Baruti Founder Spyros Drosopoulos on Genderless Fragrance

By Cheryl Gushue

Spyros Drosopoulos is the founder and sole perfumer of Baruti Perfumes, a genderless fragrance house he’s run since 2015 from labs in Athens and the Netherlands. A former cognitive neuroscience PhD candidate, Drosopoulos writes every Baruti formula himself. His goal: the sweet spot between complex, unusual notes and a scent people actually want to wear every day.

Beauty Hub Magazine sat down with Drosopoulos to talk formulation, sustainability, and what it takes to run a niche perfume house across two countries.

What Does the Name Baruti Mean?

Baruti means gunpowder in Greek. The word comes from the Arabic “barut.” Greek has its own separate word for gunpowder, but Baruti is the one commonly used. In everyday speech, it also describes something with a bite or an edge, which fits the brand’s personality.

Drosopoulos chose it for the image it creates: a perfume as a small explosion on the skin the moment you apply it. He also likes that it sounds Italian. That extra flair, he says, gives the brand a bit more personality.

How Did Spyros Drosopoulos Get Into Perfumery?

Drosopoulos was born in the Netherlands, raised in Greece, and educated in Germany. He studied psychology and completed a PhD in cognitive neuroscience, focused on sleep and memory consolidation. Perfume was a personal interest long before it was a career. He was already drawn to tea, coffee, mixology, and food from different cultures.

An introductory perfume-making class in 2009 changed the direction of his life. Around that same period, he discovered niche perfume houses like Andy Tauer, Nasomatto, and Mona di Orio, and realized that perfumers could formulate their own scents. That realization opened a door he hadn’t considered. He left academia, stepped away from his teaching position at the University of Amsterdam, and put all of his time into studying perfumery. After several years spent testing hundreds of materials, he released his first Baruti fragrances in 2015.

What Makes Baruti’s Formulas Different?

Drosopoulos writes every Baruti formula himself. No outside perfumer, no ghost nose. That was the point from the start: a distinct, recognizable voice rather than a repeat of what other brands already do.

His stated aim is a sweet spot between complexity and wearability. He describes a spectrum with generic on one end and disorganized chaos on the other. Baruti formulas sit in the middle: interesting, layered, novel, but still wearable day to day. Being self-taught, he says, removed the instinct to follow traditional formulation rules, which left more room to test combinations other perfumers might skip.

How Does Baruti Approach Longevity and Concentration?

Drosopoulos compares formulating to DJing. The real technical challenge isn’t any single note; it’s the transition between notes, making sure one carries the composition smoothly into the next.

Longevity comes down to composition and concentration, not price. A formula loaded with base notes lasts longer on skin. A citrus-forward, top-note-heavy composition, even worn undiluted, can fade in about 20 minutes. Concentration format matters too: eau de parfum and extrait de parfum wear differently because of how much fragrance material each one carries.

Cost doesn’t map cleanly onto longevity or quality either. Some inexpensive materials last for hours; some expensive top notes evaporate quickly. Drosopoulos points out that perfumery is unusual among crafts in this way. Nobody prices a painting by the cost of the pigment, but perfume buyers often expect the price to track material cost directly. In his experience, it rarely does.

Is Baruti Perfumes Sustainable? What Ingredients Does It Avoid?

Baruti formulates with both naturals and synthetics. On the natural side, Drosopoulos avoids wild-harvested materials to prevent depleting natural sources. On the synthetic side, he avoids known bioaccumulators, including Galaxolide, a polycyclic musk that remains legal and widely used industry-wide despite poor biodegradability and documented detection in fish. Baruti does use some woody amber materials, chosen with biodegradability in mind and used in smaller quantities.

Drosopoulos also points to something most consumers don’t realize: nearly all perfume raw materials are already upcycled. They’re waste byproducts from other industries, such as paper, food and citrus juice production, and petrochemical refining. No crude oil is extracted specifically to produce a fragrance ingredient. Essential oils are the exception, since naturals like rose, sandalwood, or cedarwood are harvested directly for that purpose.

Are Baruti Fragrances Gender-Neutral?

Yes. Baruti does not label fragrances by gender. Every fragrance is designed as unisex. Drosopoulos names each scent on its own, like Baruti Perverso or Laurakimou!, and leaves the fit to the wearer. He does notice general buying patterns: woodier and smokier scents tend to sell more to men, florals more to women, but that observation never becomes a label on the bottle.

Laurakimou! is a good example of how personal the process gets: he made it for his daughter, built around notes of strawberry, champagne, and magnolia. It’s since found an audience well outside that original inspiration.

Where Are Baruti Fragrances Made?

Baruti runs two labs, one in Athens and one in the Netherlands. Drosopoulos founded the company in the Netherlands and relocated to Athens in 2025, largely for more sunshine and personal reasons. He’s working toward consolidating fully in Greece, but logistics currently require keeping both locations active.

Production stays in-house from start to finish: raw material purchasing, mixing, stability testing, filtration, and bottle filling. Candles are the one exception. Drosopoulos develops fragrance oils for other brands’ candle lines but doesn’t produce candles himself. He considers wax selection, wick choice, and burn temperature a separate trade from perfumery, and hands that part off to specialists.

Can You Learn Perfumery From Spyros Drosopoulos?

Yes. Drosopoulos teaches perfumery, often in partnership with the Institute for Art and Olfaction in Los Angeles, running an online course roughly once a year alongside in-person sessions at his own lab or the Institute. The course is built for people with zero background and brings them to an advanced level within about a week, enough to decide whether perfumery is a path worth pursuing further.

What Other Fragrance Projects Does Spyros Drosopoulos Work On?

Beyond Baruti, Drosopoulos works on Scentronix, an algorithmic perfumery project, and consults on aroma marketing. Combined with his teaching work and his hands-on role at Baruti, it places him among a small group of perfumers working across the creative, technical, and commercial sides of the industry at once.

Where Are Baruti Perfumes Sold?

Baruti sells in 80 boutiques worldwide, with the strongest coverage across Europe, North America, the Middle East, and a growing presence in Asia. Early expansion is underway into Africa and South America. The brand is not yet in Australia, and as of this interview, Baruti has no retail presence in Canada, though Drosopoulos said he’d welcome the right boutique or apothecary partner there.

What’s Next for Baruti Perfumes?

Drosopoulos continues to expand distribution into Africa, South America, and, he hopes, Canada.

Instagram: @barutiperfumes