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Ashlyn Chak

Can you capture and bottle something as ephemeral as a vibe, a memory, an atmosphere? Floriography promises to do just that.
For the past eight years, Jo Shaw, the 35-year-old founder of the Hong Kong-based artisan perfume house, has been creating niche fragrances that emulate concepts such as old bookstores, the earthy scent after rain and a chaotic urban jungle smelling like metal, temple smoke and steamed rice.
“When I started, there weren’t any brands – at least in Hong Kong – selling fragrances that reminded you of an environment or an experience,” Shaw says. “The perfumes available were very literal and not very imaginative.”
Her scent awakening came in 2013 when she studied abroad for a year in Milan during her finance degree. She recalls that the Italian city’s arts heritage opened her eyes “in the realms of fragrance and how I see the world”.

This marked the start of her dive into flowers and scents, as she picked up her first books on extracting and distilling essential oils from botanicals. Upon her return to Hong Kong, she progressed from experimenting with DIY essential oil blends to sourcing professional fragrance materials and blending her own perfumes.
In 2018, she released her first bottle, Old Bookstore, with notes of pine, spruce, wood, musk, vetiver and vanilla to “remind people of walking into a vintage bookstore”. It was also partly inspired by the Bodleian Library, the main research library at the University of Oxford in England – the second-largest library in the country and one of the oldest in Europe.
“It was my first attempt at [creating] a fragrance,” she says. “Practice makes perfect with this kind of skill, so I just kept on blending fragrances every day or whenever I had free time.”
Growth and her flagship scent
As she gradually expanded her collection, Floriography began to take off, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic when “people were bored and shopped online a lot”, she says.
Business boomed when normality returned, and she quit her full-time corporate job in 2024, dedicating all her time and energy to her studio in an industrial building in Kwun Tong.
By this point, Floriography had already signed with retail stockists in Hong Kong and consignment stockists in Taiwan.

Old Bookstore is now her flagship scent and the foundation of her Frames collection, which she explains as “an easier and simpler entry point” into her perfumes. It is also her most prolific line, currently with 23 scents.
One of the more popular bottles is After Rain Earth, which, as its name suggests, produces a lingering fragrance reminiscent of an airy, scenic walk after rain has soaked the earth beneath. A customer told Shaw that it evoked the memory of running up a hill with their dog.
“It reminds people of different things,” Shaw says.
She adds that Floriography uses “a lens-based perspective”, and the Frames line represents her attempts at taking momentary “snapshots of everyday scents and environments”.

Hong Kong scents
And what is more photogenic than Hong Kong? Her subseries, titled 852, draws from the streetscapes and everyday cultural elements of her hometown and currently features three fragrances: Concrete, Roasted Chestnuts and Orchid.
The first, Concrete, is a more universal Hong Kong experience: a stroll down a bustling street as the smell of something metallic, jasmine rice and sandalwood incense hits your nose. Shaw says it is a favourite perfume of its illustrator, Manila-based Ross Du, who designs the drawings on all of Floriography’s bottles.
Roasted Chestnuts harks back to many a childhood memory for those who have grown up in Hong Kong, where, in the winter, street hawkers sell snacks such as chestnuts and quail eggs from a cart with an open wok. Similarly, Orchid reminds Shaw of the perfumed air when old women sold white jade orchid bulbs on the streets.

Floriography’s other main collection, Flow, is an in-depth and cinematic experience with a bit more storytelling.
Take Tatami and Sweet Koji, for example. Unlike regular fragrances with just a few notes, the former oozes sun-dried igusa grass, lavender, hay, Aglaia, tonka bean, vetiver, sandalwood, balsam, musk and earth. The latter – inspired by a koji fermentation class that Shaw attended – blends citrus, fresh sake, lemon zest, sweet pea, orange blossom, rose, soft musk and sake lees (sake residue).
Rather than evoking memories that resonate with consumers, Flow scents envision movie scenes or perhaps fully constructed film sets.
“It’s still through a lens, but it may be more complicated with more layering and has a longer and bigger transition from the top note to the mid and base. I created Flow to challenge myself and go beyond what sells, to hone my skill and do scents that people have never heard of.”

A flowing aesthetic
To accompany this philosophy, Shaw designed the bottles herself. Instead of using a regular flat base as most fragrance brands do, she wanted a flowing aesthetic – in a wide umbrella-like shape – that “conveys the idea of a scent flowing from one note to the next”.
“Ninety-nine per cent of the time you see a curved bottle, it’s flat at the base,” she says. “This doesn’t have a flat base at all and is very difficult to balance, but it can stand upright. It took me a year to really design and refine the shape, but I think it’s paid off because a lot of people have commented on it.”
Shaw says that running an independent perfume house in Hong Kong is challenging as many Hongkongers tend to look for big European or US brands. Customers more intrigued by Asia tend to be those in the West.
But she has her own unique way of staying afloat. Aside from a perfume pop-up in four bookstores in Taipei and Kaohsiung, which wrapped up in August, she often collaborates with brands that may seem completely unrelated to fragrance. In 2022, she made a paddy-field scent for Taiwan’s Rice Heaven Tianzhong Marathon, and in 2024, she created a Valentine’s Day perfume inspired by blue cheese and apples for Hong Kong pizzeria chain Jacomax. Both collections have since sold out.

“Making perfume is a very one-person project – you’re doing it in a confined space by yourself, and there aren’t many people you can share it with because there aren’t that many perfumers in Hong Kong,” Shaw says.
“Working with people from different backgrounds has helped me gain perspective in my scents. I really appreciate these collabs because I feel like I’m not just selling fragrances. I’m recording day-to-day experiences.”


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Flow collection from Floriography Atelier in Kwun Tong. 26AUG26 SCMP/Jonathan Wong

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Jo Shaw is the founder and self-taught perfumer of Hong Kong independent fragrance brand Floriography. Photo: Floriography

Floriography’s Tatami and Sweet Koji scents. Photos: Floriography

Views of Floriography’s perfume studio in Kwun Tong. Photo: Jonathan Wong

Floriography’s Hong Kong-inspired perfumes Orchid and Concrete. Photo: Floriography

Concept images for Floriography’s fragrances, designed by Manila-based illustrator Ross Du. Photos: Floriography

Perfume testers at Floriography’s studio in Kwun Tong. Photo: Jonathan Wong

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Lifestyle

Fashion & Beauty

Floriography’s perfumes are inspired by environments and experiences, from old bookstores to Hong Kong’s chaotic street smells


Floriography’s perfumes are inspired by environments and experiences, from old bookstores to Hong Kong’s chaotic street smells.


Fragrances

Hong Kong

How Hong Kong artisan perfume house Floriography bottles memories and the city’s vibes

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Floriography’s perfumes are inspired by environments and experiences, from old bookstores to Hong Kong’s chaotic street smells

Floriography’s perfumes are inspired by environments and experiences, from old bookstores to Hong Kong’s chaotic street smells