Phlur

A first life built on transparency

Eric and Cynthia Korman launched Phlur in 2015 in Austin, Texas. The house committed to publishing the complete list of materials in its fragrances, a practice nothing in the industry requires, and sold at Sephora and Credo.

This positioning earned it an audience without giving it scale. In January 2021, the incubator The Center, founded by Ben Bennett, acquired the house and sought someone to take it in hand.

The 2022 relaunch and Missing Person

Chriselle Lim, a fashion and beauty content creator, joined the project in late 2021 and became its owner and creative director. The relaunch took place on February 22, 2022 with a single fragrance, Missing Person, a floral musk sold first direct-to-consumer, then at Sephora from March 31.

The fragrance was presented through an emotion rather than through its materials: the smell of someone who is missing. It ran out of stock for several months and left behind a waiting list of several hundred thousand people.

What the house has become

Three of the original ten fragrances were carried over into the new packaging, an oval transparent bottle with a porcelain cap, far from the opaque white squares of the first life. The following releases continued on the same narrative principle.

Phlur is sold at Sephora in the United States, at Space NK and Selfridges in the United Kingdom, and at Anthropologie. The incubator behind it also owns Naturium, Saltair and MAKE, all built around a public beauty figure.