“I live between sunshine citrus and midnight music.”
Rio
On a first bottle found in high school, a mother’s scent he has never stopped looking for, citrus for the daylight hours, and music for all the ones after.
Tap the underlined phrases for notes in the margin.
For our twenty-second conversation we sat with Hilmy Rio Pratama, who describes himself as naturally reserved and observant, with an imagination that never stops running. He was born into a Sundanese and Cirebonese family from West Java and now lives in Balikpapan, on the other side of the sea. He collects meaning from small things: a melody, a memory, the feeling a fragrance leaves behind. Music became the soundtrack of his ordinary days. Fragrance became the way to hold what words could not.
Half of him lives here, in the hours after the day has closed. Press play, then read on.
The first bottle, and what it opened
It started in high school with Carolina Herrera 212 Men. “It was the first perfume that made me realise fragrance could be so beautiful, refined, and unforgettable,” he says. What began there did not stay a preference for long. It turned into a way of keeping things.
A way of keeping what happened
He does not treat perfume as decoration. He treats it as storage. Every bottle in his rotation carries a different memory, emotion or story, and like music or a photograph it can bring a moment back intact, without asking permission first.
That is the argument he makes for fragrance being more than a luxury. A luxury is something you own. This is something that keeps a version of you on file, and hands it back years later when you least expect it.
Fragrance is more than a luxury. It is the most personal form of self-expression.
The scent he is still looking for
There is one he cannot find. When he meets a soft floral musk he is returned immediately to childhood, to hugging his mother and breathing in something fresh and warm at the same time. Delicate rose. Airy florals. A gentle powdery softness underneath.
He no longer remembers which perfume it was. He remembers exactly how it made him feel, which is the part no bottle lists on its label. “It was comfort in its purest form,” he says, “and perhaps that is why I am still searching for it today.”
He cannot name the bottle. He can name what was in it. This is the closest thing he has to a description, reconstructed from memory alone. Tap any accord to see what it usually means.
The most rebuilt flower in perfumery. Real rose absolute costs a fortune, so houses assemble it from dozens of materials. Hundreds of versions exist and almost none of them smell like the one you remember.
The transparent end of the floral family. Often white flowers used at low dose so they read as light and open rather than heady, the way a room smells after a window has been left ajar.
Usually orris, heliotrope and violet. This is the accord that does most of the emotional work here, because powder is what nearly everyone’s memory of being small and safe actually smells like.
The skin note. Modern musks are warm, faintly sweet and close to the body, which is why a musk can feel less like a perfume and more like a person.
Fresh and warm at once. If a bottle ever matches this description, he would very much like to know.
The original · Comfort, in its purest formThe person behind his earliest scent memory.
What he wears, and when
His collection is organised by the light. Citrus and clean things carry the working day, something more considered arrives when the occasion asks for it, and a darker set waits for the end of the night. Move along the day below to see the whole rotation.
Bright, uplifting, effortless. His comfort zone.
- iNishane Wulong Cha X
- iiXerjoff Torino21
- iiiAtaraksia Kembang Sinantara
- ivProject 1945 Waters of Maluku
- vBamboe Roencing
When the occasion asks for something more elegant.
- iHoM Haute The Grand Traverse
- iiMemo Paris Madurai
- iiiEx Nihilo Blue Talisman Extrait
As night falls, the ones he reaches for without thinking.
- iYSL MYSLF Le Parfum
- iiYSL Velours
- iiiGivenchy Gentleman Reserve Privée
Sunrise, sunset, and the space between
His day opens with coffee, a spray of something fresh and music. It closes the same way, with music, much later. “Somewhere between those two moments,” he says, “is where I feel most like myself.”
He has always loved sunrise and sunset for the same reason. They are the two hours a day when light and darkness are in the room together, neither one winning, which is a fair description of the way he has arranged everything else.
The hour · Where light and dark meetNeither one winning, which suits him.
Intention, not attention
Good taste, he says, has nothing to do with owning the rarest or the most expensive thing. It is choosing what genuinely reflects you, in fragrance or music or dress or the way you carry yourself. Choose for intention, never for attention. The things that stay memorable are usually the effortless ones, the timeless ones, the honest ones.
One belief, defended
Which leads directly to the single line he would defend against anyone, and which happens to describe both halves of him at once.
True elegance does not ask for attention. It leaves an impression.
Outro · The four corners of a dayA sage polo, The Grand Traverse, coffee, and the music that ends it.
“Sometimes the memories we carry are just as meaningful as the scents themselves.”