Michael Nordstrand came to perfume from fashion, where he worked as an illustrator in his twenties. An aromatherapy class, taken when the pace of that industry wore him down, changed his course. He studied perfume creation at Givaudan, ISIPCA and the Grasse Institute of Perfumery, and earned a certification in medicinal plants from Cornell University, with a focus on the aromatic plants popularised during the Middle Ages. He then set up as an independent perfumer.
He runs Mythologist Studio, an independent atelier in the New York area that makes fragrance for brands and museums, and in August 2025 became Principal Perfumer at Patina, a company developing new molecules for perfumers. For the Getty Villa he distilled ancient Pylos into two scents, reading 172 academic papers and filtering the perfume through raw wool from the Greek island of Skiathos. His work includes Bad Lily for TALE Parfum, a 2025 Art and Olfaction Award winner, and Orange Grove for Tsu Lange Yor.
Caeleste Virtues, his first fragrance for the house, is a 2026 extrait at 25% oil, named for the Virtues, whom the house places in the second order of its angelic hierarchy. Seventeen notes sit under seven virtues, from cacao absolute and honey for Fortitude to vanilla and labdanum for Charity, with Mysore sandalwood, patchouli, vetiver, orris, cypriol, bergamot, musk, jasmine, frankincense, benzoin, star anise, cinnamon and clove between. He treats virtue as something practised rather than a fixed state: devotional, but not removed from the physical world.
