Agar Olfactory

Agar Olfactory is an experimental fragrance project created by Chilean olfactory artist Agustine Zegers in collaboration with Speculative Scent Lab, with the earliest perfumes appearing in 2021. Originating from Zegers’ broader practice in atmospheric biopolitics and speculative scent, the brand uses perfume as a medium to think through ecological collapse, climate crisis and technologically altered futures. Although the origin is Chile, the project is currently based in Chicago and circulates primarily through small concept stores and niche retail spaces in the United States.

Each Agar Olfactory perfume is built around a specific year and scenario, such as climate disaster, technological collapse, loss of staple crops or imagined human-mushroom convergences, creating distinct "smellscapes" for those futures. The fragrances function as wearable tools rather than conventional luxury accessories, inviting sustained attention to unfolding environmental and social apocalypses, including the sixth mass extinction, colonial histories and pandemic realities. Zegers and Speculative Scent Lab frame these scents as embodied technologies for planetary kinship, using unusual note combinations, non-traditional concepts and sometimes "unscented" or very subtle compositions to expand how people experience and interpret smell.

Agar Olfactory’s catalog remains small, with around seven perfumes developed in collaboration with perfumers Agustine Zegers and Isabel Lee. Distribution is selective, with stockists such as Everything (Chicago), Feature Flora (Raleigh), Stéle (New York) and TwoTwo (Oakland), reinforcing its positioning within the experimental indie and art-driven fragrance scene rather than mainstream commercial perfumery.