unique scents?
Sean Cavenaugh: Every Buchart Colbert fragrance begins with an atmosphere. We don’t chase trends or try to fill a category on a shelf. We begin with a particular feeling and follow it until it becomes a place.
Sean Colbert: My earliest scent memory is Hermès Eau d’Orange Verte, which I encountered when I was eight. It transported me to the south of France. I had never been there, but that impression somehow gave me an anchor, somewhere I could return to. Every Buchart Colbert fragrance is built on that idea. I don’t just want to make something that smells good. I want to create a doorway.
Your fragrances are created for layering. Can you explain how that works?
Sean Colbert: Our fragrances share a common DNA, so they retain their identities when worn together while also creating something new. Layering isn’t simply mixing; it’s harmonizing—the difference between people speaking over each other versus voices singing in counterpoint.
Sean Cavenaugh: It also invites the wearer into the creative process. We establish the vocabulary, but you decide what to say with it. The combination becomes personal, like a signature.
Who do you create your fragrances for? Who is your customer?
Sean Cavenaugh: We create for someone who wants their fragrance to feel like their own. It should accompany them, not speak for them. If we’ve done our job, someone leans closer without knowing why.
When you’re creating a scent, where do you start? Can you walk us through the process?
Sean Colbert: I begin with the impression I want to leave. With Lutin Errant, the process started with a piece of music and somehow led to a meandering path through a forest. Which materials create that emotional landscape? How can a top note do more than just fade? How can two things be true at the same time? Mushroom evokes damp earth; coconut and cedar suggest dry leaves underfoot. Together, they take us somewhere we didn’t expect to go.
Sean Cavenaugh: Listening is central to the process. We go back and forth and continually reflect on the original idea, then listen for what the fragrance is saying. Mischa started demure, almost afraid of its own shadow. What it became was fiercely independent. A fragrance is finished when it stops needing our input and stands on its own.
What do you envision for the future of Buchart Colbert?
Sean Cavenaugh: Deliberate growth. We would rather be found than famous. In the near term, we’re expanding the collection so the layering system becomes richer and more expressive with every release. We also want to introduce Buchart Colbert through thoughtful partners. Rather than trying to be everywhere at once, we’re looking for people who understand the work and can give customers room to discover it. Long term, we want Buchart Colbert to remain a brand people feel they discovered for themselves.
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