Rodrigo Flores-Roux

He returned home and began working professionally in 1991, starting out composing scents for shampoos and mass cosmetics rather than fine fragrance. His breakout came a few years later with Clinique's Happy (1997), a commercial hit that put his name on the map and set the tone for a career that has moved comfortably between mainstream and niche work ever since.

Flores-Roux is now a senior perfumer and vice president of fragrance creation at Givaudan, working out of the company's New York studio. His client list spans Tom Ford (Neroli Portofino, Ébène Fumé), John Varvatos, Dolce & Gabbana, Calvin Klein, Carolina Herrera, DKNY, Hugo Boss, Estée Lauder and Elizabeth Arden on the designer side, and indie houses such as Arquiste, Kilian, and House of Bō on the niche side. He has described his own sensibility as maximalist rather than minimalist, building compositions he calls 'chatty' and layered instead of quiet or restrained, with recurring returns to jasmine, leather, citrus, green tea, and botanicals tied to his Mexican upbringing.

His output has been recognized repeatedly by the Fragrance Foundation Awards, including a Perfume Extraordinaire of the Year win for Tom Ford's Ébène Fumé in 2022, plus category wins spanning both indie and mainstream fragrance through the 2010s and into the 2020s.