Studio Frith and Perfumer H celebrate a decade of collaboration

Few design studios are as adept as Studio Frith at turning a founder’s vision into a fully fledged, lived-in brand world. The London-based practice, led by Frith Kerr, has built its reputation not on a recognisable house style, but on a unique ability to create identities that feel deeply rooted in their subject – often growing them from nothing more than an idea, a set of values, or an instinct.

One of the studio’s most enduring collaborations has been with Perfumer H, the London-based fragrance brand founded by Lyn Harris, which turns ten this month. Studio Frith has been there since the very beginning, shaping everything around its visual language, from its packaging and website to campaigns, helping the brand expand from perfume into candles, pantry products, clothing and more.

Studio Frith and Perfumer H: a decade of collaboration

Raised in Yorkshire and Scotland, Lyn Harris, Kerr says, is a very rare combination of things: a female nose classically trained in the notoriously male-dominated Grasse, but with a modern approach to building scents. Kerr and Harris met when Harris was running her first perfume brand Miller Harris, which she founded in 2000 and sold in 2012. At the time, Perfumer H was just a seed of an idea, a vision for a brand, or a ‘world’, as Kerr calls it, that leans into detail; the craft, the alchemy, and story of natural perfume-making. Where individual ingredients are celebrated and savoured.

A period of dreaming and scheming ensued, with Kerr and her team imagining how this attitude of slowness and sensuality could become a visual identity that told the story of the brand. Perfumer H launched in 2015 with its first store opening on Marylebone’s Crawford Street. ‘I think what’s really particular about Lyn, is that she’s classic without being classical,’ says Kerr. ‘And that’s there in the monogram that we created for her with the hand drawn “H” and the “1992” referencing the year she formerly qualified as a perfumer. That becomes part of the craft and storytelling.’

Proving that good ideas have staying power, several of Frith’s early concepts for the brand still remain today. The soft, bundled grey felt carrier cases that Frith designed to hug the handblown glass bottles – made by south London glassblower Michael Ruh – offered a counterpoint to the run-of-the-mill crisp paper tote bags, and are still sold with every bottle ten years later. So too is the tactile box packaging – inspired by archival boxes with exposed staples – which has become a brand identifier. And the white wrapping paper, decorated with tree bark rubbings – originally made by hand using trees outside the Frith studio, and later by staff in the basement lab of Harris’ little Crawford Street store using tree trunks. Today, with now six stores across the globe, the paper is printed but the story remains. ‘It really pointed to this energy and direction of really caring about the detail and communicating that connection to the natural world and the senses.’

Each Perfumer H store is a physical manifestation of what Kerr refers to as Harris’ ‘world’. Darkly atmospheric, every element is considered and crafted. At Clifford Street, fragrances can be tested using suspended glass stoppers in hanging glass vials that are filled with a few droplets of perfume, while bottles are displayed in antique display cases like a bygone apothecary. There is a sense of discovery and intrigue at every turn.

A fundamental element of Frith’s work with Perfumer H is to make air visible - to communicate the idea of molecules floating in space. One particularly clever way of doing this has been Frith’s creation of ‘concrete poetry’ – also known as visual poetry where the visual arrangement of the words is just as important as the meaning of the words themselves. These visuals have adorned everything from windows to social media posts and merchandise. ‘Lyn is like a poet working with molecules, and there is a sort of simplicity about that,’ reflects Kerr. ‘We work really hard to develop that visual language that connects to how she thinks, makes perfume. And in a way, these words, this concrete poetry, work like sculptures.’

With stores now in London, Paris, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Taipei and Tokyo, Perfumer H has gone global. For many brands, international growth means compromising the very handmade or crafted elements that made them distinct. But under Frith’s watch, Perfumer H has maintained a consistently precise and poetic articulation. How?

‘We work with a lot of entrepreneurs developing brands from an idea,’ explains Kerr. ‘We work with them to gain a deep understanding of the truths their brand is rooted in. Sometimes people say to us, “I'd love something that's timeless” – but we don't know what that means. We don’t have a crystal ball. We don't know what “time” this is, but if we look for those truths, they will always be true. And so I think in the development and setup of brands, we actually work with truths.’

Inside Studio Frith's Shoreditch work space, there is a whole shelving system of Perfumer H prototypes and tests from over the years. Claire Koster – Studio Frith's design director, who has been instrumental in helping to shape Perfumer H's identity – tells us: ‘It's been incredible to see the brand develop over the last ten years and realise how much is still that original thinking and concept. I think we’ve gone back to ideas from eight or ten years ago, or revisited early concepts at a later point – because they might not have been right for that moment, but they still feel true.’

This instinctive way of working remains central to the collaboration. To celebrate the ten-year milestone, Studio Frith has worked with the brand to develop a series of anniversary products, including limited-edition handblown bottles with commemorative '10' monogram for the ‘Ink’ and ‘Rain Cloud’ scents, along with a small collection of branded collectibles – hats, T-shirts and totes – launching throughout July 2025. It’s a brand that hasn’t just endured, it’s evolved – with its founding principles still intact, and its visual and spatial world continuing to unfold with quiet confidence.

perfumerh.com
studiofrith.com