Alex Lee

Alex Lee is a contemporary perfumer working in a bold, gourmand-leaning idiom, where sweetness is kept in check by spice, wood and a slightly rough texture. It is a style for people who like dessert notes but want a fragrance that still feels adult.

For the South Korean niche house BORNTOSTANDOUT, Alex composed Drunk Maple Eau de Parfum. It opens sharp and peppery, with pink pepper and davana, a herb with a fruity, boozy facet, and rum adding a warm spirit note. The heart pairs coffee and maple syrup with soft, powdery suede, which stops the gourmand elements becoming cloying. The base of vanilla, benzoin, amberwood and sandalwood keeps the composition grounded and resinous rather than candied.

Gourmand perfumery, which uses edible notes such as vanilla, caramel, coffee and syrups, has become one of the most popular fragrance families. The best examples balance sweetness with structure, and Drunk Maple does so through its spice and woods, making it especially good for cooler months and evenings.

BORNTOSTANDOUT, founded in Seoul in 2022 by Jun Lim, builds bold, provocative, unapologetically sensual fragrances, and its Extrait Extrême line pushes those ideas to their most concentrated form.

Drunk Maple is offered here as a full bottle. Explore Alex Lee’s work at Redolia Perfumery below.