Marissa Zappas

United States

Marissa Zappas is a New York City-based independent perfumer, writer, and poet whose approach merges her anthropology background with admiration for early 20th-century avant-garde perfumes. She trained at Givaudan, starting as a receptionist and apprenticing under master perfumer Olivier Gillotin for two years before freelancing in 2017, and holds an M.A. exploring perfume's history, death attitudes, and cemetery construction. Her ethereal, nostalgic fragrances like Annabel’s Birthday Cake blend fantasy and reality, gothic and modern, often through collaborations with NYC artists and projects like co-founding Gumamina with Courtney Rafuse.