SOK Studios: The Scent Dialogue with Crystal Chen

People often ask me why I started making perfume after so many different paths. I’ve been a barista, a tattooist, a videographer, even worked in newsrooms. Each role shaped me, but none of them fully explains why I chose perfume.

The truth is, there isn’t one reason. I can only say: I fell in love.

Perfume, to me, is another language. A scent carries me into memory — the smell of winter air pulling me back to a fragment, or my mother’s cooking, or my grandmother’s kitchen. Without words, these scents said love. That invisible power overwhelmed me, and I wanted to work with it.

And just like scent, I’ve always felt that music carries emotions words can’t hold. A melody can reach places language cannot. As a videographer, I had already experienced how sound and image, when combined, could create something larger than themselves — something that lives on a different dimension. I began to wonder if scent could do the same, reaching further when joined with other forms of art.

Music became the first step. From the moment I began making perfume, I often imagined what would happen if scent and music came together. When I first shared this thought with Crystal, she received it with warmth, and together we began to build something new.

It feels special that my first collaborator was Crystal Chen, at the same time she was releasing her debut album. For me, it wasn’t just about perfume. It was about showing how scent could sit beside other forms of art, opening up new ways of experiencing memory and emotion.

I am deeply grateful to Crystal for trusting this idea and making it her own as well. And I know this is just the beginning — one day I hope to explore scent alongside film, ceramics, and every art form I can reach. This collaboration was simply the first step.

Credits: Photography by Crystal Chen, Videography by Sojenn Lee