Sabrina Co champions Philippine heritage through scents and plates
In a landscape of young creatives avidly championing their heritage and celebrating local culture, Sabrina Co stands out for delving into a field no one else has explored as fully as she has. While others have made great inroads through fashion, the arts, music, food, and design, Sabrina brings forward stories of Philippine flora and fauna, costume, and even nursery rhymes through uniquely Filipino fragrances.
For scents, her homegrown brand ATIN carries beautifully presented diffusers, room and linen sprays, and body and massage oils. These delve not just into the fragrances of flowers like ylang-ylang or fruits like dalandan, but also into destinations and Philippine experiences like Boracay, Palawan, and Intramuros, plus uniquely Filipino flavors like halo-halo. But it took most of her 20-plus years to get to a place where she has bestselling lines at Kultura and creates custom scents for shops, hotels, and even offices.
Sabrina explains, “When I was younger, a lot of my memories were tied to fragrances—he smell of my grandmother, the smell of my grandmother’s house, or of my mom when she was cooking. Everything I remember from my childhood—places and people—has to do with their scent.
“That was very powerful for me,” Sabrina continues. “In high school, everyone was working on projects, and I thought it was interesting that there’s nothing I knew of in the Philippines that would tell the story of Filipino fragrances. I know that we have so much to offer in terms of flora, vegetation, and nature, and no one’s really bottling that and promoting it as Filipino.
“I started at the end of high school, but I had an interest in perfumery ever since I was 15,” Sabrina adds. “I went multiple summers to France to study under perfumers in really old perfume houses, and I fell more and more in love with fragrance. Luckily, I interned one-on-one under Isabelle Cutri, a senior perfumer who’s done amazing perfumes for Giorgio Armani and SIC (Standard Industrial Classification, which includes the production of perfumes).”
Her scents range from the mesmerizing ylang-ylang, an iconic Filipino scent, to mangosteen, tangerine, and even dahon ng kamatis. The diffusers come in a range of elegant designs that are perfect as gifts or for your own home. These, along with the body oils, are priced under P1,000 to make them appealing to locals and tourists.
“I started with home fragrances because I felt that personal fragrances were too competitive,” says Sabrina. “This is like a niche. I had a line of 12 fragrances at SM Kultura, where I launched, and it’s done really well. They keep telling me to expand, expand, expand. And from there, I created a line of ceramic plates, again with everything grounded in Filipino culture, history, and traditions.”
Going from fragrances to ceramics was, she says, an aesthetic decision. The designs on the round, rectangular, and square dishes are based on botanicals. Philippine fruits and vegetables, birds, and fish are presented against a white background that’s sometimes rimmed with vibrant color. She even created plates with depictions of the bahay kubo nursery rhyme, complete with nipa hut and vegetables, for Toyo Eatery.
“The ceramics are a line of their own, but the reason I created them is because I thought the diffuser could use a friend on the table,” Sabrina says with a laugh. “Initially, they were made for the diffuser to sit on, but now people use them for decoration, to put up on walls, for merienda, and for dining.” They have also been used to hold watches and jewelry on bedside tables. Since they own the ceramic factory, they are in control of production and quality from beginning to end and can market these items for under a thousand pesos each. “Affordable luxury is what I’m after,” Sabrina maintains.
Her plates, featuring the artwork of Damian Domingo, depicting señoritas and mestizas in typical Filipiniana dress of the 19th century, recall an unhurried past rooted in genteel tradition. One can imagine afternoon tea with dainty kakanin served on these plates.
In college, she studied visual and performing arts and communication journalism, as these are also her passions. “By the end of college, I was at a fork in the road—to take a job in the US or stay with this baby that I’ve been working on for many years. Do I just go home and work, or do I live out my New York life?” She chose to come home. “I think if I lived in New York, I would have been broke and just living paycheck to paycheck! And I’m glad because now the brand is a lot bigger, and we keep pushing out new products.”
A scent like Boracay reflects her experience of the sun, the sand, and the sea on the island. For Palawan, it’s the smell of the lagoon and the greenery. “When I do fragrance formulation, I take into account what it makes me feel, what it reminds me of. What are the ingredients or parts of nature that are only in that place?”
She creates scents for stores because “fragrance can make you want to linger in a store and spend.” For BPO office spaces, different scents are used for areas of work or rest. Citrus scents are energizing, while downtime is enhanced by the relaxing scents of florals or oriental teas. For Mactan International Airport, Sabrina created Mac-tan Memories, which uses green mango—a symbol of Cebu—elevated with sea salt, coconut, and marine essence. Her products are used in many spas, including Illume at the Grand Hyatt, Kerry Spa at Shangri-La The Fort, and Balesin.
“I would love to introduce scenting machines with more Filipino motifs,” Sabrina says. For now, she and her brother have delved into dog wellness in London with a place called Puppery. It’s focused on letting your pet age gracefully. She has younger twin brothers; Sabrina is the creative, one brother is in tech, and the other in finance, making working with them a perfect combination.
On what she learned from her entrepreneur parents, Arnold and Ruth Co, she says, “I have to give it all to my parents. They brought me to all of their meetings. My bassinet was in my mom’s office, so even from a young age I was exposed. I don’t think they intended for me to hear everything, but I picked things up. My parents are firm believers in hard work. You may be gifted, but if you don’t put in the hard work, you’re not going to get anywhere.
“I also learned resilience. If anything, my parents taught me how to get back up every time you fail. They definitely didn’t baby me if I had problems or issues. They said, ‘You figure it out—that’s the only way.’ There’s no going down; it’s all up from here.”
As Sabrina continues to navigate the expansive world of Philippine fragrances, it looks like the only way she’s going is up.
