Ostens’ Christopher Yu’s Scent Journey From Lower Hutt To Global Success

New Zealand-born, London-based Christopher Yu has launched some of the most important fragrance brands in the world. As he prepares to move home to Aotearoa, his story is told in six evocative scents.

At the library bar of The NoMad hotel in London, Viva sets Christopher Yu the difficult task of listing a library of scents that hold his olfactory memories. It helps to start at the beginning.

Clinique Aromatics Elixir Eau de Parfum

An almost suffocating, complex blend of notes, including oakmoss, patchouli, ylang ylang and rose.

Growing up around Lower Hutt, Yu was surrounded by flowers. His mother owned floristries and he would help her put bouquets together.

“I was always in the flower fridge and I had to learn from a very young age when she was rattling off these Latin names,” he recalls. “In some ways, my mother being a florist is the biggest influence.”

His mother’s love of Clinique Aromatics Elixir created a scent impression for Chris, and his family’s work ethic held strong. His father had a chain of martial arts equipment stores, and his grandfather owned camera shops around Wellington, where he would work during the school holidays.

“All of my family, because they were immigrants from China, had their own businesses,” he says. “Serving customers and reading people on the shop floor was very much part of how I ended up in beauty and business.”

A refreshing blend with citrus, herbs, and tonic notes.

There were early signs of a career in fragrance. As young as 8 years old, travelling to visit family around New Zealand, Yu would ask to go to the airport early to smell the perfumes at Duty Free. At 17, he remembers an 11pm phone booth call to order a bottle of Acqua di Parma’s Colonia Eau de Cologne (which he had read about in a magazine) from the London department store, Liberty.

On leaving high school, Yu studied law and accounting and entered the graduation programme at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Wellington, working for two years in tax law. While it was good grounding for business, he says, “It wasn’t my passion, and it was very clear.”

Yu moved to London in 2000 and worked as a solicitor in investment banking at Credit Suisse for less than a year before he was made redundant in a tough economic climate. “It was the best thing ever to happen to me!”

He took a retail role at Liberty for the summer. Fortuitously, he was working at the fragrance counter on the day a man named Laurent Delafon came by with a Tanner Krolle doctor’s bag brimming with candles from a little-known brand at the time, Diptyque.

While Delafon asked to speak with a Liberty buyer, Yu “being a gauche Kiwi” said he would speak with him first.

After a coffee at a café around the corner, Yu decided to bank his whole redundancy cheque and become his business partner. Their company, then named United Perfumes, was responsible for perfume distribution at Diptyque. “It was the most magical sliding doors moment, and my whole career changed,” Yu says.

Diptyque Figuier Classic Candle

At that first meeting, Yu was enchanted by the scent of the Diptyque Figuier Classic Candle, one of the first fig-scented products before their popularity ripened.

Yu worked with, and learned from, two of the Diptyque founders, the late Yves Coueslant and Christian Gautreau, over seven years with the business.

Diptyque was already a cult brand among the style set in Paris, and Delafon and Yu opened the first stores in London, as well as counters at Harrods, Selfridges and Liberty.

In the heady heydays of the early 2000s, Yu would be asked to drop candles to the homes of loyal customers and doors would be opened by Karl Lagerfeld, Tom Ford and David Furnish.

“I still, at 50 years old, 25 years later, pinch myself sometimes because I am this little kid of two immigrants, growing up poor in Lower Hutt, now standing in front of these people,” he says.

“I think how influential Karl Lagerfeld was for culture, not just fashion, and getting to speak to someone like that and to not really feel scared because I didn’t know the magnitude of it at the time.”

It’s worth noting that Yu’s Kiwi accent is still intact, except for French words dropped softly into conversation.

While Yu says he was simply at the right place, at the right time – when customers were fatigued by big-label fragrances and looking for something with an independent spirit – his business partner, Delafon, has the top notes on Yu’s success.

“His enthusiasm, ‘can do’ attitude, and passion for perfumes made us team up to look after the Diptyque brand in the UK,” Delafon writes over email.

“His curiosity, his sense of wonder, and his multi-cultural background are some of his of key characteristics. These mixed with a very ‘Kiwi’ trait of being to adapt and blend in are infectious and bring a unique perspective to problems and opportunities alike.”

The fresh air of Grasse…

A pivotal moment of Yu’s career was befriending Agnes Costa of the Fragonard family, who have a more than 100-year-old perfume materials business and eponymous brand in the famed fragrance region of Grasse, France.

“I remember going down there for a meeting the first time and a lot of doors were shut, but Agnes took a shine to me,” says Yu. “She was fascinated with New Zealand and she wanted to travel there and so she just kept asking me all these questions and we became good friends.

“A few phone calls later… I was let in to a part of the perfume industry that not many people get to see.”

When asked, over email, of her first impressions of Yu, Costa wrote, in a very French way, that she was “seduced” by his inner beauty and talent.

“His vision, his modernity, and the fresh air from New Zealand I visited once and love forever,” she notes. “His creativity, curiosity and taste for modern art.”

