Leo Gibbon

About

Leo Gibbon is a London-based co-founder of IIUVO, the independent fragrance house he started with Tomi Ahmed. He is the half of the pair who has been described as the brand's nose, though IIUVO works with outside perfumers on its scents and names none of them.

Gibbon came to scent from music: in 2015 he was a DJ and sometime shop worker, and he credits his mother's florist shop as an influence. IIUVO began with scented candles, and its first three sold out within a week of launching at Colette in Paris. No perfumery school or apprenticeship is named in any source.

IIUVO's first fragrances, the Edition One trio Soigné, Gilot and Fonteyn, followed in 2017 after two years of work. The founders chose the French house Robertet for them and say they worked with a different nose for each scent, so Gibbon's role there is that of the brief-giver and co-author of the concept, not the person who balanced the formulas. BULLSHIT, which the house describes as a concept created and synthesised by IIUVO with the artist Stefan Brüggemann, began as a candle in 2016 and became an eau de parfum in 2020. Database listings credit it to both founders.

The work is concept first. IIUVO calls itself an artistic practice that uses scent alongside other media, and Gibbon says the link between scent and music is a key part of how they create. The fragrances are unisex and each starts from a person, a place or a memory rather than a list of materials.