Anecdotes by Artists Puts Perfumers Center Stage, Transforming Personal Stories into Fragrance

NEW YORK, Sept. 14, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Anecdotes by Artists, a new prestige fragrance brand created to pull back the curtain on one of the most veiled corners of beauty, launches at Sephora, revealing the real stories and artists behind the scents.

Anecdotes by Artists offers an unfiltered look into the perfumers’ process. Each collection is created by a different Perfumer Artist, who is given complete creative freedom with no brief, benchmarks, or boundaries. The result is distinct and unique scents, inspired by raw stories, unexpected ideas, and scents shaped by the Perfumer Artist’s own memories, emotions, and point of view. A canvas for perfumers of all backgrounds, each collection will reveal a new perfumer’s perspective and an entirely new way of creating fragrance.

Dana Steinfeld, Chief Blue Sky & Innovation Officer at Maesa, has spent more than two decades developing fragrances and building beauty brands, bringing her expertise to the role of both founder and brand creator.

“I’ve been obsessed with fragrance since childhood, but truly fell in love early in my career when I started to learn how fragrance was really created,” said founder Dana Steinfeld. “This industry has given me the privilege of working with some of the world’s most extraordinary perfumers, witnessing their artistry firsthand. I believe that the soul of a fragrance lives in the artist behind it, in the memories, emotions, and experiences that shape their work. When you understand those stories, you don’t just smell a fragrance differently, you connect with it more deeply.”

The First Collection By Perfumer Artist Patricia Choux 

The brand’s first collection is by Perfumer Artist Patricia Choux, an acclaimed, FiFi Award-winning senior perfumer who trained at the prestigious ISIPCA school in Paris. Now based in New York City at renowned fragrance house MANE, she calls herself a “watercolorist” of scent and never reaches for the safe choice. Known for her daring style, Choux has created fragrances for prestige and niche houses including Clive Christian, Jo Malone, Marc Jacobs, Carven, NEST, Henry Rose, Snif, Nomenclature and more.

With no brief or boundaries, Choux followed instinct over convention, layering precious, rare and unexpected ingredients into three distinct scents drawn from her own memories and emotions, each one inspired by a story you can feel.

“Creating this collection of scents was unlike any project I’ve worked on before. Without the constraints of a traditional brief, I was able to create something deeply personal, scents that reflect my own memories and artistic perspective,” said Perfumer Patricia Choux.

Bringing The Brand To Life 

MANE gave unprecedented access to document the full creative process, including smell sessions, perfumer journals, and raw material exploration in the lab. Through every touchpoint, Anecdotes by Artists will show the making of the brand, including the collaboration with retail partner Sephora. A collective of fragrance influencers, trusted voices in the fragrance space known as the “Nosey Insiders,” will bring consumers behind the scenes of the brand’s creation through their lens. The brand will also partner with artists across different disciplines, including painters, fashion designers and chefs, to highlight a diversity of creative processes and honor how artists use their craft to tell stories or reimagine scent through their own artistic language.

The Sephora partnership marks a first for Maesa, the Next Gen Beauty Company, with Anecdotes by Artists bringing a new perspective to prestige fragrance.

“Anecdotes by Artists delivers a fresh perspective to fragrance with their first-of-its-kind approach, and we’re excited to offer their innovative take to Sephora’s beauty community,” said Carye Campbell, SVP Fragrance Merchandising at Sephora. “Our mission is to welcome all to the world of beauty and, by putting perfumers at the center of each scent and allowing artists an opportunity to share their personal stories, Anecdotes by Artists widens the perspective of how beauty lovers can experience scent.”

The debut collection will be available exclusively at Sephora on September 14 and is rolling out at select Sephora stores nationwide and on Sephora.com. 

The Collection 

Wild Cousin Eau de Parfum I $140 – 3.4 oz/ 100mL, $35 – 0.3 oz/10mL
The Anecdote: “I hated being told to be a good girl. One of my most vivid childhood memories was being forced to eat a dessert I couldn’t stand: French baba au rhum cake. With Wild Cousin, I reimagined that cake on my own terms. A rum-soaked gourmand that’s defiantly addictive.” — Perfumer Artist Patricia Choux 

Wild Cousin reclaims a negative memory as something indulgent, empowering and original. A decadent and deviant boozy gourmand perfume you can’t get enough of.