Between trips to Grasse, Yu and Delafon helped grow Diptyque into a global juggernaut worth more than £100 million in sales (about $280m at 2007 exchange rates). In 2007, the company was purchased by Manzanita Capital, a fund of the family of the Gap fashion chain, which now also owns Space NK.

Yu knew he could only continue to work for himself and United Perfumes (which changed its name to Colour & Stripe in 2022) became one of the world’s most prestigious fragrance distribution and development companies.

Within months, Yu and Delafon were working with another little-known brand at the time, Cire Trudon. The 360-year-old candle maker to Marie Antoinette was steeped in history but it had yet to become revered in modern times. Delafon and Yu worked with Cire Trudon for 13 years, and its prized placement in many homes today is a testament to its revival.

Yu continued to meet some of the best “noses” in the world of perfumery, including Francis Kurkdjian, of the cult-followed fragrance Baccarat Rouge. He’s humble enough to admit that his senses were not always right. When he first encountered Baccarat Rouge, he told Kurkdjian it was a bit too full-on. “So, I would have been the guy that turned down The Beatles,” he laughs.

Ostens’ Impression Rose Oil Isparta

An addictive floral, full of ripe, jammy blackcurrant and crushed Turkish rose petals lifted by pink peppercorn.

Yu says he had not wanted to create his own brand, but this all changed after he visited LMR in Grasse, named so after the “visionary” natural fragrance Laboratoire founded by Monique Rémy. During the meeting, he experienced a unique scent. “It smelt like jam, like elderflower, like Turkish delight.” The reply, was simply: “C’est juste une rose.”

The rose was from a single varietal, from one side of a mountain in Isparta, Turkey, and Yu was captivated. “I felt like I’ve never smelt before up until this day.”

Yu shared the LMR natural oils with everyone he could, including at an event in the Claridge’s Ballroom with friends from the industry and beyond. While the event was purely a creative exercise, guests asked when the new product was launching.

In 2020, he and Delafon launched their own fine fragrance and candle company, Ostens, while continuing to work with leading brands, including “it” New York perfumery D.S. & Durga (owned by Manzanita Capital). A play on the Latin word “ostendier”, meaning “to show”, Ostens has a debut collection of six eaux de parfum, each showcasing a pure ingredient.

While the source material, Rose Isparta, is available simply as a Préparation Oil, the “master of the modern rose” Dominique Ropion (who created Frédéric Malle’s Portrait of a Lady and co-created Viktor & Rolf’s Flowerbomb) was given free rein to create the perfume version, Impression Rose Oil Isparta. “It is about unbridled creativity and the best raw materials in the world.”

On its completion, Ropion was embarrassed to give the formula to Yu and Delafon, as he didn’t check the price of the materials. He decided to give four options, but the duo chose the most expensive in a blind test.

“Still today, it is most expensive formula at IFF, which owns LMR.”

Prioritising the provenance of special ingredients meant Ostens was initially only direct-to-consumer, with some pop-ups. Now Ostens, which also has a range of glass-blown Illumination candles, is sold through 40 stores around the world. (For New Zealand, Yu is in talks with Mecca about being stocked there when the time is right.)

The smell of Auckland Airport at dawn

Humid, herbal and floral.

Yu’s dream perfume would be the smell of landing in New Zealand at 6am after a long international flight – a pilgrimage he makes each Christmas. As he walks from the International Terminal to Domestic, there is a slight humid and earthy smell.

He might be able to bottle it when he moves back to New Zealand at the end of the year with his partner.

“I’m excited about building Ostens from down there, but also being part of the New Zealand beauty industry,” he says.

Yu aims to start an consultancy to help New Zealand and, especially, indigenous brands make a move to Europe.

“My mother says ”you owe New Zealand a great debt" because of how they welcomed my family, and to be where it happens Downunder and shout out to the rest of the world, with all of the amazing friends and contacts that I’ve built over here, makes me so proud.”

Yu has already formed personal relationships with New Zealand perfumers, including Nathan Taare from Of Body in Wellington.

“It’s thanks to Chris that I now call myself a perfumer. Before meeting him, I struggled with that term,” says Taare.

“Chris helped shift my perspective to an international one... The fact that we’re both from the Hutt Valley has always made me proud of Chris. From our first meeting, there was an immediate connection around where we come from and our indigenous roots.”

Yu also wants to encourage a wider sense of community in the capital.

“I really want to be a part of helping Wellington find its feet again. It’s always been the creative centre. It’s going through a state of flux, and I want to be a part of the change,” he says.

Already, Yu organises a Writer’s Prize with Bats Theatre. As a frustrated finance student back in New Zealand, he hung out with a theatre crowd – and he’s held on to a passion for new writing on the board of theatres in London, including Soho and Kiln Theatre.

The (hopefully) annual award takes the form of a paid writer’s residency, and, as well as local mentors, has connected the winner on Zoom calls with Phoebe Waller-Bridge of Fleabag fame and singer-songwriter Sam Smith.

“I really wanted to make someone who was practising their art and writing in Wellington feel like they were connected to the world.”

As always, Yu gets to the essence of the matter. “I look at theatre, I look at perfume, it’s all the same thing,” he says. “It’s just here to make you feel something.”

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