Michael Gibson

About

Michael Gibson is the founder and perfumer of Sentir, an independent fragrance house in Manchester, UK. He makes every Sentir fragrance himself: he sources the materials, builds the formulas, then tests, refines and makes them.

His earliest scent memory is his grandad's bottle of Eau Sauvage, but fragrance became an obsession at about 18, when he took a job in a perfume shop. He realised that the notes listed on a fragrance are impressions of what something smells like, not a list of what is in the bottle, and he set out to learn how fragrances are really made. He began buying individual raw materials, trying to identify them in fragrances he liked and studying each one on its own. No perfumery school is mentioned, so none is claimed.

He describes years of experiments that smelled muddy at first, and says he made only two or three fragrances he liked in his first six years. Cèdre Doux, created in 2018, was the first that worked, because nothing shouted over anything else. The Sentir range followed, with Cèdre Doux, Aplomb, Brilliance Mandarine, Bombe de Mimosa, Ambre Brûlé and Mon Soleil all listed as 2023 or 2024 releases by public databases.

He says he is still finding his style, and he is firmly against dupes. He wants Sentir to suit people who are bored of mainstream designer fragrances that all start to smell the same and who want something with more personality. The creative side, he says, will always stay with him.