Key Notes: Rum-Soaked Cake, Crème Chantilly, Davana Flower, Oakwood 

The Villainelle Eau de Parfum I $140 – 3.4 oz/ 100mL, $35 – 0.3 oz/10mL
The Anecdote:  “I’ve always been misunderstood. People often read me as cold and unfriendly, but I’m actually pretty warm and open. With The Villainelle, I wanted to create a vanilla inspired by that feeling of being misunderstood, and use one of my favorite ingredients in a way nobody expects. This is the new vanilla gourmand I’ve always wanted to create.” — Perfumer Artist Patricia Choux 

The Villainelle bottles an olfactive contrast: cold and warm, soft and smoky. A luxurious vanilla perfume built on tension, surprise, and slow obsession.

Key Notes: Iced Juniper, Vanilla Resin, Vanilla Crystals, Incense Smoke 

Painted Petals Eau de Parfum I $140 – 3.4 oz/ 100mL, $35 – 0.3 oz/10mL
The Anecdote: “While working on a floral painting, I hit a moment where the piece felt completely stagnant. I decided it was time to kill the boring and splashed the canvas with paint to give it new life. With Painted Petals, I interpreted this moment into a feminine floral overdosed with juicy, pink fruits to create that feeling again.” — Perfumer Artist Patricia Choux 

Painted Petals transforms the ordinary into something vibrant and dynamic. A luxurious floral perfume bursting with spontaneity, joy and artistic energy.

Key Notes: Strawberry Leaf, Pink Rhubarb, Tuberose Milk, Jasmine Absolute

Discovery Set I $18 – 3 x 0.1 oz
Includes Wild Cousin, The Villainelle, and Painted Petals 

For more information, follow @anecdotesbyartists on Instagram and TikTok.

About Anecdotes by Artists
Founded by lifelong fragrance obsessive and industry veteran Dana Steinfeld, Anecdotes by Artists reveals the perfumer stories behind the scents, bringing the creativity, artistry and emotion of perfumery into focus. Launching exclusively at Sephora, the brand brings you behind the scenes of the world of fragrance, sharing a direct lens into the perfumer’s creative vision. Anecdotes by Artists gives each “Perfumer Artist” complete creative liberty to tell their own story, crafting fragrances that feel distinctive and unforgettable. Each Anecdotes by Artists collection spotlights a different Perfumer Artist, offering a rare look into their world, inspiration, and creative process, forging deeply personal connections through relatable emotions and experiences that inspire each fragrance. Available at Sephora.com and select Sephora stores.

About Maesa
Maesa is the Next-Gen Beauty Company, transforming the industry by incubating and growing meaningful, innovative brands and making prestige beauty accessible. Maesa believes beauty ignites inspiration, creativity, imagination, and connection, sparking new ideas and possibilities, and meeting unmet consumer needs. Through best-in-class design, formulation, brand creation and marketing capabilities, Maesa delivers new, better and different products with an unsurpassed speed to market. Maesa works with a variety of retailers to create and launch brands across beauty and wellness categories. The current portfolio includes Kristin Ess Hair, Hairitage by Mindy McKnight, fine’ry, Being Frenshe and MIX:BAR, among other brands. For more information, visit www.maesa.com.

About Sephora
Sephora is the world’s leading global prestige beauty retail brand. With 55,000 passionate employees operating in 37 markets, Sephora connects customers and beauty brands within the world’s most trusted and dynamic beauty community. We serve a highly engaged community of hundreds of millions of beauty followers across our global omnichannel network of more than 3,400 stores and iconic flagships, and our e-commerce and digital platforms, offering personalized and immersive seamless experiences across every touchpoint. With our curation of close to 500 brands and our own label, Sephora Collection, we offer the most unique and diverse range of prestige beauty products, tailored to our customers’ needs from fragrance to make-up, haircare, skincare and beyond, as we constantly reimagine the world of prestige beauty.

Since our inception in 1969 in Limoges, France, and as part of the LVMH Group since 1997, we have been disrupting the prestige beauty retail industry. Today, we continue to break with convention to drive our mission: champion a world of inspiration and inclusion where everyone can celebrate their beauty.

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