Dr. John Zannis sheds light on his vision for his ZANNIS fragrance house below, as well as the early influences that led to his remarkable journey from plastic surgeon to luxury perfumer.
What did you want to be when you were growing up, and how did your childhood influence the path you ultimately followed?
I was always drawn to two seemingly different worlds: science and art. I loved understanding how things worked, particularly the human body, but I was equally interested in drawing, design, proportion and beauty. I don’t think I understood at the time that those interests were connected.
My Greek heritage also gave me an early appreciation for history, mythology, architecture and the classical idea that beauty can have structure and meaning. Later, at Stanford, I studied human biology while also pursuing studio art, and I spent time in Florence studying art history. Eventually, plastic surgery became a very natural intersection of those interests. It requires anatomy and science, certainly, but it also requires judgment, proportion, restraint and the ability to visualize something before it exists.
Looking back, fragrance is another expression of that same curiosity. It sits somewhere between chemistry and art, but ultimately it is about human experience. In that sense, the path from biology to art to surgery to fragrance feels much less unusual to me than it probably looks from the outside.
Before founding Zannis Fragrances, you established a career in medicine and plastic surgery. How did that experience shape your approach to fragrance?
Surgery taught me precision, but perhaps more importantly, it taught me restraint. In plastic surgery, a millimeter can matter. More is not necessarily better, and the most successful result is often the one in which every element feels inevitable rather than conspicuous. You learn to study proportion, understand structure and remove anything that doesn’t serve the final result.
I approach fragrance very similarly. I don’t think of it as simply assembling attractive notes. There has to be an intention behind the composition. What is the emotional architecture of the fragrance? What should happen in the opening? What should remain several hours later? What impression should it leave behind?
Medicine also made me fascinated by the relationship between perception, memory and identity. I have spent much of my career observing how changing something physical can alter the way a person experiences himself or herself. Fragrance reaches that same territory through an entirely different sensory pathway. It is invisible, but it can have an extraordinary effect on memory, mood and self-perception.
That intersection eventually became the foundation for what I call Olfactory Neurodesign™—using what we understand about olfaction, emotion and memory as part of the creative framework of perfumery.
What inspired you to create a fragrance brand, and what did bringing that vision to life entail? Which perfumer did you work with, and how did that collaboration unfold?
The initial fascination was memory. I became increasingly interested in why certain people, places and moments remain vivid while others disappear. Scent is extraordinary in that respect. A smell encountered decades later can suddenly return you to a particular room, person or period of your life with remarkable emotional clarity.
That made me begin thinking about fragrance not simply as something decorative, but as a kind of sensory signature—something capable of becoming associated with a person’s presence.
From there I studied fragrance structure, olfactory neuroscience and the relationship between scent, emotion and memory. But I also knew enough to understand that intellectual concepts do not automatically produce beautiful perfume. Perfumery is an art form, and I wanted someone with genuine technical and creative expertise beside me.
I partnered with Johanna Monange, a French perfumer who understood what I was trying to accomplish. My role was largely to define the emotional destination: the feeling, character, tension and identity I wanted a fragrance to possess. Her role was translating those ideas into materials and proportions.
There was a great deal of iteration. We rejected formulas, adjusted details that most people would probably consider insignificant, wore the fragrances repeatedly and lived with them over time. I was much more interested in getting something right than getting something to market quickly.
That process ultimately shaped the philosophy of ZANNIS. Science can inform the work, but beauty still has to lead. A fragrance has to move you before anyone explains why.
Zannis speaks in the distinctive language of rigor, precision and dominance. How do those ideas translate into the intimate and sensual experience of wearing fragrance? What do you hope the wearer feels?
I would make an important distinction between dominance and aggression. To me, real presence is rarely loud. It is composed. It comes from knowing who you are and not needing to constantly announce it. That is the kind of strength I’m interested in exploring through ZANNIS.
Fragrance is inherently intimate. It exists very close to the body, and another person usually encounters it by entering your physical space. So although our visual language can feel strong and disciplined, the fragrances themselves have warmth, texture, vulnerability and sensuality.
AXIOS, for example, has authority and structure, but there is warmth underneath it.
AEON moves much more toward intimacy, connection and closeness.
Ultimately, I want wearing a ZANNIS fragrance to feel less like putting on a costume and more like clarifying something that was already there. Perhaps you stand a little straighter. Perhaps you feel calmer, more intentional, more attractive or more certain of yourself. The fragrance should amplify presence, not manufacture a personality.
Fragrance becomes deeply personal once it meets the wearer. How do you invite people to bring their own memories, desires and individuality into the Zannis world?
That individuality is essential. One of the most fascinating things about olfaction is that two people can experience the same material quite differently because scent is filtered through biology, culture and personal memory. I would never want to eliminate that ambiguity by telling someone exactly what he or she is supposed to experience.
