How Curiosity Led Shazeb Khan to Build Aur Amör : A Fragrance House Rooted in Craftsmanship

Most people spend their lives looking at the world. A perfumer spends years learning how to smell it.

For Shazeb Khan, that education began in 2018 with an ordinary YouTube recommendation and a small spiral notebook.

At the time, fragrance was not the destination. His curiosity extended across healthy cooking, cosmetic formulations, and understanding how different ingredients transformed into something meaningful. Rather than simply accepting that something worked, he wanted to understand why it worked. One afternoon, while watching another formulation video, he began writing ingredient names, blending methods and observations into a small notebook. Looking back, he considers that notebook - not a business plan - the true beginning of Aur Amör.

Determined to move beyond online learning, Shazeb pursued formal training under a senior master perfumer whose expertise bridged artistic perfumery with analytical chemistry, mass spectrometry and fragrance analysis. There he discovered that perfumery was not merely the art of creating pleasant scents. It was a discipline founded upon observation, chemistry, patience and deep respect for raw materials.

His education soon moved beyond books and laboratories.

He began distilling botanicals himself, collecting fresh roses before noon and producing rose water that impressed even members of his own family, who preferred it over commercially available alternatives. He later visited a nearby farm cultivating Golden Magnolia flowers, carefully distilling them to experience the material at its source.

His curiosity extended further into preparing handcrafted tinctures from Madagascar vanilla beans, Ambrette seeds, roasted coffee beans, Ethiopian civet paste, Siberian castoreum, cured leather, smoked cigarette tobacco and seven varieties of tobacco leaves. Each experiment was an attempt to understand a raw material in its purest expression before it ever became part of a fragrance.

Not every lesson came from beautiful aromas.

Some of the earliest materials he encountered were surprisingly harsh, metallic or intensely animalic, challenging every assumption he had about perfumery. Then came a moment that changed his understanding of fragrance forever.

The first time he smelled Egyptian Oakmoss Absolute, he struggled to describe what he experienced. It was more than an aroma. It seemed to quiet his mind in a way he had never felt before. Preparing a tincture from Madagascar vanilla beans became another unforgettable lesson, revealing how profoundly a natural material transformed when it met human skin. Those experiences taught him that fragrance is not simply something we smell. It is something we experience.

His curiosity even extended to the foundation of every perfume - ethanol itself. He explored alcohols derived from different agricultural sources, compared their behaviour, studied denaturants and purity levels, and even researched the naturally derived grape alcohols used in some of the world's most exclusive fragrance collections. For him, no ingredient was too ordinary to deserve careful attention.

Years of study gradually shaped something greater than technical knowledge.

During his personal journey, Shazeb came to believe that every human being radiates an unseen presence shaped by the qualities they cultivate within. Love, to him, represents one of the highest human qualities - something that cannot be seen directly, yet is deeply felt by those around us. That understanding inspired the name Aur Amör, bringing together the ideas of Aura and Amour (Love). It reflects his belief that every creation carries something of its creator, and that work crafted with sincerity, care and love leaves a lasting presence beyond the object itself.

Today, Aur Amör is being built as an independent fragrance house rooted in curiosity, craftsmanship and continuous learning. Its first fragrance, ORENZO, represents not the destination, but the beginning of a lifelong commitment to creating fragrances with honesty, intention and respect for the art.

Looking ahead, Shazeb hopes to contribute to India's growing culture of fine fragrance by encouraging deeper appreciation for raw materials, thoughtful craftsmanship and the discipline behind perfumery.

As he often says,

"The day I stop asking questions is the day I stop deserving to call myself a student of perfumery."

Because Aur Amör was never built one fragrance at a time.

It was built one question at a time.