We can create an intention around a fragrance, but once it leaves the bottle, the wearer finishes the story.
Someone may associate a particular note with childhood, another person with a lover, another with a hotel in another country, another with something they can’t consciously identify at all. Those associations gradually become layered onto the fragrance.
Eventually it can become difficult to separate the perfume from the experiences you have while wearing it.
That is one reason I think fragrance is so different from many other luxury objects. You don’t simply possess it. Over time, you alter its meaning.
How did you develop the brand’s packaging and visual identity? What did you want those elements to communicate before someone even experiences the fragrance?
I wanted ZANNIS to feel as though it belonged to neither a particular trend nor a particular year.
My visual references tend to come from classical architecture, Mediterranean materials, Renaissance proportion and modern editorial design rather than conventional fragrance branding. There is a certain permanence to stone, metal, geometry and classical forms that I find very compelling.
At the same time, I didn’t want the brand to become nostalgic or theatrical. It had to feel contemporary.
So there is a deliberate tension between antiquity and modernity, discipline and sensuality, permanence and evolution. Even the Greek influence is handled with restraint. I am of Greek descent, and that heritage is genuinely part of my point of view, but I have no interest in turning the brand into a collection of Mediterranean clichés.
Before someone smells the perfume, I want the object to communicate intention. Weight. Permanence. A sense that someone cared about every decision. Luxury, to me, is not ornamentation. It is the absence of arbitrary choices.
What might fragrance lovers discover about AXIOS and AEON that they would not necessarily anticipate from the brand’s strong visual identity and language?
Probably tenderness. The visual world of ZANNIS can initially suggest something austere, powerful or even somewhat masculine. But the fragrances are much more nuanced on skin.
AXIOS certainly has strength. Ginger, black pepper, vetiver, fir balsam, labdanum and leather give it structure and depth. But as it develops there is warmth and a polished softness beneath that architecture. I wanted strength without harshness—something confident enough that it doesn’t need to shout.
AEON may be even more surprising. It is luminous, floral, creamy and very intimate. Neroli and an ocean accord create brightness initially, but jasmine, honey, incense, ambergris and lactonic musk gradually bring it closer to the skin. There is something almost comforting about it.
AXIOS is largely about presence. AEON is more about connection. They are different expressions of the same philosophy: that strength and sensuality are not opposites.
When someone wears a Zannis fragrance, how do you hope it affects the way they experience themselves—and perhaps the way they engage with the world around them?
I think fragrance can function almost like an internal cue. There are clothes you put on and immediately carry yourself differently. There are places that change your state of mind the moment you enter them. Scent can do something similar. I don’t believe perfume magically turns someone into another person, nor would I want it to. What interests me is its ability to reinforce a state that already exists within us.
Confidence. Calm. Attraction. Focus. Intimacy.
There is also something powerful about ritual. You apply a fragrance before going out into the world, and eventually that scent becomes associated with certain versions of yourself—the person who walks into the meeting, goes to dinner, travels somewhere new, falls in love or takes a chance. Over years, those associations accumulate.
My hope is that someone eventually smells a ZANNIS fragrance and doesn’t primarily think of us. They think of themselves.
What are your greatest fragrance influences and inspirations? Are there particular heritage houses or vintage fragrances you especially admire?
Within perfumery, I have tremendous respect for the great heritage houses because they established so much of the vocabulary everyone working in fragrance uses today. Houses such as Guerlain, Chanel, Hermès and Dior are interesting to me not simply because of individual fragrances, but because they demonstrate how a house can maintain a recognizable point of view across generations.
I also admire older fragrances because many of them were less concerned with universal approval. They often had sharper edges, unusual textures and tremendous personality. Some could be challenging, but they were memorable.
That idea is important to me. I would much rather create something distinctive enough that a person feels passionately about it than produce something perfectly pleasant that nobody remembers.
As ideas about identity, luxury and fragrance continue to evolve, how do you envision the future of Zannis? What kind of relationship do you hope to build with the people who wear your fragrances?
I think luxury is changing. For a long time, luxury was largely communicated through scarcity, price and visible status. Those things will always exist, but I think increasingly sophisticated consumers are looking for something else: authorship, meaning, craftsmanship and a point of view. People want to understand why something exists. That creates an opportunity for an independent house like ZANNIS. We don’t have to create dozens of fragrances simply to occupy shelf space. We can move deliberately, explore ideas deeply and allow each fragrance to have a reason for being.
I also want the relationship with our customers to feel more like a house than a transaction. The most interesting fragrance houses develop communities around them. People discuss the compositions, argue about favorites, associate them with periods of their lives and anticipate what will come next.
Over time, I hope ZANNIS becomes a body of work.
There will be different collections and different expressions, but the central question will remain the same: How can scent become part of identity, memory and human connection?
If we continue answering that question honestly, I think the house can evolve for a very long time.
Find ZANNIS fragrances here.
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